Young Jimmy Carter and his friends were walking across a pasture after a day’s farm labor during the Great Depression. As they came to a gate, his companions stood aside and let Carter enter first.
This was no act of kindness or intuitive deference to a future U.S. president. The two teens stopped because they were Black, and James Earl Carter Jr. was white, a 14-year-old whose father owned the Georgia land they all worked.
After years of playing and working as equals, his friends’ silent statement opened Carter’s eyes.
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