Politico: “The summer after he was sworn in as president, Jimmy Carter flew to Mississippi, that deepest of Deep South states, and articulated the mix of pride, swagger, insecurity and optimism he shared with his home region.
“People just didn’t believe that a Southerner could be elected president,” Carter said upon landing at Jackson’s airport. “But you and I together showed them they were wrong. And for the last six months, strangely enough, I haven’t seen much in the newspapers or magazines about my being a Southerner. Now I, like you, am an American.”
That Carter had to say that at all illustrates how set apart the South was from the rest of the nation, even as late as the 1970s. That it never was again is a testament to what Carter’s campaign, victory and administration represented.
As the former president is laid to rest this week, his critics and enthusiasts are at odds about what his presidency meant to the country and the world. But there should be no debate about what the son of Plains, Georgia, meant for the South.
Leading a cohort of next-generation Southern leaders in both parties, Carter grafted the region back on the national map by repudiating Jim Crow, firmly and finally extinguishing George Wallace as a political force and assembling a fearsome, if fleeting, biracial general election coalition.
“He brought the South back into the mainstream, suddenly there was a legitimacy to being Southern, said Curtis Wilkie, the longtime political journalist and Mississippian.”