Were you around in '76? I was a Dem at the time and voted for Jimmah. If he was similar to Maddox, he would have never gotten the Dem nomination. Carter basically rejected the position of the old southern segs like Maddox. His hero was JFK.
As a member of the Sumter County school board in the early sixties, Carter was an early proponent of school integration.
He was later involved in a three way race with for gov. with Maddox and some other guy on the Dem ticket. He was deeply disturbed when Maddox got elected.
You are confusing the real Jimmy Carter with the press-invented Jimmy Carter. Carter was a segregationist throughout his entire Georgia political career. When the Brown decision was handed down in 1954, he sat on the local school board in Sumter County. That board decided
not to integrate schools but to keep segregation as its official policy. In 1956, Carter fought against construction of a new 'Negro' elementary school because the location was too close in proximity to the white elementary school.
It was Governor Carl Sanders that would move Georgia away from segregation into a period of racial harmony. In 1966, with Sanders unable to succeed himself, the gubernatorial race came down to Lester Maddox and Bo Calloway, a staunch opponent of Jim Crow. Carter threw his support behind Maddox. Calloway actually received more votes than Maddox, but because he did not win an outright majority, it was up to the Georgia Legislature to decide. That is how the vicious axe-handle-weilding racist Lester Maddox became governor. and Jimmy Carter supported him.
In 1970, Sanders decided to run for governor again. This time he would face off against Jimmy Carter who ran on a segregationist platform. Keep in mind this is 1970, six years after passage of the Civil Rights Act. Carter chose Lester Maddox as his running mate, and began cozying up to Alabama's George Wallace while criticizing Sanders from banning him from the State. During the campaign, Carter made a visit to a segregated academy. He won the support of outspoken segregationists, and even distributed flyers showing Sanders with black Atlanta Hawk basketball players. Another flyer pointing out how Sanders had attended King's funeral (which Carter did not). Still another suggested that Sanders and Julian Bond were working hand in hand.
Every newspaper in the State except for one backed Sanders. Yet Carter's overt appeal to deep-seated racism in the State with Lester Maddox at his side won him the election.
Jimmy Carter is a racist piece of shit. His civil rights history is abhorrent. As governor, he fought federal court-ordered integration every step of the way. And it sickens me to know that people believe him to be a good man. He is not. He is a mean-spirited micro-manager who never atoned for his racist past. Heck, even Maddox and Wallace came clean later in life. But not Jimmy Carter. And the only reason that this racist history is ignored is because he is a Democrat.