ScholarWorks@GVSU

An early April morning at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum. The buildings are beautifully situated in 35 acres of woods between downtown Atlanta and downtown Decatur. The Carter, one of 11 presidential library-museums administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, contains more than 27 million pages; one

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First thing on the morning of April 4, 2005, James Yancy (right) briefed Eian and Brian on research procedures at the library. In the NARA system, such briefings are called "interviews."

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Jimmy Carter has spent much of his life in the rural South, about two hours' drive south of Atlanta. He grew up not in Plains, as is widely believed, but in Archery, Georgia, on his parents' farm. This photograph was taken in 1926, when he was two. Jimmy Carter described

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The director of the Carter Library, Jay Hakes (second from left), led Gleaves, Eian, and Brian on a tour through the museum. Here they stand in a meticulous reproduction of the Oval Office as it appeared between 1977-1981. Because the 39th president is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy,

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Jimmy Carter's political career began at age 39 when he successfully ran for the Georgia Senate. The U.S. president at that time was another Democrat, John F. Kennedy. This photograph of Carter was used in campaign posters and literature during that first successful campaign. Moving to Atlanta, he served in

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In the Carter library conducting research are Gleaves, Eian, and Brian. Some of the material they sought is still classified and thus not available for researchers.

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Jimmy Carter lost his first bid for governor of Georgia in 1966. He was not well known and it was during this campaign that some journalists first dubbed him "Jimmy Who?" The phrase would be resurrected a decade later when Carter seemed to come out of nowhere to run for

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Jay Hakes (center) was a political science professor at the University of New Orleans when, in 1976, he headed up Carter's Louisiana campaign for the presidency.

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About one year after being elected pope, John Paul II made an historic visit to the United States in 1979. He was the first pontiff to make the journey over the Atlantic. While in the U.S., John Paul II went to the White House and was hosted by the Carters.

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President Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Jay Hakes jokes that if (1) you are a president and (2) your mother is from Georgia, then you are destined to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The mothers of all three U.S. presidents who won the prize -- Theodore Roosevelt,

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A bust of President Jimmy Carter in the lobby of the museum. Carter left the presidency on January 20, 1981, deeply disappointed that he had been defeated by Governor Ronald Reagan. His last visitor to the Oval Office was Max Cleland, who brought the outgoing president a plaque with a

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