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Jimmy Carter lived much of his childhood in Plains, Georgia, without electricity or indoor plumbing
He was the first member of his devout Baptist family to finish high school. He won an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and afterward became a senior officer in Admiral Rickover's nuclear submarine program.
When his father died in 1953, Carter returned home to work in the family's failing peanut business, eventually making it prosper. All the while he remained an outspoken critic of segregation. In a fiercely contested election in 1962, he gained a seat in the state senate, where he pushed for solid budgeting, efficient bureaucracy and aid for the needy.
Upon reaching the governor's mansion in 1971, he stretched out his arms to everyone.
As the Democratic party campaign chairman in 1974, Carter trapped the attention of national and international leader alike. He now had enough support, he felt to make a run for the presidency. During the primaries, his populist harping on honesty in government caught on - he won the nomination and went to overtake a stalled Ford.
To maintain a people's image, he largely dispensed with limousines and sold the presidential yacht.
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