Years in Office: 1978 to 1981

Jimmy Carter was a successful peanut farmer in Georgia before he entered politics as a Senator in 1962. He had also been an officer in the U.S. Naval Academy. He was the first graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy to become President. In appearance and manner, Carter was calm reserved and soft spoken. His friends knew him as a man of great personal warmth and charm. In politics, he was an able, energetic campaigner with an iron will and a determination to win every fight.

While in the Navy, Carter worked with a select group of officers who developed the world's first nuclear-powered submarine.
While Carter was president a treaty was signed with Panama giving them control of the Panama Canal in 1999, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Iranians took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held a group of Americans hostage for 444 days,

An accident at Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania caused concern about the safety of such plants, and the U.S. boycotted the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. After serving one term Carter failed in his effort to be re-elected and returned to his peanut business in Georgia.

Quote: Human Rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood. — 30th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, December 6, 1978