An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

“Our two races, although inseparable in our daily lives, were kept apart by social custom, misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land.”

Carter often contrasts the easy familiarity and friendship between certain members of his family and their Black neighbors with the way they were treated by segregationists. His father was one of the racists who, unlike his wife, would not break social customs such as forcing Black visitors to use the back door of the house. Misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures to justify segregation does not get much treatment in the memoir, but the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which created the “separate but equal” doctrine, is mentioned multiple times as a key factor in The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation.

“Another legacy of the war was the refusal of white people to accept the children of liberated slaves as legal or social equals.”

Carter attributes the white citizens’ refusal to see their Black neighbors as their equals to lingering resentment about the outcome of the Civil War. His older neighbors remember the way their parents were forced to live during Reconstruction, and their bitterness about the “intrusion” of the Federal government regarding the rights of states and individuals. Carter considers the real tragedy of Reconstruction to be its failure to establish social justice for formerly enslaved people and their descendants.

“Earl was tight-lipped, but all the mores of our segregated society had been honored.”

While Earl Carter observed the social customs of segregation, he found small ways to accommodate his Black neighbors, such as when he allowed them to listen to a boxing match on the radio as long as they stayed in the yard. While Earl was not without compassion and could recognize the value of some of his Black tenants and neighbors, his refusal to regard them as his equals speaks to The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation in Carter’s community.

“No one bore a heavier burden than those who owned no land but worked the fields with increasing hopelessness and despair.”

Carter frequently describes the plight of the sharecroppers during the Depression. Not only were they at the mercy of unscrupulous landlords who kept them in perpetual debt, but the relief that President Roosevelt finally provided via the Agricultural Adjustment Act favored wealthy landowners over sharecroppers, reflecting The Gap Between Washington and Plains. The sharecroppers had a poor diet, cheap clothing, and a short life expectancy.

“This was my first picture of the difference between political programs as envisioned in Washington and their impact on the human beings I knew.”

The Gap Between Washington and Plains, one of Carter’s main themes, is crystallized in this statement. Carter’s father and other local farmers detested Roosevelt’s New Deal farm relief measures that were aimed at stabilizing prices. It allowed landowners to cheat their tenant farmers and caused farmers real anguish over plowing up perfectly good crops. They were also racist, paying less to Black families in the belief that they could somehow live more cheaply than white families.

“We worked, played, fished, trapped, explored, built things, fought, and were punished together if we violated adult rules.”

Carter was so close to his best friend, A.D., who was Black, that he forgot about their racial difference. He played mainly with Black children and so considered himself the outsider. His idyllic blindness to skin color would end when he was a teenager.

“Much more than my parents, she talked to me about the religious and moral values that shaped a person’s life.”

Along with her husband, Jack, Rachel Clark was one of the Black adults who had an outsized influence over Carter as a child. She taught him to fish and shaped his moral values. Later in the memoir, Carter makes the point that of the adults, aside from his parents, who most deeply affected his early life, three—Rachel Clark, Bishop Johnson, and Willis Wright—were Black.

“From as early in March until as late in October as weather and my parents permitted, I never wore shoes.”

Going barefoot is a motif that evokes Carter’s nostalgia for his childhood on the family farm. He discusses in great detail the feeling of sinking his feet into mud and newly plowed fields and associates the sensation with a feeling of freedom. This “liberation” ended when he was 13 and had to wear shoes to church and school.

“I don’t remember ever questioning the mandatory racial separation, which we accepted like breathing or waking up in Archery every morning.”

As a child, Carter didn’t think to question segregation but accepted it as the natural order of the world. He didn’t consider the fact that the Black adults in his life couldn’t vote or serve on juries, or that his Black friends went to segregated, crowded schools. Only as an adult could he understand The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation and its legacy of racism.

“Let them go, Hot. There are a lot more fish in the river. We’ll get them tomorrow.”

Earl Carter’s patience with the tearful young Carter after he accidentally lost the string of fish he and his father caught caused the boy to “almost worship” him. The scene shows one of the rare moments of tenderness he experienced from his father. Despite knowing that his father loved him, Carter would wonder for decades why Earl couldn’t express his love more openly, invoking The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity.

“My mother was born in 1898, four years after my father, and she grew in spirit and influence all her life.”

Lillian, or “Miss Lillian” as the press would call her after her son became president, was an imposing character who reflects The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity in the memoir. A nurse, she cared for Black and white neighbors alike and was highly regarded at the local hospital. In addition to her career and raising four children, she harvested pecans and was a skilled negotiator. Later in life she would join the Peace Corps and do humanitarian work. She was a celebrity in her own right, and Carter and others revered her.

“My father was the center of my life and the focus of my admiration when I was a child.”

This is another instance of Carter’s interest in The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity. Carter calls his father “the center of [his] life” and emphasizes his “admiration” for him, stressing the central role his father had in his formative years. While Carter will detail his father’s flaws in the memoir, he is careful to acknowledge how important and often positive his father’s example was for him growing up.

“There is a sense of harmony here, of mutual respect between black and white citizens, a common willingness to join in ambitious projects to improve our town, and the strong influence of religious faith expressed in its eleven churches.”

Carter and his wife had a deep, lifelong affection for Plains, Georgia, where they chose to return after Carter’s political career ended. He found a permanence and sense of values there that he saw nowhere else in the world. At the same time, he says several times in the memoir that the intimate relationships he once enjoyed with his Black neighbors no longer exists, which suggests the idyllic “harmony” may not always be quite as Carter paints it.

“I am sure that there are few living Georgians who, in their lifetimes, have eaten more possum meat than I have.”

Since his mother worked, Carter, along with his siblings, had to accept certain compromises. One was that Carter and his sister Gloria had to eat their lunch at the home of their Uncle Jack Slappey and his wife, Ethel. Slappey was a veterinarian who was often paid in game instead of money, and gamey-tasting possum was one of the forms of currency.

“I began selling boiled peanuts on the streets of Plains when I was five years old.”

Carter inherited his father’s strong work ethic and was constantly working, which reflects The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity. His first encounter with the outside world was his operation selling peanuts that he picked, soaked, boiled, and sold on the street. He was such a fixture in the business community that he overheard far more gossip, bad language, and dirty jokes than was typical for his age.

“I soon learned that, with a properly adjusted plow and well-behaved mules, the plowing could go like a dream.”

Carter didn’t only work for money or to earn the approval of his father. He found a deep satisfaction in a job well-done. Plowing was the most important job with which he was entrusted, as an error could seriously damage a crop. He found a visceral pleasure in plowing and describes his sense of gratification at being able to see the results of his work.

“The single most important economic factor in our lives was the price of cotton.”

Carter contrasts the ability of his own family, as big landowners, to warehouse cotton when the price was low, with the plight of smaller farmers who had to sell at harvest time in order to pay their debts. Cotton was also a famously difficult crop to manage. Harvesting it was backbreaking, and the plants were subject to invasive pests. These factors also speak to The Gap Between Washington and Plains, as what could be an abstract economic trend or number elsewhere always had direct, real-world effects at the local level in Plains.

“There is no way to exaggerate the importance of sickness and medical care in our community for people of both races, or how much my mother’s involvement in nursing affected my early years.”

The citizens of Archery and Plains were fortunate to have an excellent modern local hospital, Wise Sanitarium, along with the nursing services of Lillian Carter. The author describes at great length the illnesses that were prevalent in his youth, including tetanus, mumps, measles, whooping cough, typhoid, and polio. All are avoidable today through vaccination, but in Carter’s boyhood they were dangerous and sometimes fatal. In addition, both he and one of his sisters nearly died in childhood.

“From age six until I entered high school, I was two different people.”

Carter describes the disconnect between his life on the farm in Archery, where he was valued for his hard work and mixed freely with Black neighbors, and at school in Plains, where he was a relatively small boy competing with much larger boys. He also speaks of how the way he talked with his Black friends differed from the language he used at school with his white friends, reflecting both his code-switching and The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation, as his all-white school life separated him from Black friends like A.D.

“I’m still embarrassed to recall our social order based to a great degree on the economic status of our parents.”

Carter describes how the poorer children in high school were bullied over their lack of grooming and inadequate clothing. He berates himself for failing to defend them. The system itself failed to defend these children, who either quietly endured their humiliation or dropped out of school.

“Until my last two years of high school, the black boys at Archery were my closest friends. I had a more intimate relationship with them than with any of my white classmates in town. This makes it more difficult for me to justify or explain my own attitudes and actions during the segregation era.”

Carter titles Chapter 9 “Learning About Sin.” One of his own “sins” was his acceptance that, at around age 14, the Black boys who had been his best friends began to defer to him. At the time, he regarded their change in attitude as a step toward maturity in an “unquestioned segregated society” (230). In hindsight, he can see that the equality the boys held in their friendship vanished after this point and they were never again as close as they had been. The loss of friendship with his Black friends was a casualty of The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation that hit very close to home to him.

“These were my kinfolks, and I presume that I inherited some of the characteristics of them all.”

Carter’s ancestors often had colorful lives. Carter is proud of both the ancestors and the stories he uncovered about them. He relates their lives in great detail to make his point that he shares their genes and, therefore, must have some of their characteristics, invoking The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity.

“Times were changing in Georgia, but slowly.”

Carter makes this understated observation as he relates the story of his contribution to overturning unfair obstacles to voting rights for Webster County, Georgia’s Black citizens. He helped Willis Wright by letting his old friend use Carter’s name to point out that he had every right to vote without answering impossible questions. Carter gestures towards The Gap Between Washington and Plains in detailing how federal policies designed to end racial segregation and discrimination were fiercely resisted at the local level in Georgia.