James Earl (Jimmy) Carter, Jr.

Jimmy Carter was born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. (1946), he served in the U.S. navy and in 1953 returned to his family's peanut farm, which he built into a prosperous business. As governor of Georgia (1970-75), he reorganized the state executive branch and sponsored consumer and land-use legislation.

After a spectacularly successful campaign for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, Carter, although a Southerner and political outsider, narrowly defeated the Republican candidate, President Gerald Ford; his running mate was Walter Mondale.

Carter's presidency was plagued by difficult relations with Congress, which ratified his two Panama Canal treaties (1977) giving eventual control of the canal to Panama, but would not ratify his arms limitation treaty with the Soviet Union (1979). He was successful, however, in effecting (1979) a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

During Carter's term of office the U.S. suffered high interest rates, inflation, and then recession, all of which he had little success in controlling. In November 1979 a group of Muslim militants in Teheran, Iran, took some 50 U.S. citizens hostage and held them until January, 1981. Carter's failure to attain their release before the 1980 presidential election contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan.

Since leaving office, Carter has been active in human rights issues, often serving internationally as an observer during first-time free elections, and has worked as an international mediator in North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia, and elsewhere. He has also worked with Habitat for Humanity, an organization that helps working-class people build and finance new homes.