55 pages • 1 hour read
Jimmy CarterAn Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2000A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Learning About Sin”
Carter “spoke two languages” as a farm boy: That of his African American playmates, and the “white folks’ language” (207). From age six till he entered high school, he was also two different people: The confident farm boy and the timid, defensive schoolboy. His schoolwork was good, he read nonstop, and he had wrestled enough with his friends to hold his own on the school grounds.
Plains High School housed 11 grades, and attendance to age 16 was required but not enforced, especially when children were needed on the farm. Earl never took Carter out of school for farm work. Carter rode into town with friends or took a bus to his school, while his Black friends walked to class, which was held in a church building. When buses finally were provided for Black children, their fenders were painted black to “maintain a clear, though symbolic, racial distinction between the students” (209).
The superintendent of the school, Miss Julia Coleman, had a limp and failing eyesight and was “totally dedicated” to education. Miss Julia made sure that great books were in the school library and would get extra books just for Carter. She also instructed the students in music and art appreciation and public speaking.
Mr. Y.T. Sheffield was principal, math teacher, and athletic coach. He meted out punishments by striking girls on their palms with a ruler and hitting boys with a board. Earl would add to the punishment by restricting pastimes such as listening to the radio.
All the boys played sports whenever they could. Carter was on the varsity basketball team because games were played at night and parents with day jobs could attend them. He was the smallest one on the team and nicknamed “Peewee,” but he was also the fastest. Carter adds that he grew three inches, to five foot nine, during college.
The pecking order at school depended on physical strength, academic standing, and economic status. Children from poor families, who couldn’t wash regularly, were bullied, and Carter is ashamed that he didn’t stand up for them.
Carter wasn’t sure he would be accepted at the Naval Academy, so he belonged to the Future Farmers of America (FFA) program. The members competed in raising animals and other agricultural crafts. Carter drew upon these agricultural studies during his time in politics. He was the only one of the 26 members of his 1941 graduating class to get a college degree.
The churches, along with the schoolhouse, were at the center of young people’s “spiritual, educational, and social lives” (218). School began with a chapel service, hymns, and Bible verses. White families were mostly Methodists or, like the Carters, Baptists. The two major congregations alternated services, as neither had a full-time pastor. Earl taught the Sunday School class for boys aged nine to 12.
Some Baptists—like the grandfather of his future wife, Rosalynn—did not permit cards, fishing, or movies on Sundays. Both churches condemned alcohol, although Carter’s parents drank. White Baptists attended Plains Baptist Church, and Black Baptists went to Lebanon Baptist Church, still the largest church in town at the time of Carter’s writing. Revival weeks, with twice-daily meetings, were high points. Children were baptized, visiting evangelists preached. Adulterers would quietly stop attending services.
Fraternal organizations included Kiwanis and Rotary clubs for men and gardening and other social clubs for women, although Lillian worked too much to attend them. The PTA organization was strong and enforced the policy of firing teachers who married to make room for those widows and single women who probably needed the job more.
Lillian and Earl had various social sets. They entertained the local gentry at their local cabin, equipped with a jukebox and pool table. With other farm families, they took the children to square dances and ate hearty food. Both groups drank, though only the men drank openly at the dances. They also entertained nurses and doctors from the Wise Sanitarium in their home.
Teenagers had formal “pound parties” in their homes, with each guest expected to contribute a pound of food. The girls and boys took part in a series of dancing. Carter began driving to them at age 12. He dated a series of girls, all of them “nice girls.” He never told a girl he loved her until he fell in love with Rosalynn.
Until his last two years of high school, the Black boys at Archery were Carter’s closest friends, more so than any of his white classmates. He says this makes it “more difficult […] to justify or explain” (228) his attitudes and actions during the era of segregation. For a long time, they did not perceive differences among themselves despite their economic circumstances. Then, however, Carter began to develop closer ties with his white community. He wanted to play varsity basketball, make new friends at school, and start dating.
At around age 14, as he approached a gate with A.D. and Edmund, his friends stepped back to let Carter go first. He viewed this small act as “deeply symbolic,” for afterward his Black friends treated him with deference. He wonders if their parents had said something to them and says that a “precious sense of equality had gone” (229) out of their relationship. Things were never the same between them after this time.
It seems strange to Carter now that he never discussed this change with either his Black friends or his parents as he found himself taking on the authority of his father. He concludes that all of them simply assumed that this was another step toward maturity and that they were “settling into [their] adult roles in an unquestioned segregated society” (229).
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Carters of Georgia”
Carter traces his ancestry to a James Carter who in 1764 began acquiring land for cultivation. James Carter fought in the American Revolution, as did his close neighbor, Thomas Ansley. Their descendants intermarried, eventually producing Wiley Carter. The great-great-grandfather of Jimmy Carter, Wiley won new land near Plains in a lottery. Three of his sons fought in the Civil War, surrendered and were paroled, and walked back to Georgia.
Wiley’s children inherited their father’s farmland. Carter’s great-grandfather, Wiley’s son Littleberry Walker Carter, died in a knife fight, and his wife died of grief the following week. As an adult, Carter found Wiley’s grave along with those of his other relatives.
Carter’s brother Billy was named for their grandfather, William Archibald Carter. Born in 1858, he was Littleberry’s second son. Billy acquired land, a cotton gin, sawmills, and a store in South George at the age of 30 and made his money cutting pine timber and selling wine. His oldest son was Carter’s Uncle “Buddy” Alton. Billy was shot in an argument over the ownership of a desk, and his family subsequently sold the property and moved to Plains. Earl Carter was 10 years old.
In addition to his store, Buddy provided banking services to Plains from 1920 to 1965. He didn’t profit from the business, but it brought people into the store. Buddy served as mayor of Plains from 1920 to 1954, except for a few years when he served as a county commissioner.
Carter starts his history of his mother’s side of the family, the Gordys, with his great-grandfather Wilson Gordy, who moved to the Carolinas around 1840. Lillian recalled her own mother, Mary Ida Nicholson Gordy, as being strong-willed. She refused to put on her wedding dress until she was sure her future husband was waiting at the church. She raised her own nine children and two nephews.
His grandfather, “Jim Jack” Gordy, was “wide-roving and flamboyant” (243). Born in 1863 near Columbus, Georgia, he taught school before moving to the town of Richland, Georgia. He was interested in both local politics and national elections, shifting political parties when needed to keep his job as postmaster in Richland. Later he was a “revenue agent,” enforcing liquor laws by destroying stills and arresting moonshiners. He disappeared for weeks periodically to spend time in a country cabin. Carter last saw him after his graduation from the Naval Academy in 1946; he died in 1948.
Jim Jack’s daughters, like Lillian, married well, while his sons had varied careers. Lillian’s brother Tom was a World War II prisoner of war, captured in Guam and declared dead. After his “widow” remarried, he was found alive, weighing less than 100 pounds. He divorced his wife and soon remarried, and was proud of his nephew Jimmy’s election to governor of Georgia.
Carter concludes Chapter 10 by saying that he presumes he inherited some of the characteristics of all his kinfolk. His “protected and disciplined” boyhood helped prepare him for “what was to come” (253).
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Navy Versus Plains”
Carter’s whole family was invested in getting him into the Naval Academy. He needed an appointment either from one of Georgia’s senators or the local congressman, Steven Pace. They focused on Pace. Earl supported Pace in every election, contributing to his campaign funds. Pace advised Carter to enroll in junior college and wait a year, when an appointment might open up. After a year, he promised Carter an appointment the following year if he received good grades.
Carter switched to Georgia Tech, where he was in the Navy Reserve Officers Training Corps, before he got his appointment. He served for seven years in the Navy. During that time, A.D. married and served time in prison for forgery, Rembert became a funeral director, and Jack Clark had died. Uncle Buddy became a surrogate father to Carter, helping to guide him through his “embryonic years as a businessman and a politician” (257).
Carter says his feelings about his father were mixed for many years after he left home. He loved and respected Earl, but felt he was aloof, never praising or thanking his son although Carter “hungered” for his affection. As Earl was dying, however, Carter visited him and his accomplishments came into focus through the many people who paid their respects to him. Many reported Earl’s secret acts of generosity toward them.
Although Carter enjoyed his naval career, he began thinking that his life couldn’t compare in value with his father’s. He had already married Rosalynn and told her he wanted to resign his commission to return to farming. He bought back the land that his father had sold to Willis Wright.
The Black community decided that Willis should be the test case for attempting to register to vote in Webster County. Asked to answer difficult questions about citizenship by the registrar, Willis retorted that the questions were designed to keep Black people from voting and were no longer required. The registrar showed Willis a pistol and told him to think the decision over; Willis’s response was to bring the problem to Carter. Carter told him to say that he and Willis had discussed the matter, and Willis was returning to register. He did so successfully. Carter reflects that “times were changing in Georgia, but slowly” (260).
Carter says he has tried to understand how his “upbringing and inherited traits” (260) influenced his character and attitudes. He was very different from his siblings, even the sisters who were close to him in age. Gloria, always defiant, married young and had the marriage annulled after her husband became abusive. She married again, this time happily, to a farmer who shared her love of Harley motorcycles.
Ruth was very close to Carter. She married a veterinarian and became famous as the evangelist and author Ruth Carter Stapleton. She offered much-needed support to her brother when he ran for governor in 1966 and lost to the racist Lester Maddox.
Billy Carter was 13 years younger than Jimmy. Carter realized years after he returned to farming that he had disrupted Billy’s plan to succeed their father. Billy joined the Marines, married, and left Plains. In 1963, while serving in the state Senate, Carter asked Billy to come back to Plains to help him with the warehouse. Billy was drinking but had a decent work ethic.
Billy became a center of attention when Carter campaigned for president in 1976. He drank and talked more and was “always good for a delightful quote” (265). He later became sober and at age 51, like his father and two sisters, died of pancreatic cancer. Lillian Carter, meanwhile, “blossomed” after Earl’s death, campaigning for Lyndon Johnson, opening a nursing home, and volunteering as a nurse for the Peace Corps.
Carter was the only one left from the Archery family when he wrote the memoir. He says he is grateful that he and Rosalynn live near their birthplace, the source of their “most pleasant and enduring memories” (268). They continued to enjoy family reunions on Rosalynn’s side of the family.
He reflects that Plains has only changed in one “dramatic and positive” way (268) since his boyhood, in the area of attitudes toward race. This had troubled Lillian when her son was in politics. Earl was considered to have been a racist, yet he died in 1953 before the Civil Rights movement was well underway. She said both races knew him to be fair and helpful, and Carter agreed with her.
The author says he focused on the distant past in order to better understand and explain himself, to recount experiences of interest, and “perhaps” to bring some perspective to the present at the dawn of a new millennium. He offers his most vivid memories, including embarrassing ones about the treatment of the Carters’ Black neighbors. He misses the personal intimacy he experienced with those neighbors, something that is now forgotten.
A 12-acre site in Archery became a historic site showing how rural families lived in the Depression. It included the Carters’ farmhouse and other buildings and the home of Jack and Rachel Clark. Carter says he and Rosalynn still grow some cotton, wheat, peanuts, and timber but don’t envision their four children or 10 grandchildren taking over the farm.
Carter concludes by saying that the farm may not belong to his descendants in the future, but the earth will remain the same. It will go on shaping the lives of its owners, “for good or ill, as it has for millennia” (270). In his Acknowledgments, he mentions revisiting the historic site where he once wrangled mules every morning “an hour before daylight” (271).
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
The theme of The Role of Family in Shaping Personal Identity is at the forefront of these final chapters in the memoir. Carter devotes pages to sorting out his mixed feelings for his father. The scene at his dying father’s bedside, in which he witnessed the overpowering gratitude that the community showed to Earl, provided closure to his feelings as he realized “how diverse and interesting and valuable a man’s life could be” (257). His brother Billy, too—portrayed as a buffoon by the media during Carter’s presidency—receives careful, thorough treatment for his intelligence and competence.
Perhaps his fullest acceptance of his father’s humanity was Carter’s decision to follow in his footsteps as a farmer. Nearly the entire focus of the memoir, with the exception of a few pages in Chapter 11, is on farming and small-town life. Carter’s ultimate decision to return to Plains as a farmer is in this sense a homecoming, described in his words as, “When I came back home from the navy” (259). His return also began his involvement in politics, as seen in his involvement in helping the Black community gain their voting rights.
Carter says in this closing chapter that he misses the personal intimacy he experienced with his Black neighbors. However, the intimacy clearly came at the cost of The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation. Only as a boy could he freely visit his Black neighbors and play with their children. From the moment that he accepted his Black friends’ deference to him, he crossed a threshold into an adulthood where segregation was inevitable.
In Chapter 11, Carter also ruminates on why he felt compelled to write a memoir focused on, as his subtitle says, “Memories of a Rural Boyhood.” He had already covered his presidency in an early memoir, Keeping Faith, and would revisit his life from his youth through his presidency and beyond in the 2016 book A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety. He states that he chose to focus on the distant past to understand and explain himself, to “recount interesting experiences,” (268) and to bring perspective to changing times at the dawn of the 21st century.
The book’s title recurs at points throughout the memoir. In Chapter 1, Carter says it was always about an hour before daylight when Jack Clark rang the farm bell to start the workday. In Chapter 5, he says this bell was the alarm that awoke his father each day. His Acknowledgments, which describe the historic buildings around Plains that are now operated by the Park Service, acknowledge the title one last time: It is a final tribute to his beloved friend and mentor, Jack.
