(car engine rumbling) (car indicator ticking) - [Interviewer] Okay, you guys ready?

I'm gonna ask you questions, but you address Chris's camera.

- Okay.

- [Interviewer] Okay?

- I mean, we've seen so many firsts, I mean, I saw my first Ku Klux Klan person here.

I saw my first Indians come here.

I got to meet Yasser Arafat, and he smelled bad.

And I wanted to tell him he smelled bad, but, oh golly, it was bad.

I guess he smelled like a camel, I don't know.

But anyway, I told Mr. Jimmy, Mr. Jimmy said, "What'd you think about my friend?"

I said, "He stinks."

You know?

- Yeah, do you wanna- - We can just tell you all kind of stories.

- We've had Lulu Roman and the lady used to have the short shorts on "Hee Haw".

- I crossed a karate blow with a pig.

- [Audience] What did you get?

- A pork chop.

(audience laughing) - We've had politicians come to church.

We've had Andrew Young speak at our church.

- Andrew's heard me say this many times, and I've never said it about anyone else.

Of all the people I've ever known in public service, Andy Young is the best.

- So help me God.

- When somebody says, "Where are you from?"

And we say, "Plains."

And they kind of look at us like, "Where in the world is Plains?"

Well then if we continue on and say, "Plains, peanuts and a president," they know exactly where we're from.

(upbeat lively music) (upbeat lively music continues) ♪ This train is full of people who know how to love ♪ ♪ There is no difference between the people ♪ ♪ They belong to the one above ♪ - [Announcer] Decision '80.

- It is early on this election night, but already there is a lot of good news for Ronald Reagan of California, and a lot of bad news for Jimmy Carter, the President from Georgia.

(crowd cheering) - I've wanted to serve as president because I love this country and because I love the people of this nation.

- [Speaker 1] And we love you!

- [Speaker 2] We love you!

(crowd applauding and cheering) - I promised you four years ago that I would never lie to you, so I can't stand here tonight and say it doesn't hurt.

(crowd applauding and cheering) In a few days, I will lay down my official responsibilities in this office to take up once more the only title in our democracy, superior to that of president, the title of citizen.

- Shortly after the inaugural ceremony, former president, Jimmy Carter took off for Georgia, and a welcome home by his neighbors in Plains.

He found a big crowd waiting in drizzling rain to welcome him, perhaps triple the normal population of this little Georgia town.

Also there to greet him, his mother, Ms. Lillian.

The famous Carter smile flashed as the former president made his way through the well wishers.

But it had been a wrenching day for Mr. Carter.

- You've honored us beyond anything imaginable, as I walk the streets of this town to sell boiled peanuts to the merchants and the stores here.

And we hope forever to honor you with our lives in the years to come, in being great Americans, and being good Georgians, and being good Sumter Countians, and good residents of Plains, Georgia.

God bless you, we love you all.

(upbeat cheerful music) (upbeat cheerful music continues) - This is my sister, and her aunt, and my niece.

- Hey!

- Hi!

- And you're gonna follow 'em going that way, we're going there.

- [Interviewer] Tell me what we're doing today.

- We're doing a parade today for a 96th birthday for some guy that we know a little bit.

- [Speaker 3] 96 years young.

- Yes, right, 96 years young.

And I'm about to back around and try not to throw them off the back.

(speaker 3 laughing) - We're a diverse group of people.

This is what our country looks like.

This is what we need, to bring us all together, both Black, White, and Brown, all of us are here together.

Town of Plains, friends of Jimmy Carter, church members, we're all getting together and we're gonna drive by and celebrate his birthday.

Turning 96, he might make it to 110.

A serving leader, helping out with a serving leader.

So today, I'm really excited about making this happen for him.

- [Interviewer] Is that the president talking to you in that ear?

- That's right.

- It's a peanut parade for Mr. Jimmy Carter's 96th birthday, we off.

(upbeat cheerful music) - [Speaker 4] What are you doing?

(upbeat cheerful music continues) ♪ If you wanna be the leader ♪ ♪ Keep low and never ask ♪ - Today we did a first for President Carter.

We had a drive by his house, and we just kind of kept it to the local people.

We didn't let the news media know, but some of them found out anyway, but they weren't allowed to film.

So the Secret Service swung open the gate and let us go through.

And Kim Carter-Fuller, who is Jimmy Carter's niece, asked George, Sunday at church, because we own a peanut warehouse, "Would it be possible to have a load of peanuts, "with a tractor pulling it, in the parade?"

Probably the first time a load of peanuts have ever been by Mr. Jimmy's house.

Of course, Mr. Jimmy and his family owned a peanut business here in Plains, also called Carter's Peanut Warehouse.

So he was our number one competitor here in Plains.

But we still were friends and we got along well.

And I know that we heard Ms. Rosalynn say, "Yay a load of peanuts!"

♪ When you're loving the love from above ♪ ♪ Gotta love gotta love with the love ♪ - [Interviewer] How did you come to be such a large presence in the town of Plains?

- Because we only have 700 people in town.

Of course, I work downtown.

I'm the Director of the Friends of Jimmy Carter.

So once you work downtown and you see everybody every day, you just kind of naturally fall into it.

I kind of fell into a position on city council.

Somebody else had to leave.

So I said, "Well, I'll just try it out, "and if I wanna run, I'll do it."

And so I ran, but nobody ran against me, so I got it.

♪ Return to sender ♪ - The plane will be here in about 15 minutes.

So if you're ready and you wanna stay where you are, you better hold your seat.

These are people from Americas.

These are from Americas.

They know how to behave.

Excuse me, excuse me.

To make God understandable, sometimes we make Him trivial.

It has been very intimidating at times to teach when uncle Jimmy is in the congregation.

♪ To be my joy through the ages ♪ ♪ To sing of His love for me ♪ - A lot of your political candidates will say anything they think you wanna hear.

But uncle Jimmy didn't.

He was a young man from South Georgia who grew peanuts.

And over the course of his life and his career, he moved up by always staying the way he was supposed to.

Uncle Jimmy, he wasn't a people pleaser.

Now, you pleased me because you loved me, okay?

(congregants laughing) There were Sundays when he would get home earlier than he thought, and he would come on to Sunday school.

I'd say, "Oh crap."

And I'd look at him, and I, "Did I say that right?"

- When was the full moon?

Does anybody know?

- Friday night.

- Saturday night.

- Oh, Saturday night.

Now, last Sunday, Sunday before, I noticed when I got home that he had tried to call me 'cause my phone, I thought, "Oh good, he's gonna tell me I've done a good job."

And this is what he said, "Kim, the next time somebody from the audience comments, "make sure they have a microphone, thank you."

I went, "Okay" (laughing).

(gentle music) Growing up in this area, it was very quiet.

At the time to begin with, your life kind of centered around school and church.

But then the '70s came in and President Carter decided to run for governor, and we had a lot of people coming in because of that.

And then of course, he announced that he was going to run for president.

And so it just exploded.

- This has been a long personal campaign, a kind of humbling experience, reminding us that ultimate political influence rests not with the power brokers, but with the people.

- I don't wanna go anywhere else.

I don't understand why people wanna leave, yeah.

(gentle music) - I called him Mr. Jimmy because I've been knowing him ever since I can remember.

He was a wonderful president, and we love him, and we love Ms. Rosalynn and the whole family.

- What about your mother?

- My mother dated him a little bit in high school.

And years later, my wife asked, says, "Why didn't you date him more?"

And my mother said, "I really wasn't impressed with him then."

But those two ladies married the right men.

- They did.

- They really did.

- This is Williams Warehouse complex.

I can't tell you what year it was made in, but that's the latest picture we have of it.

Those trees there, and that one there, those are pecan trees.

Back when Mr. Jim was running, we had 10,000 people a day.

A lot of tourists thought those were peanut trees.

We got 75 grams, just of peanuts, no hulls, no rocks.

We check the moisture on every load that comes in.

We got three bars on this cylinder.

Go round and around, peanuts and your hulls falls through.

We shell about six hours before we fill up a semi truck.

Woo-woo!

- I grew up on a big farm about 25 miles from here.

And to be honest, the African Americans could not afford a combine.

So of course when the White farmers got the combines, the really nice White farmers, like my dad would take our combine to the Black farmers farms and go to those poles, and they would take their peanuts off and run 'em through my dad's combine.

And we were able to help 'em that way.

So, we've all worked together.

- We come a long way in the farming industry.

- [Interviewer] Was that unusual that there would be some kind of kindness or goodwill between a Caucasian and an African American?

- I don't think so.

Now, Mr. Jimmy talks a lot about how he grew up out in the country, and the only neighbors he had were Black people or African Americans.

Well, I was the same way.

And the first time I really saw my dad ever cry was at a funeral for paps who worked on our farm, who taught my daddy how to farm.

And he had to speak at paps' funeral.

So I would say in the deep south, we love the African Americans who are part of our life, especially if you are a farmer living in the rural area.

- Well, they really helped the farmers years ago, pick cotton, pick peas.

You just couldn't do without 'em.

And it's just love for all of 'em.

- I have a lot of Black friends and we'll say that we're sisters, but we have different mothers, so that pretty well makes the tourists go.

"Okay, yeah."

- [Speaker 5] Are we ready?

- [Speaker 6] Yeah, I'm good.

- [Speaker 7] Yeah, I'm ready.

- [Speaker 6] Got a little caravan here.

- Are you kidding?

In Plains, this is a parade.

Let me stop.

I love my little town.

That building over there was the first Black owned business uptown.

It was a mercantile store.

Guys got Carter's filling station over there.

- [Speaker 6] Oh yeah, we did an interview in there with Tim, yeah.

- Okay, well, the reason why we have our own post office is because the Carter there used to have a worm farm, and he'd export worms all over the United States, otherwise their population wouldn't support our own personal post office.

So that's something.

We're going right now, we're right in front of a Plains Peanut and Grain.

They process a lot of the peanuts that are shipped all over the world.

Okay, this street is parallel to Hudson Street, which is predominantly Black.

And this street, 308 is predominantly White.

Right directly across from each other, there's Hudson Street right there.

And that's a Black street, or a street owned predominantly by Black people.

- [Interviewer] Tell me about your time as Mayor Pro Tem.

- Oh yes, I was on the city council, and whether you volunteer for it or not, you spend a year as Mayor Pro Tem here in the City of Plains.

And my boss, he published it in our little local hospital newspaper that I was Mayor of Plains.

I said, "That's wrong, I'm not Mayor of Plains, "I'm Mayor Pro Tem.'

And I said, "Why didn't you do it that way?"

He said, "I can't spell Pro Tem" (laughing).

When I first moved here, our city council was all White, all White people with two White women on it.

Now our city council, I believe is half and half because the demographics of our city is pretty much half and half.

The Black population was real reticent about voting.

They didn't think that it was important, or they were led to believe it wasn't important.

And Bowman Wiley, the first Black person to run for the city council when he went to bed, he says he was a winner.

And when he woke up in the morning, he had lost.

So the next time the election rolled around for the city, we had poll watchers, and he ran again, he didn't give up when back in those days, that wasn't a thing to do.

- [Interviewer] Why was it not the thing to do?

- I don't know if you wanna go down their rabbit hole.

- [Interviewer] Let's try.

- We had a very strong organization here that used to have meetings at a restaurant called Country Corner Kitchen.

And they would have regular little meetings and marches and that kind of stuff with the White suits and all that.

And a lot of people were very intimidated.

(mellow music) (mellow music continues) One lady who was a senior citizen said if she went up there to vote, they would take her house.

So that was the prevailing attitude when I first got here.

And I'm not easy to intimidate.

(upbeat cheerful music) - [Interviewer] What happened when he went to the White House?

- Which time?

(Boze chuckling) They would always say, "Boze is a really nice guy, but don't marry him.

"You'll never go anywhere.

"You're in Plains, Georgia.

"I mean, that is like the end of everything," they thought.

- So when Jimmy got to be president, we went to the White House, and she had the White House operator call them.

- And so they went, "I can't believe you're there.

"You're not really there."

I said, "Oh, yes I am."

And it wasn't a braggy thing.

Yes it was (chuckling).

But we've had fun with President Carter the whole time.

He's such a gentleman.

And Ms. Rosalynn is related to Boze, but she's such a lady.

And Mr. Jimmy's always been there, and he tolerates me.

- [Speaker 8] We've got somebody famous.

- No, he's the mayor.

- Oh, the mayor, welcome mayor.

- We're not shopping, honey.

We're going in here and just look.

And I have spent a fortune in here.

That's why Boze doesn't come in.

- That's a couple of friends of mine.

I gave 'em a Trump sign and somebody got it, so I'm gonna give him another one (chuckling).

- [Interviewer] Politically, Carter is more on the liberal side or democratic side.

- We don't bring it up here at my house, our house.

- We don't really talk about that.

He knows how I feel and I know how he feels.

You have to respect other people's opinions.

We all are different people.

- Even though it's wrong.

- We obviously have different opinions about different things, and I have different opinions with my kids, but that doesn't mean I don't love them.

But I mean, I have Black friends and I tell 'em I do not like the term Afro-American 'cause it separates.

Either you're an American or you're not, and you shouldn't distinguish Black or White.

See, I grew up with Black kids and we were all poor, all of us.

And nobody taught me to hate anybody because they were Black.

And we played together, we built forts together, we shot moles.

- A lot like Mr. Jimmy.

- I just wasn't taught to hate anybody.

♪ We shall overcome someday ♪ - Somebody from up north said, "I never had a race problem."

But he never knew anybody Black (laughing).

When I went to seminary up north, it was interesting that all of my good friends, my best friends were White southerners.

They understood what we had together been through.

They understood the burdens, and the pain and the struggles.

I mean, Black Lives Matter is a wonderful slogan.

It's mobilized people all around the world.

But when you are sitting in the presidency of the United States, what does it mean?

And Carter knew what it meant.

Jimmy Carter seemed to place his whole presidency in the agenda of Martin Luther King, because I think he knew what was going on in his childhood.

And his mother was a saint, a whiskey drinking saint (chuckling).

But she delivered every baby in a county that was 80% Black.

And any baby she delivered, she treated as one of her children's.

Now, his daddy wasn't comfortable with that.

But Dr. King used to have a phrase that I applied to Jimmy Carter that, "Greatness is achieved by antithesis strongly marked."

You've got to have a tough mind and a tender heart.

And in Jimmy Carter's life, his daddy was the tough mind, his mother was the tender heart.

And he was always torn how to reconcile those in his own life.

And it's not easy.

(congregants applauding) - I'm honored, and happy, and privileged to be on this podium with the greatest president in the world.

(congregants applauding) - I come here grateful and I accept this award, not as an honor that I have earned, but as an affirmation that I share the hopes and dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. And I recognize that tremendous progress is still left to be made, and we will prevail in the struggle for human rights because men and women like Daddy King, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta King, Andy Young, and all those in the Civil Rights Movement will never stop believing in the promise of our democracy.

We must never forget his dream.

Together, together we can make it come true.

Thank you very much.

(congregants applauding) ♪ Oh deep in my heart ♪ ♪ I do believe ♪ ♪ We shall overcome someday ♪ - At the end of a long campaign, I believe I know our people of this state as well as anyone could, based on this knowledge of Georgians, north and south, rural and urban, liberal and conservative.

I say to you, quite frankly, that the time for racial discrimination is over.

(crowd applauding) Our people have already made this major and difficult decision, but we cannot underestimate the challenge of hundreds of minor decisions yet to be made.

(gentle lively music) - Now, there's some rich history in South Georgia, and there's some remnant of the past that is still haunting people.

We got a city where literally Blacks are on one side of the tracks and Whites are on the other side of the track.

But here's one for you.

We have cemeteries here in this area where Whites are buried on one side and Blacks are buried on the other side.

And President Carter is trying to get the dirt road paved on the Black side because it's paved on the White side, but not on the Black side.

So even in death, we're separated.

- We grew up on one side, they were on the other side.

You know what I mean?

We didn't mix like we are mixing now.

And the Black was basically all we knew because I never rode a school bus to school, and we had to walk to school, and they would pass us on the bus.

Of course, they did ugly things and it wasn't easy, but we had no choice.

We said, "Maybe one day things would get better."

- They went to different schools and different churches.

I didn't know it was a racial thing.

I just thought that's the way it was.

They had a brand new school, and we had a school built in the '30s.

Their school was actually better than ours.

I just never gave it any thought.

And I was a kid.

What I supposed to think?

Black kids were our friends too.

- I had kind of grown up thinking when somebody says, "Oh, they're from the other side of the tracks," that was just a turn of phrase, that is literally what is meant in places like Plains.

And I think we've driven through many small towns that have the same kind of distinctive micro communities, I guess you would say.

I think we have been really intentional in trying to understand some of the dynamics, which we can only understand from our limited perspective as being White northern people who are new to the south.

- Back in the '60s, it was a very rough time.

There was a farm not too far from here called Koinonia Farm.

It was a community of Black and Whites, and they were bombed.

Their buildings were set on fire.

Their people were harassed just because it was Blacks and Whites living together.

So you add integration into that, it made tensions very high in Plains.

- When integration of schools was being introduced, at Plains High School, families were being urged to boycott the school.

My family and probably three or four other families were the only ones who went to school that day.

My friends all knew that there were some certain words that they used very freely that I was not gonna use about other races.

I mean, and they knew that people were welcomed in our house that were not welcomed in their house, but they never said, "Kim, oh, your family's weird, or, "Oh, your daddy's wrong, or your mama's wrong, "or your grandma, your uncle.

"They're all wrong for that."

But all around us, it was happening all around us.

- There was a man who stood up in Plains Baptist Church and said that, "There'll be no Blacks in heaven, "so there'd be no Blacks in my church."

And I led the little children's choir and their second favorite song to sing was, "Jesus Loves the Little Children "of the World, red and yellow."

And I thought, "I am in the wrong church."

- I can remember as a teenager, men and women who were role models for me stand up and express themselves.

I was devastated.

We've all lived together, and then all of a sudden, they were saying their thoughts about race that I never realized how they believed.

- There was a guy from Albany, Georgia, Reverend Clinton King, he wanted to join Plains Baptist.

He finally came and we called off church.

So everybody walked out of church and left him on the church doorsteps.

- He had let it be known ahead of time that he was coming and he was going to join our church.

That just put fuel to the fire because they weren't gonna have that.

They're not gonna let him come in.

- In the south, there's always been that division, Black and White.

And God accepts anybody, so why not us accept anybody?

It was just a sad time.

♪ God gonna step in ♪ ♪ Stand up stand up ♪ ♪ Keep on standing ♪ ♪ Stand up ♪ ♪ No matter what you doin' ♪ ♪ Stand up ♪ ♪ Oh yeah ♪ ♪ Stand up ♪ ♪ Stand up ♪ ♪ He'll be right there ♪ - What you see in the Maranatha Baptist Church is an effort to struggle with a real partnership of brotherhood and sisterhood becoming a real family.

And in a real family, me and my brother are different (chuckling).

- [Jan] And I know Mr. Jimmy, all he asked us to do was be kind to the person in front of you.

- That's what we try to do at Maranatha, and in Plains, and anywhere we are.

- Morning everybody.

- [Congregants] Good morning.

- This is a special chair that the church just provided for real old people.

(congregants laughing) That's fine, that's good.

Okay, how many of you think that we could help make America great by helping just one person lead a better life?

- [Congregant] Yes.

- That in the next month, you're gonna look around in your own family or right close to you, or just pick out somebody, maybe an old person that's living by themselves or something.

And you might say, "Why don't you let me check on you every now and then, "or next time I bake a cake, "I'll bring you at least a half of the cake."

And just go by their house and have a cup of coffee with 'em.

Like Mother Theresa said, "Not extraordinary things, "not great things, just simple things."

I think that will make America better.

- The Carter family moving their membership from Plains Baptist to Maranatha, it was a really, really powerful statement at that time in the deep south, in Plains, Georgia.

It was an example manifested through the Carters that I think helped to make the City of Plains and that area a much more inclusive community.

- We look back, especially Blacks and we think about the pain that's been inflicted upon us down through the years, and it hurt.

I've been in this world long enough to realize, and I trust in God enough to believe anything is possible.

But you have to be willing to accept change.

- Most people are like, "What are you talking about?

"Racism, what's racism?

"What's systematic racism?"

We'll put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig, right?

- Yeah.

- And so, I think there is a lot of dressing up of what everyone's thinking.

Or not everyone, I shouldn't say everyone, I'm sorry.

That shouldn't be the phrase 'cause that's not how we think.

- I don't think prejudice is what people think it is.

It's just me trying to do the best for my family.

And in fact, I had one woman tell me one time, "Well, I'm White."

And that covered her rationale for what she was doing because she would use those resources to get the best thing she could for her family.

And you can't be mad at somebody for doing that.

Hannibal crossed the Alps 'cause he was gonna go over there and steal all those people's stuff and rape all them women.

That's what the thing is.

- [Interviewer] If you had to describe the people of Plains, how would you describe them?

- What you mean now, which one (chuckling)?

I'm gonna put it like this.

There are some good White people in Plains I feel like, and I feel like there's some good Black ones.

Now, how many Black ones have you interviewed since you've been here?

- [Interviewer] You're the first.

- And I might be the last.

(gentle dramatic music) ♪ Oh yeah oh yeah ♪ ♪ Ooh yes ooh ♪ (singer harmonizing) ♪ All right rolling ♪ - President Carter contacted me about a year and a half ago and said, "I wanna eradicate substandard housing in Plains."

So we set out doing that with the help of a lot of people in the city, especially Councilwoman AB Jackson.

I remember he was in the hospital last December, and I hadn't seen him in a while because he had brain surgery.

And he called me in, and he said, "Jill, what are you doing about the Habitat project?

"Have you been working?"

So, he was in ICU, but he didn't care about anything except helping others.

- Well, I always did believe in taking care of my house.

President Carter and them used to come down, they liked to sit down and they was telling me how nice and that I kept it, so they wasn't shameful.

They sat down in my house, sure wasn't.

I mean, I took care of my house, but I couldn't afford to put no roof on it.

I know it needed one, but I couldn't afford it.

I can rest at night now, and I don't have to worry about the roof falling in on me.

- So Andy is writing a check for the Carter Plains Foundation, turning on the water for a gentleman in town who's a marine veteran who hasn't had water in two and a half years.

So we're gonna turn his water on today.

It's a great day.

(knocking on door) Hey Irvin.

(phone ringing) Mr. Irvin dries his clothes in that bush.

- [Irvin] Hello?

- Hey Irvin, this is Jill.

- [Irvin] How you doing?

- Good, where are you?

- [Irvin] I'm down here helping, I'm helping the men pick up pecans.

- Okay, we got your water is gonna be turned on in just any second.

- [Irvin] Thank you.

- You're welcome.

President Carter, he hasn't gone out of the house for really since the pandemic.

This is November of 2020, but he just could not stay in any longer.

He wanted to see what we're doing to help friends and neighbors of his.

The house that we're gonna visit with him is Alonzo Davis.

When President Carter was growing up, he had a best friend and that was AD Davis, that was Alonzo's dad.

So it's gonna be very, very special time, I think for Alonzo and definitely for President and Mrs. Carter.

- [Interviewer] Mr. President, what was your first encounter with racism?

- [President Carter] Well, I grew up in a community that was completely segregated.

There was no mixing of Black and White people as far as social things are concerned.

But my mother was a registered nurse, practicing medical profession every day.

And so she didn't pay any attention to racial segregation.

I didn't have any close White friends at that time.

My only White friends were at school or church.

But I got along well with my neighbors with whom I hunted and fished and worked in the field, all of whom were Black by the way.

So we were very close to them and treated them as equal as much as we could, just common decency and respect.

- We have Alonzo.

Alonzo, tell him who your dad is.

- Your dad's A.D?

- A.D Davis.

- This is A.D's house.

- I know, we had to visit A.D's house first.

He meant a lot to me.

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

- He grew up with dad.

He was his friend when they were growing up.

- Wow.

- Yeah, he was my best friend.

I came to your house first.

You have a good week, Alonzo.

- Thank you.

- And good luck to you.

(singers harmonizing) - Good seeing you, sir.

(singers harmonizing) - [President Carter] I was about 14 years old, I guess, and so were my friends, and I was coming out of a gate into the barn and they stepped back and let me go first.

I thought it was a trick or something that I would trip on the trip wire and fall on my face.

Later, I realized their parents had probably told 'em that we had reached an age where they had to separate socially as well as racially.

So that was my first experience with being treated as a superior just because I was White, and I didn't like it much, but that pasture gate experience was an eye-opener to me.

(singers harmonizing) ♪ Sing a song ♪ (singers harmonizing) - Where the pave run off.

- [Interviewer] Yes, I've been down there.

Towards where St. Mark's is, yeah.

- [Mary] Yeah, all the way down there.

- But other than that, I'd say there used to be a lot of about 30 families or more there, but they were all Black.

The Carters and the Watsons, the man that worked, he was the captain of the railroad right there where the pave run off at, that's where Mr. Watson lived, and that was the White family.

And the rest of, other than the Carters, that was the only White folks out there, and we just got along just like a family.

- All my children was born on the Carter Farm, and they were good people.

Jimmy's mother and my mother worked at the nursing home and Ms. Lilian called us her Black family, her Black children, and she treated us like that.

The only different I could see was they was one color and I was another one, but I had no control over that.

- As a child, Jimmy Carter worked on the farm, but he worked along with the neighbors who were African-American who worked for his father.

His family was very welcoming and would share on levels with the African-Americans in different ways from the way most Caucasians interacted with African-Americans.

- He grew up in Archery, Georgia, a community just outside of Plains a couple miles.

Most, all his friends were African-American children.

And then there was a moment where his friends started treating him different.

So obviously, their parents had said to 'em, "Okay, now you're older, "now you have to treat Jimmy with respect "because he's White."

And Jimmy was cognizant of that from a very early age, and felt it was wrong.

- There are so many African Americans in this city that he has helped personally.

I got pictures of him sitting on their porches.

You got the 39th president sitting on your porch, right?

And he's asking them, "What do you need?"

And if you know anything about the lady that raised him, it was the Black woman, Ms. Clark that really poured into him, and he has never forgotten that.

- I think that we've heard and seen many instances of the Carter's kind of not feeling that two side of the tracks situation.

When Ken went with Mrs. Carter, maybe we'd only been living here a few months at the time to go deliver food.

I feel like that was exposure to the other side of the tracks and a recognition that there were activities that the Carters would do, it didn't matter where they were.

And I think we've seen that play out.

- She's influenced a lot of people too 'cause she would share pictures where they'd go abroad or those poor countries, and she would have them up in her arms.

And she's just interested in people, don't matter how lowly they are.

- I think they care for people just like I do.

I don't see color, I see people.

And if I can help you, I don't mind.

And that's the way I feel about them.

- Blacks and Whites in Plains, I feel like we are partly integrated.

We have growing pains from time to time, but we are trying to, how can I say, overcome a lot of debts.

And we look back on our 39th President of the United States and how his message is for hope and love and we can't help, but have some of that rub off on us.

- [Interviewer] Because of President Carr's influence, how has that shaped Plains?

- I think it's kind of broadened the way we look at the world.

We got to meet Sadat Pagan.

Yasser Arafat kissed me, and I caught hell from my friends.

- On the cheek, on both cheeks.

- But anyway, I just learned that we're all the same, regardless of where you from.

Regardless of race, color, whatever, it doesn't matter.

- You cut this chocolate skin off me, I'm gonna bleed red.

If I cut that vanilla skin off you, you're gonna bleed red.

What is the difference?

- There's no such thing as a White race.

There's no such thing as a Black race.

We're mongoloid, caucasoid and negroid.

Even though some of us have a little bit of the shelf for a forehead, Neanderthal.

Some of us have a little bit of Neanderthal in us, but outside of that, all of us are cousins.

Every human being alive on earth today are all cousins.

So there's no such thing as a race.

There's just us.

And we either love each other or we don't.

- My parents, and my aunt, and uncle, and my grandmother, and my aunts all found themselves in situations with people that the world probably said, "What in the world are you doing with these people?

"They're Muslims, or they believe in idols or whatever.

"Why do you associate with them?"

You look at all the many people all over the world that my uncle Jimmy has come in contact with and people that normal, everyday people would not even look at.

You don't just look at people.

You look at people, and you learn their hearts.

- [Interviewer] Would you say Plains is truly integrated?

- We are getting there.

(knocking on door) - [Speaker 9] Hi Mary.

- Hi there, how you doing?

- [Speaker 9] Good, how are you doing?

- I'm good.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you too.

Lemme see that picture.

- Yeah.

You recognize that?

- [Mary] With the floor thing, it just seemed more like the White House.

I mean, the governor's mansion to me.

- [Speaker 9] It's a cool picture.

- Mm-mm.

- Of your friends.

- Oh yeah.

- [Interviewer] Hey, let me look at the shots a couple times.

It's a wider shot.

You look nice Mary.

- Thank you.

- [Interview] We're rolling, okay, first question, where did you meet Jimmy and Rosalynn?

- At the governor's mansion.

Okay, I went to jail April of 1970, and I went to the women's prison August of 1970, and went to the governor's mansion January '71.

But once Amy got to know me and I got to know Amy, Governor and Ms. Carter would go outta town and I would stay right there to Governor's mansion with Amy.

And according to President Carter, the parole board, none of 'em believed that I was guilty.

They all felt like I was innocent.

- [Speaker 10] Just tilt up.

(melancholy music) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) - [Interviewer] Spell this out for me, because he became your parole officer, correct?

- Yes.

- [Interviewer] How did it feel that this governor, that he believed you when you said you were innocent?

- Well, I didn't know how to take him to be honest with you.

By me not being raised in Georgia, it was just kind of difficult because I was always told that it was real prejudice.

But he and Ms. Carter, none of the family was not prejudice at all.

They treated me like I was one of them, you know what I mean?

They never treated me like an outsider.

- [Interviewer] Do you ever think about how phenomenal that is?

That whole story?

- To be honest with you, it never really bothered me.

I'm talking to you more than I talked to anybody.

I never felt like I was popular or important.

- [Interviewer] I know two people who thought you were really important.

- Jimmy and Rosalynn, yeah, they did.

- [Speaker 10] Whenever you're ready.

- [Interviewer] Okay, so Mary, where are we going right now?

- We're going back to the Carter House.

- [Interviewer] And what have you been doing at the Carter House all these years?

- Cooking, cleaning, traveling with the Carters, and taking care of the grands.

James was born at the White House, so I took care of James until he moved to Columbus, moved to Atlanta.

When Joshua came, I started going to Peachtree City, taking care of Jeff's kids, Jeff and Annette kids.

And Hugo, took care of Hugo and Errol, Amy's two boys.

So I kind of babysat around and cooked, cleaned, washed and ironed.

And then when they traveled, they took me with 'em.

It was just one of those things.

- [Interviewer] Do you like your kids or the Carter kids better?

- I like 'em the same.

(interviewer laughing) I like 'em all the same.

When we came back from the White House, I was only gonna stay six months, and Amy cried and she didn't want me to leave her, and I'm here today, that's why I'm still here 'cause she didn't want me to leave her.

So I promise I would never leave her, and she promised me she would never leave me, so we still here with each other.

- [Interviewer] So Amy's the reason you stuck her out?

- Yeah.

Amy sent me these pictures, that's me and her on the South Lawn at the White House.

And this is us getting off the helicopter, downtown Plains, coming to visit Ms. Lillian.

- [Interviewer] You notice how everyone's going to you not him?

- Yeah (laughing), yep, that's us.

- [Interviewer] 'Cause you were a friend of Ms. Lillian's too.

- Oh, she was a sweetheart.

He said his mother always taught him, everybody was created equal, didn't care who they were, or what color their skin were 'cause he had talked about Ms. Lilian teaching him that a lot.

And his best friend was Black.

He said him and his friends used to walk the railroad train.

He said the only thing he hated about going to the movies was when they got to the movie theater, the Blacks had to go either upstairs or downstairs and the White had to go either upstairs or downstairs, which is which.

- [Interviewer] I read this excerpt out of a book called, "How Jimmy Won."

It talks about Earl Carter, Jimmy's dad, and it says, "Earl Carter's magnanimity toward the Blacks "who worked for him did not signify any acceptance of them "as social beings.

"In a segregated society, "he was just as prejudiced as his peers."

Do you think that was true about Earl, his dad?

- I don't know.

I really can't say.

President Carter hasn't mentioned that his daddy was not as friendly as his mom.

And her being a nurse and all, and the Blacks that worked on his farm, he never socialized with them.

- [Interviewer] Have you experienced racism in Plains?

- No, I mean everybody, well, there are a few people that you know, they won't speak, but I don't think it's racist.

I think they just don't know you.

And the people that I've been around, Black and White, that I've been around, everybody seem to know each other.

"Hey Mary, how you doing?

"Let's have lunch, or let's just sit down and talk, "we'll go to church together."

I sang with Maranatha Choir for a while, and then I just don't do it anymore.

- [Interviewer] Rosalynn just having passed away a few months ago, and Jimmy being in his last days, how does that make you feel?

- Well, with her, he was really sad at first 'cause I didn't know she had got that bad, 'cause I was just dining there the day before.

And Amy called me and she said, "Miss, you wanna see mom, "you better come on now."

And I said, "Okay."

So I just jumped in my house dress and went on down there and I sat by the bed, and held her hand, I rubbed her hand.

But I got up to go to the living room to the den where he was.

And by the time I got to the door, she was gone just like that.

And I cried and cried and cried because it was just a shock to me.

(melancholy music) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) (melancholy music continues) - [Interviewer] President Carter, if you were to leave this world with one single message, what would that message be?

- [President Carter] My religious faith is very important to me, and I would just like for the teachings of Jesus Christ to be implemented in the whole world.

Love one another, and have a complete equality of treatment of all the people, Black and White, and other races as well.

And treat each other the way we would like for them to treat us.

- I can't hardly imagine Plains without them.

Hopefully, we can keep going on.

I hope he'll be proud of us.

- When the day comes and he's not here anymore, this will be a sad town, a very sad town, and it'll take a lot of us a long time to give him up, but how blessed we are to have had him.

- Amen.

- I hope that we continue to get along like we do.

Really right now, it's all about Mr. Jimmy, and I think his memory will go on forever, and we'll be right here to meet the people and remember his teachings.

And we'll miss him.

- I think a lot of people have learned from what he and Mrs. Carter have lived because once you see a person out there living what they talk, you are either gonna go along with it or live separate from it.

And we all respect him, both Black and White.

So we are just trying to get along here in Plains.

- I've seen a lot of people acting in this community to make sure that it's not a bumpy track, but it's actually a bridge that connects the two sides of town.

There may only be a few people who walked across it, but you see it being built.

- Hello, I'm Chip Carter, and I'm proud to be the son of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

(audience cheering and applauding) They taught us their values, Christian values, Plains, Georgia values.

They taught us that every person deserves our respect regardless of their wealth, their race, their age, their politics, their sex, their sexual orientation, or the amount of power that they have.

They taught us to love our neighbors and to help them when needed.

I see my parents' lives as a jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces.

Everybody here has your picture on one of the pieces in that puzzle.

I wanna thank you for being here, and I wanna thank you for being our friends.

I raise my glass to my parents, Rosalynn and Jimmy, salut!

- [Audience] Salut!

- The coming together as brothers and sisters is not an easy phenomenon, especially in the atmosphere that has surrounded Jimmy Carter and Plains, but they've never stopped working at it.

- Don't have no hate in your heart against nobody, regardless of what color or race, whatever there is.

You're supposed to love everybody.

I feel like if we get along with love, we all will make it.

That's the way I feel.

- Individually, we have our stories, but as a group we can offer maybe an example of how people can live, not how people are supposed to live 'cause that sounds kind of highfalutin, but how people can live and maybe a different picture of the deep south.

You know, we're not so bad.

- There's nothing to fear.

You all are human just like I am.

And all I can do is tell the truth.

Now, we had some Black folks that won't do right, and we got some White ones that won't do right, and that's life.

But I learned to deal with, if you don't wanna speak to me, I don't have to speak to you.

I'm gonna give you the time of the day, and I'm not gonna look back to see whether you speak or no.

- [Interviewer] Do you think racial unity is possible?

- (chuckling) I don't know.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues)