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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 15, 2001)
You are invited! Cornerstone The Campus Ministry of: The Presbyterian Church (USA) The United Methodist Church VB/ United Church of Christ jMT The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) W 640 N 16 St uc3@unl.com Sundays 10:00 AM Fellowship 10:30 AM Worship Thursdays 10:00 AM Donuts Fridays 6:00 PM Choir Practice Discussion groups, retreats, Service Project. Call Melissa @ 476-0355 for information. V All are welcome. The Cornerstone ministry is an open and accepting community of faith. It does not support or participate in discrimination on the basis of color, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, nationality, class, gender or physical condition. www.dailyneb.com Carter's memoirs focus on seqreqation I ■The former president has come out with a new book discussing life in his time. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CHICAGO - Each work day, "an hour before daylight,” a mid dle-aged black man who “invari ably wore clean overalls, knee high rubber boots, and a straw hat” would ring a big, iron farm bell. Jack Clark’s morning ritual was the signal for a young, white boy named Jimmy Carter and other Carter family members to wake up and head to their barn in southwest Georgia for the start of a day of hard work. There, the boy who years later became the nation’s 39th presi dent, helped hitch the mules and headed to the corn and cotton fields of Archery, Ga. - “never quite a real town,” just a tiny com munity outside Plains. The pre-dawn bell-ringing provided the inspiration for the title of the former president’s newest book, “An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood.” The book, already a best seller, is set during the Depression, when Americans - particularly Southerners - were still living under segregation sanc tioned by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 "separate but equal” ruling. The title is “symbolically sig nificant because we were in a time of darkness before the end of seg regation came as a prelude to a change in our entire society's structure,” says Carter, inter viewed in Chicago during a recent book tour. Carter's writing is down-to earth, much like the daily chores and games of his Southern boy hood. It is also eloquent and sensi tive, reflecting the complexity and hardships of the times. Through words and photo graphs, Carter, bom in 1924, offers a personal, candid look at life on his family farm, where he read by kerosene lamps, had no running water until 1935 or electricity until 1938, and counted black children among his best friends. “This was a time,” Carter recalls, “when because of the abject poverty that surrounded us, the black and white people were drawn together in an extremely surprising degree of intimacy or closeness. I didn’t have any white neighbors; I only had black neigh bors.” Most of his playmates were black children. “I played with them, fought with them, wrestled with them, worked in the field with them, went fishing with them,” he says. The 76-year-old former presi V] -O k- V . „ I dent’s book reflects his amaz ing memory for details of things long ago. * As much as he might <wk like to forget, he still, for example, remembers tejj the “unique taste" of the many opossums his M Aunt Ethel cooked for him. He also remem- jfl bers the much more ^B appetizing meal served 1 at a political rally he ’ attended with his father in 1934 as if it were last month—“pork barbecue, Brunswick stew, coleslaw, sweet pickles,” freshly slicec bread and sweet iced tea. He remembers selling boiled peanuts in downtown Plains and walking barefoot on the rough pine floors at school, through the manure in the bam lots and on the scorching soil /\uu utspue uie racial intimacy of which he speaks, he also remembers segregation. Carter describes his father, Earl, as a strict segregationist but also a man who rejected racist groups and who was considered fair and helpful by both ethnic groups. The book tells how William Decker Johnson, a well-educated African Methodist Episcopal bish op, knew he could not use the Carters’ front door when he want ed to talk with Earl, but refused to go to the back door. Instead, the bishop would arrive in a chauf feured car, park in the front yard and sound the horn - a signal for Earl to come outside where die two could talk and even laugh together. To this day, the former presi dent writes, he occasionally visits the bishop’s modest grave and considers Johnson one of the five people who most deeply influ enced his early-life, outside his parents. even ueiure i was axi auuu and able to understand the diffi culty of overcoming racial barri ers,” Carter writes, “I looked on Bishop Johnson as an extraordi nary example of success in life. He had come from a tiny rural place, set his sights high, obtained a good education, and then risen to die top of his chosen profession.” Affecting Carter's life even more profoundly was a quiet, modest black woman named Rachel Clark, wife of farmhand Jack Clark. When his parents were away, the young Carter spent many nights in the Clarks'humble tenant home, sleeping on a pallet stuffed with com shucks. Rachel Clark, who had “the demeanor of a queen,” taught Carter how to fish in the creeks and, what is more important, how . to behave. “Much more than my par ents,” he writes, “she talked to me about die religious and moral val ues that shaped a person’s life, and I listened to her with acute atten tion.” Carter writes that some of his memories are painful, others embarrassing. He remembers, for example, going to a movie in a nearby town with his friend, Alonzo Davis, “A.D.” for short On the train and in the theater, the two boys split up as AX), headed to the "colored” sections. “I don’t remember ever ques tioning the mandatory racial seg regation, which we accepted like breathing or waking up in Archery every morning," Carter writes. Yet, while no one would want to return to such unchallenged segregation, he writes, “some thing has been lost as well as gained” since then. “We knew intimately how each other lived, and there was a mutual respect between black and white people,” he explains. “People now may be even further apart in a personal way than we were during die Depression.” Carter’s book is more than a memoir about the color line. Dedicated to his youngest grand son, Hugo, so that he might some day better understand die lives of his ancestors, it is an album in words and pictures of Carter’s childhood and family. There are photographs of Carter as a young boy: beaming as he cradles his beloved Boston bulldog, Bozo (“the best squirrel hunter in the Plains community”); skinny and shirtless as he shows off a baby alligator; riding his Shetland pony, Lady, as he glances back at her colt and the family’s bird dog, Sue. There also are pictures of rela tives, including his well-read, racially liberal mother, Lillian, in a knee-length swimsuit and the hard-working father who called his son “Hot,” short for "Hot Shot” It was adoration for his demanding father that prompted Carter to give up a successful Navy career and return to Plains vith his wife, Rosalynn. “Daddy was a very strict dsti plinarian,” Carter says. “He gave me suggestions, which wei5 the same as orders. He expected me to fulfill those directives meticulous ly, which I did. And when Jdid a perfect job as Daddy requested, he never said, ‘Good job.'” Led Center programing s supported by the Friends of Led and gams from the National Endonment far the Aits, a federal agency: Heartland Aits Fund, jontly supported by Arts Mrtwest and . Mid-Amenca Arts Aliance: and Nebraska Arts Coredl All erents in the led Center are made possite by the Led toiormance fund which has been established r memory of Ernst F. led and hrs parents Ernst U. and Ida Hied aUrirenity ofNebraska Lincoln An equal opportunity educa tor and employer with a cotpehenswe plan far ctrersity AEROS 's’” Mj AEROS takes you to the crossroads of Romanian Olympic gymnastics and modern dance, the athletic troupe of 15 finds harmony by tempering raw strength with agility, ultimately exceeding the sum of its parts. ACROBATS and AUTOGRAPHS After the performance UNL gymnasts and AEROS performers will sign autographs in the Lieas Steinhart Room. Generous support provided by Embassy Suites Sunday, February 25,2001 7:00pm Lied Center for Performing Arts Lincoln, Nebraska Tickets: (402) 472-4747 or (800) 432-3231 Box Office: 11:00am - 5:30pm M-F www.liedcenter.org