Amazon.com
Born on October 1, 1924, Jimmy Carter grew up on a Georgia farm during the Great Depression. In An Hour Before Daylight, the former president tells the story of his rural boyhood, and paints a sensitive portrait of America before the civil rights movement.
Carter describes--in glorious, if sometimes gory, detail--growing up on a farm where everything was done by either hand or mule: plowing fields, "mopping" cotton to kill pests, cutting sugar cane, shaking peanuts, or processing pork. He also describes the joys of walking barefoot ("this habit alone helped to create a sense of intimacy with the earth"), taking naps with his father on the porch after lunch, and hunting with slingshots and boomerangs with his playmates--all of whom were black. Carter was in constant contact with his black neighbors; he worked alongside them, ate in their homes, and often spent the night in the home of Rachel and Jack Clark, "on a pallet on the floor stuffed with corn shucks," when his parents were away. However, this intimacy was possible only on the farm. When young Jimmy and his best friend, A.D. Davis, went to town to see a movie, they waited for the train together, paid their 15 cents, and then separated into "white" and "colored" compartments. Once in Americus, they walked to the theater together, but separated again, with Jimmy buying a seat on the main floor or first balcony at the front door, and A.D. going around to the back door to buy his seat up in the upper balcony. After the movie, they returned home on another segregated train. "I don't remember ever questioning the mandatory racial separation, which we accepted like breathing or waking up in Archery every morning."
In this warm, almost sepia-toned narrative, Carter describes his relationships with his parents and with the five people--only two of whom were white--who most affected his early life. Best of all, however, Carter presents his sweetly nostalgic recollections of a lost America. --Sunny Delaney
From AudioFile
Not since Abraham Lincoln have Americans become as familiar with another humble U.S. President raised in the heart of farm country as they are with Jimmy Carter. Carter revisits his Depression-era childhood growing up in Georgia before the Civil Rights Movement. Recounting treasured memories, Carter speaks candidly about black workers on the farm and the respect shown to them by his mother and father. In fact, some of Carter's fondest recollections surround his relationships with blacks and the marvelous lessons they unselfishly taught him about nature, farming, spirituality, and friendship. This is an inspirational story of a family pulling together during tough times while living with dignity and the resultant respect and goodness that propelled a young boy to become a kind and revered leader. B.J.P. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
Carter has written more than a dozen books since he left the White House; this vivid recollection of his Georgia childhood will probably be one of his most popular efforts. There are facts here--about the economics of farming during the Depression, the structure of sharecropping, and Georgia politics, for example--but the focus of Carter's narrative is the people who nurtured him on the farm and in Plains. Despite segregation, these people included African American neighbors as well as his own family, and Carter supplies lively portraits of many of the adults and children, black and white, who impressed him when he was little. Using a conversational tone, Carter wanders through the past, commenting on the weather and crop prices, local geography, chores and illnesses, adjusting to school, and learning to hunt and fish. Carter remains more popular as an ex-president than he was during his term of office, and his experiences are just different enough from those of most readers that his memoir should have broad appeal. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Jonathan Yardley The Washington Post Book World A lovely and haunting piece of work...conveys with quiet passion...its author's love for the place in which he grew up and where, he says, he expects to rest for eternity.
Book Description
In An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter, bestselling author of Living Faith and Sources of Strength, re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm before the civil rights movement forever changed it and the country. Carter writes about the powerful rhythms of countryside and community in a sharecropping economy, offering an unforgettable portrait of his father, a brilliant farmer and a strict segregationist who treated black workers with respect and fairness; his strong-willed and well-read mother; and the five other people who shaped his early life, three of whom were black. Carter's clean and eloquent prose evokes a time when the cycles of life were predictable and simple and the rules were heartbreaking and complex. In his singular voice and with a novelist's gift for detail, Jimmy Carter creates a sensitive portrait of an era that shaped the nation and recounts a classic, American story of enduring importance.
Download Description
Filled with the loving memories of his parents, childhood friends, and neighbors, An Hour Before Daylight is Jimmy Carter's beautiful and touching recollection of his Depression-era youth outside of the small town of Plains, Georgia -- a sweeping look at the South as it existed before the Civil Rights Movement changed the country forever. Blessed with a novelist's gift for detail, Carter describes the pressure of farming in very hard times, and most importantly, how a society of god-fearing men and women, who acted with individual kindness, could have been blind to the sin of discrimination until they were awakened by their fellow man. An Hour Before Daylight is ultimately a biography of the American South, written with stunning honesty by one of its most talented sons.
Book Info
An autobiography of Jimmy Carter's boyhood in Depression-era Georgia. Carter describes his family, this strict, segregationist society he lived in, his boyhood friends, most of whom were African-American, and the cycles of life in the rural community where he was raised. DLC: Carter, Jimmy--Childhood and youth.
About the Author
Jimmy Carter, who served as thirty-ninth president of the United States, was born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924. After leaving the White House, he and his wife, Rosalynn, founded the Atlanta-based Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that works to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health around the world.
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