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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