James Earl Carter was the 39th President of the United States of America. Jimmy Carter, as he preferred to be called, was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. He was the oldest of four children and grew up near Plains, Georgia, where his father was a farmer and the owner/operator of a small country store. He attended school in Plains, Georgia, and was baptized in 1935 at the First Baptist Church of Plains, which strongly influenced his life. Jimmy Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and graduated 5th out of a class of 820 in 1946. He married Rosalynn Smith in July 1946. He served in the U.S. Navy for seven years and studied nuclear physics at Union College in Schenectady, New York. He served on the crew of the nuclear submarine Sea Wolf. Jimmy Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953, following the death of his father, to return to Plains, Georgia, to oversee the operation of the family farm. After taking over the operation of the family farm, he started a fertilizer business, operated a cotton gin, a peanut-shelling plant, a farm supply company, and warehouses. By the time Jimmy Carter ran for president, he was the owner of more than 3,100 acres of land and his net wor

Jimmy Carter was not eligible for a second term as governor of Georgia and began running for president of the United States almost immediately after his term expired in January 1975. He built his campaign for president on moderate positions on most major issues and he set a moral tone for the election by making a promise to never lie to the American people. He also promised to institute a decent, compassionate, and responsible government. By the beginning of 1976, he had established effective organizations in most of the states and entered most of the 30 presidential primaries. He chose Minnesota senator Walter Mondale to be his running mate against incumbent president Gerald R. Ford. Jimmy Carter won the popular vote by 40,827,394 (50.1%) to 39,145,977 (48%) for Ford and the electoral vote by 297 to 240. Jimmy Carter was inaugurated on January 20, 1977 and immediately began to take symbolic actions to demonstrate his disdain for what he considered to be the “imperial presidency”. He sold the presidential yacht and eliminated some of the ceremonial trappings of the presidency.

The most perplexing problem the Jimmy Carter faced during his administration was the seizure of American diplomats and embassy employees in Teheran by radical Iranian students in November 1979. More than a year of questionable negotiations with the Iranian government, plus unsuccessful airborne attempts to rescue the hostages, proved to be difficult political and policy problems. Much of the 1980 presidential campaign was played out under the cloud of the hostage problem. The hostages were finally released on January 20, 1981, the day that Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter’s successor, was inaugurated. The hostages freedom was obtained in exchange f