An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

Earl Carter, born in 1894, was a relatively small man, but stocky and strong with light red hair. He was a fairly successful farmer with a large tract of land, numerous buildings and fields, and many employees. A product of the segregated South, he enforced segregation but found ways around it, such as when he allowed his Black neighbors to listen to the Joe Louis fight on the radio.

Earl was a serious businessman, but fun with his friends. He traded easily without wasting time. He was also deeply involved in church work and other affairs of the community. When his work was done, he greatly enjoyed sports and the outdoors.

Earl was an excellent diver and tennis player. He also played baseball on a local team and would take Carter to professional games. He was known for being so careful with money that he made the children wear unfashionable clothes that he couldn’t sell at the commissary, and insisted on cutting Jimmy’s hair in a bowl cut. He made sure Carter knew survival skills and on the whole was a compassionate and fair father, though he rarely showed affection.

Carter’s mother, Lillian, was born in 1898. Carter describes her as slender, almost gaunt, and “pretty in her own way” (109) with dark hair and sparkling eyes. She was a nurse to both Black and white neighbors and seemed like a different person to her son, “precise and businesslike” (109), when she dressed in her white nurse’s dress and cap. 

Lillian was the operating nurse at Wise Sanitarium, then turned to private nursing after Carter’s sister Ruth was born. She was the disciplinarian at home but loved to have a good time with her husband. Unusual for a Baptist of her era, she drank and played poker. As she aged, she took up humanitarian work, serving in the Peace Corps.

Jack Clark, a Black man, was the farm’s supervisor. It was Clark who rang the farm bell “an hour before daylight” (38), at noon, and at the end of the workday. Carter spent a lot of time with Clark, with whom he shared milking duties. He compares the farm to a clock: Earl owned it, and Jack Clark wound it every day. Carter spent a lot of time in the home of Jack and his wife, Rachel, and felt comfortable there.

Carter describes Rachel Clark as the “most remarkable” person who lived near the Carters on the farm, and the one who “made the most significant and lasting impact” on him (74). He, and others, believed she came from African royalty. She was famous for her ability to pick cotton. Rachel taught Jimmy how to fish and to care for God’s creation. She taught Jimmy the right way to behave and about moral and religious values.