On October 1, 1924, future President James Earl Carter is born in Plains, Georgia. Carter, who preferred to be called “Jimmy,” was the son of a peanut farmer and was the first president to be born in a hospital. Carter was raised a devoted Southern Baptist and graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946. He married Rosalynn Smith later that year.
After graduation, Carter served in the Navy’s new nuclear submarine program and was looking forward to a career in the Navy when his father passed away in 1953. The Carters dutifully returned to Georgia and took over the family farm. Back in Plains, Carter became involved in local politics, serving first on the school board and working his way up to a seat on the Georgia State Planning Commission. In 1962, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and, nine years later, he became governor.
A liberal Democrat, Carter launched a campaign against Republican presidential incumbent Gerald Ford in 1974, when the American electorate was still reeling from the Vietnam War, which ended in 1973, and former President Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. Ford, who assumed office immediately upon Nixon’s resignation in 1974, pardoned his former boss, enraging many who thought Nixon should have had to stand trial. Carter’s “Washington outsider” persona helped him win the White House in 1976.
