An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

The chapter opens with a photo of Main Street in Plains, Georgia in 1905. It is a collection of well-worn wooden buildings, porches propped up on posts, on an unpaved street. Carter describes Plains’ flat, rich land and explains that nearby Archery transforms from plains to hills and poorer soil. Archery no longer exists, but it is where Carter lived from the age of four until he left for college and the Navy in 1941.

Plains remains because its citizens are committed to it and its farms are productive. Archery, in contrast, was “never quite a real town” (14) aside from its Seaboard Airline Railroad workers and a still-vibrant African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. The Carter farm was the last of the “good” land to the east of Archery. He recalls how close he felt to the soil, composed of sand, loam, and red clay, beneath his bare feet. Particles made its way into the family’s clapboard house, located on a dirt road called US Route 280.

Locals did not drive over the road but walked or rode in mule-drawn wagons. The railroad ran on the other side of the road. Someone was always outside, watching the passing scene. The Carters had a telephone, which was rare. It was on a party line, and the neighbors who shared it and the operator always listened in.

The locals still felt a strong tie to the Civil War, which they called the “War Between the States” (17). Black and white people were “inseparable” in their daily lives but lived the legacy of the war that conquered the white families and liberated the grandparents of the Black ones. The races were separated by “social custom, misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land as mandated by the United States Supreme Court” (17).

Resentment against “Yankees" (people from the Northern United States) and common ancestors bound the white townspeople together. The white locals did not recognize or admit that the problem of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era was its failure to establish social justice for the formerly enslaved people. Instead, they were bitter about violation of states’ rights.

Georgia began as a colony in 1733 that rejected enslavement, but 20 years later (in 1751) legalized it as a way of reaping the riches of plantation farming. Carter gives as an example his great-great-grandfather, who died in 1864. Wiley Carter left his 12 children 43 enslaved people, 2,212 acres of land, and worthless Confederate money. After the enslaved people were freed, his children ended up with small farms and the belief that only land had lasting value.

Also as a result of the Civil War, white people refused to accept the children of liberated enslaved people as their “legal or social equals” (18). Elections were rigged to exclude Black citizens and decide results based on counties, not individuals. However, relationships among Black and white families were “almost totally intertwined” (18) even as the political and social dominance of white citizens went unchallenged.

In addition to segregated schools, churches, and sections of public buildings—the result of the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” doctrine—Black citizens could not vote, serve on a jury, or take part in political affairs. They might appeal to a school board or city council but couldn’t participate in the decisions. White children attended Plains High School; Black children were privately educated in one-room classrooms in churches or private homes.

The home of the AME Bishop of churches in five states, William D. Johnson, housed a school, insurance company, and publishing company. Once a year the Carters were invited to a worship service at St. Mark AME Church. The Carters attended “sedate” services at Plains Baptist Church and were always struck by the music and spirit in the AME church. Bishop Johnson was a powerful speaker and an early influence on Carter, and he knew how to circumvent customs of segregation. For instance, to speak to Carter’s father he would converse in the yard or from his car, refusing to go to the back door.

The Depression years were marked by frustration and despair in Archery. Cotton exports slowed with the impending war in Europe. Competition from Western states, which had superior mechanization and irrigation, also affected cotton sales. Peanuts became a more lucrative crop for the Carters and other local farmers. The rise in popularity of peanut butter increased demand.

People who moved back to their relatives on Southern farms after losing urban jobs created shrinking plots of land. Dependence grew on tenant farmers or sharecroppers, who provided labor in exchange for a small share of the crop. When Carter left home for college in 1941, most of the local farmers had no mechanized power and depended on manual labor and centuries-old techniques.

Carter’s father, Earl, was successful enough to try new ideas and pay for non-cash food crops to feed the family. A gross income of $300-$400 a year was typical for a tenant farmer, and out of this he had to pay the landlord his share, typically $100-$200, for use of the land. Farmers who owned their own land, like Earl Carter, were expected to have better houses, clothing, and schooling. However, since they had to pay taxes and buy supplies, they were often no better off than the sharecroppers.

Carter was born in Plains, but his first memory is of seeing the family’s new home on the farm in Archery when he was four. He had a younger sister, Gloria. Jimmy was small enough to slip through an opened window and unlock the door, earning his father’s approval. The house had three bedrooms and a front porch that the family used nine months out of the year.

They were constantly drawing water from a well and chopping firewood. An outdoor privy was in the backyard. Carter’s father Earl put in a bathroom and running water in 1935. The house was lit with kerosene lamps. Earl also had a small collection of books, unusual for the time, and Carter’s mother read constantly and encouraged the children to do the same. She and Jimmy often read during mealtime. The family enjoyed evening radio programs. Carter recalls the Joe Louis-Max Schmeling fight of 1938 when “Mr. Earl” Carter allowed his Black neighbors to listen to the fight from the yard. They restrained their jubilation over Louis’s victory until they were out of earshot. Carter concludes that “all the mores of our segregated society had been honored” (31).

Meals were made up mainly of vegetables the family grew and animals they raised, including hogs and chickens that Jimmy killed. Earl also had a commissary store for his workers and a blacksmith shop for his own use. The large barn housed sheep, goats, cattle, mules, horses, cows, and hogs. Carter spent a lot of time with the farm’s supervisor, a Black man named Jack Clark. It was Clark who rang the farm bell “an hour before daylight” (38), at noon, and at the end of the workday.

Carter compares the farm to a clock: Earl owned it, and Jack Clark wound it every day. Carter dreamed of running the farm one day. Earl Carter’s Black workers lived in five clapboard houses nearby. They worked for day wages unless it was harvest time, when they were paid for the cotton they picked or peanuts they pulled.

Jack Clark and his wife, Rachel, profoundly affected Jimmy’s childhood. He spent a lot of time in their house and slept there when his parents were away. Earl kept the workers’ homes in good repair.

Carter’s friends were sons of Black tenant families and other locals. He freely explored the farm’s 350 acres but didn’t like to walk past the cemetery and haunted house that lay between Plains and Archery. Carter helped care for one of its elderly residents one night and heard the man’s dogs howling; the owner had passed away. Carter closes the chapter by saying he lived in Archery for 14 years, with his greatest ambition to “be valuable around the farm and please [his] father” (48).