PRESIDENT JAMES E. "JIMMY" CARTER - SPEECH UNSIGNED CIRCA 1976 - HFSID 286046

JAMES EARL "JIMMY" CARTER
Typed, unsigned speech with handwritten corrections read by Carter during his 1976 presidential bid in a predominantly black part of Los Angeles County.
Typed speech unsigned, with handwritten corrections in black and blue ink. 8 pages, 8½x11. This speech was read during Carter's 1976 presidential run at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, now Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital. The hospital is located an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County near the Watts neighborhood, site of the Watts Riots of 1965, and the city of Compton, which had one of the highest concentrations of blacks - over 90 percent - in the United States at the time. Needless to say, Carter focused on race relations in this speech, specifically the impact of the civil rights movement. Carter and his running mate Walter Mondale ran against Republican candidates Gerald Ford, the incumbent, and Bob Dole, in 1976. Ford been appointed president in 1974 after the resignations of president Richard Nixon during Watergate and vice president Spiro Agnew and was the first person appointed president under the 25th amendment, which had been ratified less than 10 years earlier. He had served less than two years as president when the Democratic National Convention was held. Carter marketed himself as a reformer and outsider during the presidential election, which doubtless went over well in a nation still reeling from a loss in the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. He entered the race with a huge 33-point lead in the polls against Ford, but Ford managed to pare this lead down to a statistical dead heat. Ford got a lot of help from Carter, who among other things said that he'd issue a blanket pardon for all Vietnam draft dodgers if elected and told Playboy that he'd "lusted in his heart" for women other than his wife. However, Carter held on, and he won the 1976 presidential election with 50.1% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes to Ford's 240. Carter, born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia, served as 39th U.S. President from 1977 to 1981. He was the only one-term Democratic president of the 20th century and the first Democrat not to be reelected since Grover Cleveland in 1888. Carter, the only U.S. president to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis (1946, at the age of 21), is also the only U.S. president to serve a full four-year term without making an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Carter is also the first Southerner to be elected president since the Reconstruction after the American Civil War. His presidency was marred by double-digit inflation; a rising prime rate that peaked at 21.5% in December 1980, the last month of his presidency; the 1979 oil crisis, sparked by the overthrow of the Shah of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini; and the capture of American hostages by Khomeini-backed revolutionaries in Tehran. His younger brother William Anton "Billy" Carter didn't help his image. Billy was an alcoholic who used his image as the president's brother to promote "Billy Beer". However, Carter also had several notable foreign policy achievements, including the Camp David accords, which resulted in a peace treaty between enemy nations Egypt and Israel, and the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, or SALT II. Carter also began the flow of arms to Islamist rebels in Afghanistan, which had been invaded by the Soviet Union after the 1978 overthrow of a pro-Moscow government there, in 1979. He won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic efforts both during and after his presidency. Lightly toned, stained and creased. Light crease in upper right corner. Staple holes at upper left corner. Otherwise, fine condition.