But before he became President of the United States, Carter was a peanut farmer and a child of the Depression-era, segregated South.

In his recent book, An Hour Before Daylight, Carter expounds on his formative years.

“I decided to write a kind of a personal memorandum to go to my children and grandchildren,” said Carter in an interview with National Geographic Today, “to let them know how different life was when I grew up.”

The South Carter writes about is a surprisingly integrated one, a place where poverty united him with his black neighbors.

“They were my only playmates,” he said. “That mutual respect [and] love that existed between white and black people that lived in proximity during those Depression years was extraordinary.”

Although filled with warm childhood memories, Carter said his book is not a romanticized story of the South:“It’s just the way it was.”

Closeness in Segregation

Carter points to the years between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement as a unique period in U.S. history when slavery had ended, but segregation persisted in the South.

“It was a Supreme Court ruling,” he said, “It was the law of the land.”

And although Carter spent much of his time with black playmates, he vividly recalls the effects of a segregated South on public education.

“White kids rode to the school on buses; black kids walked to school,” he remembered, “The blacks had the cast-off books that the white children had worn out.”

Carter cited the denial of quality education as one of the worst crimes of the segregated South.

“A basic human right is the right to develop one’s own mind [and] lead a purposeful existence,” he said. “There’s no doubt that that was the worst and most permanent devastation of segregation.”

Despite the South’s segregation, Carter recalls his childhood as a time when he learned from and respected his black neighbors, who “established…the standards and morals of my existence.”

“Towards the end of my book I recollected the best I could, other than my mother and daddy, the five people that shaped my life. And only two of them were white,” said Carter.

From the Farm: a Champion of Human Rights

Carter said his earliest experiences had a profound impact on his adult life.

“There’s no doubt that my attitude toward my governorship and my presidency and now my post-presidency has been shaped largely by what I experienced as a child on the farm,” he said.

One of his foremost goals as president, said Carter, was “to make sure that everyone on Earth knew that America was the champion of human rights.”

After leaving the presidency, Carter went on to found the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization that seeks to enhance human rights, promote peace, and build democracy around the world.

Carter explained that he is particularly mindful of the extreme poverty faced by people in the countries served by the Carter Center.

“When I go to a [poor] country…I compare the life that those people live…to the people, that were my neighbors, that I knew when I was a child,” he said.

But through his own experience Carter has learned that poverty “is not a permanent condition.”

The lessons learned during his impoverished childhood, concluded Carter, can be applied worldwide.

“The physical aspects of life are not the most important. It’s how the moral values are shaped. It’s how you react to diversity. It’s how you deal with your neighbors.”