An Hour Before Daylight

Memories Of A Rural Boyhood

Jimmy Carter

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780743217255
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"An American classic." — The New Yorker In An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter, bestselling author of Living Faith and Sources of Strength, recreates 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.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

abortion, 196

Abrams, Gussie, 47, 111, 197

adultery, 222–23, 253

African Americans:

as athletes, 95

Carter’s friendships with, 36–43, 45, 46–47, 73–77, 186, 207–8, 210, 229–30, 270

churches of, 15, 20, 21–24, 56–57, 220–21

as day laborers, 28

discrimination against, 20–21, 65, 66, 159, 187

education of, 20–21, 24, 210

emancipation of, 17, 50, 220

equality of, 24, 259–61, 269

health of, 53–54, 80, 191, 192

legal system and, 60, 149

life expectancy of, 53

music of, 21–22, 61, 62

poor whites and, 19, 20

poverty of, 19

as railroad employees, 15, 61–62

segregation of, 17, 19–21, 23–24, 32–33, 69, 95–96, 99–100, 131, 159, 210, 220–21, 229–30, 267, 269–70

as sharecroppers, 50, 53–54, 65, 69, 77, 182–88

as slaves, 17, 18–19, 50, 187, 220

voter registration by, 260–61

white relations with, 18, 19–21, 23–24, 32–33, 36–37, 183, 186–87, 196–97, 260, 269

work stoppages by, 56–57

African Methodist Episcopal Church, 15, 21–24, 62, 210, 221

Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933), 63–66

Agricultural Adjustment Administration, 70–71

agriculture:

economic factors in, 27–28, 111, 161–90, 199–200

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