Page 66 – LIFE

LIFE’s Look At Jimmy Carter From 1971: A Governor Speaks Out on Race

December 29, 2024December 14, 2016 by

When Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100, stood before a crowd in Atlanta in January 1971, speaking to Georgians for the first time as their governor, he did not deliver the address that was expected of him. Rather than stick with the tone of his campaign—a tone largely adopted to win over the state’s white population—he made bold declarations against discrimination. Those declarations would set the tenor of the four years to come.

Carter had run a moderate campaign as a way of distancing himself from his more liberal Democratic opponent, Carl Sanders. Though he had taken a stand against racial discrimination in the past, refusing to join an organization of pro-segregation business owners and opposing literacy tests for voting, he stayed relatively quiet on civil-rights issues during the campaign.

Carter had learned the hard way—by losing to segregationist Lester Maddox in the 1966 race—that his hopes of winning a Georgia gubernatorial race required him to avoid alienating the significant percentage of the white population that still opposed integration. This time, he sought endorsements from segregationists and appeared only infrequently before groups of prospective black voters. He campaigned against busing as a means of integrating schools.

So when he stood before that crowd and declared, “I say to you quite frankly, the time for discrimination is over,” his message surprised both the pro-segregation forces that had supported him and the integrationists who had not. “No poor, rural, weak or black person should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity of an education, a job or simple justice,” he continued.

The speech to the legislature was the heart of LIFE’s story on Carter in its Jan. 29, 1971 issue. The speech helped the world begin to get to know the man who would be elected President of the United States in 1976.

In the LIFE article Julian Bond, a civil rights leader who was at that time a Georgia state legislator, expressed a wait-and-see attitude about Carter’s remarks. “Will he be good,” Bond said. “You’ve got to remember that good is a very relative term in this state.”

But Carter’s words were more than just an empty promise. During his term as governor, Carter increased the number of black employees in state government by 25%, appointing more minorities and women to state positions than all previous Georgia governors combined. He also hung a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the statehouse, drawing protests from members of the Ku Klux Klan.

While some of these changes were more symbolic than tangible, they helped usher in what TIME would call the “New South,” with Carter on the magazine’s cover as its face. Six years later, he’d have the chance to address those issues with a much bigger crowd, as President of the United States.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Jimmy Carter at age 45, when he was the newly elected governor of Georgia.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter in 1971, when he was the newly elected governor of Georgia.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter posed with a group of students, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

In his capitol office, Carter met with Atlanta educator Nathaniel Ingram, who had brought a copy of a Human Relations Day proclamation for Carter to sign, 1971

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At a joint session of the Georgia legislature, the new governor delivered his first budget message, as wife Rosalynn (center) and former Governor Lester Maddox, who had become lieutenant governor. The popular Maddox was prevented by law from running for a second term.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter in his first month as governor of Georgia, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carter and his wife Rosalynn watched their daughter Amy at play, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter and daughter Amy, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter played with his daughter Amy, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter posed for a portrait with his family, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jimmy Carter kissed his wife Rosalynn, 1971.

Stan Wayman The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe and More: Photographs by John Loengard

August 11, 2021December 6, 2016 by

In the preface to his new book Moment by Moment, LIFE photographer John Loengard notes that the thing about a good photograph is that it cannot be repeated. What it captures will never happen again, though now it is frozen in time by the image.

“That may explain why an image of a brief moment, an instant in time, can hold our interest forever,” he writes.

Loengard’s latest book is a survey that takes a closer look at a variety of the many iconic images he has created during the last 60 years. It is filled with quiet, intimate moments, from a laughing Marilyn Monroe to a young boy turning his head at the sound of his mother calling. All of his subjects, whether famous or unknown, are treated with the same careful, thoughtful eye catching the moments in between.

Pictured on the cover is the famous photo of the Beatles in a swimming pool at Miami Beach in 1964. This photo in fact never ran on the cover of LIFE magazine – although as illustrated here, it is certainly cover worthy but ran in the back of the book as a Miscellany. (“I never thought it was a terrific photograph,” Loengard told LIFE.com a few years ago. “It’s not a very expressive picture at all, in my opinion. But given the history and the appeal of the people in it, it keeps cropping up, year after year.”)

John Loengard was a staff photographer for LIFE magazine from 1961 to 1971 and went on to be the Picture Editor from 1978-1987. Moment by Moment was published by Thames and Hudson.

Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr of the Beatles took a dip in a swimming pool.

Photo by John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation.

Louis Armstrong got a beer and a haircut at his neighborhood barbershop in Queens, New York City, 1965.

John Loengard

Marilyn Monroe blessed the cornerstone-laying ceremony at the Time-LIFE building with her presence. New York City, 1957.

John Loengard/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

England’s Queen Elizabeth II and Duke of Edinburgh wait with their hosts, Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and his son, the Crown Prince, before they enter the New Cathedral of St. Mary of Zion. Axum, Ethiopia, 1965.

John Loengard

The boy turns his head as he hears his mother’s call from down the street. Manchester, England, 1968.

John Loengard

Dr. Timothy Leary with his wife, at the commune where he lived near Palm Springs, California, 1969.

John Loengard

Buckminster Fuller, architect and inventor, ferries houseguests to Bear Island, which his grandmother bought in 1904 and remained his family seat; Penobscot Bay, Maine, 1970.

John Loengard

Builder Victor Westphall constructed a chapel in memory of his son David, a Marine lieutenant killed four years earlier in Vietnam. Eagle Nest, New Mexico, 1972.

John Loengard

At twenty-two, Twiggy said she was quitting modeling for acting. “You can’t be a clothes hanger for your entire life,” she said. Outside New York City, 1972.

John Loengard

Tom Nesbitt tends his bar. Doheny & Nesbitts Pub, Dublin, 1987.

John Loengard

Richard Avedon sits in his studio before a wall of miscellaneous clippings and his portrait of oil field worker Roberto Lopez. New York City, 1994.

John Loengard

See Colorized Photos of a Peaceful Pearl Harbor in the Months Before War

December 7, 2020December 5, 2016 by

Even with decades having passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941, the Hawaiian lagoon remains synonymous with destruction. But, in the weeks and months before the surprise assault, even as war raged around the world, Pearl Harbor represented pretty much the opposite. The soldiers and sailors stationed in Hawaii had a plum assignment, and the nation saw the harbor as proof of American naval power.

When LIFE Magazine profiled the Navy in October of 1940, a year before the attack, that celebratory tone was evident throughout. And, at the center of that celebration was Pearl Harbor, as a LIFE crew was allowed to sail along on maneuvers off of that base.

“The U.S. Navy is good,” the magazine proclaimed. “It is the great fighting creation of a people whose genius is not warlike but mechanical.”

Though the reporters admitted that the fleet was not yet entirely ready for war, it was already a great collection “of mechanical marvels and human skills.” Pearl Harbor was being transformed into “a first-class base like Britain’s Singapore or Malta” and each battleship was “a city of 1,200 sailors,” who lived their lives at the pace of the bugle, whether performing practice exercises (like the first-aid drill seen in the second image above) or making good use of their leisure time.

Ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, TIME commissioned freelance photo editor Sanna Dullaway—who had previously worked with photos of Indy 500 racing, Queen Elizabeth II and much more—to colorize several of the images from that story, presenting a new and unique look at that suspended moment before war began.

Sanna Dullaway is a photo editor based in Sweden. See more of her work here.

Original caption: “Anti-aircraft gunner aims machine gun.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “In officers’ wardroom dominoes, bridge, acey deucy are most popular. This is aboard the Indianapolis.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “Nurses’ sun deck where they may relax and play in sports clothes is segregated from the res of the ship. They are favorite tennis companions of junior officers who radio ship for dates.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: “On liberty at Waikiki beach, four sailors snap pictures of a Hawaiian girl.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

U.S. Navy in Hawaii, 1940.

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Original caption: ” Lonesome sailor on coral beach of Hawaiians’ Maui Island looks at line of light cruisers and destroyers in Lahaina Roads fleet anchorage.”

Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Photo colorization by Sanna Dullaway for TIME / original image: Carl Mydans The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackie Kennedy’s Post-Assassination Interview With LIFE

February 25, 2020December 2, 2016 by

In the dark and dramatic days following the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his widow took the time to speak to Pulitzer-winning journalist Theodore H. White, of LIFE Magazine, in Hyannis Port.

Their conversation, which was also featured prominently in the 2016 movie Jackie starring Natalie Portman, was extensive, but the essay White produced for the Dec. 6, 1963, issue of LIFE Magazine was short . Billed as an “epilogue” for President Kennedy, White described in two short pages what Jackie Kennedy had told him about that day in Dallas, and what came after. She told him of the heat, the crowds, how much she’d wished she could wear sunglasses and how, when everything was over, she kept thinking of a line from a song that the President had loved, from the musical Camelot, about the “one brief shining moment” that had been lost. That association between the Kennedy era and the idea of Camelot would endure through the decades to come.

“All through that night they tried to separate him from her, to sedate her, and take care of her and she would not let them,” White wrote. “She wanted to be with him. She remembered that Jack had said of his father, when his father suffered the stroke, that he could not live like that. Don’t let that happen to me, he had said, when I have to go.”

White would later donate his relevant papers to the Kennedy Library, including his handwritten notes on the conversation, which were made public a year after the former First Lady’s death.

The papers are a vivid document of White’s working process, exposing the questions he wanted to ask, the extent to which she participated in crafting the “Camelot” image that would stick with the family for decades to come and the one matter he kept coming back to: “When did farewell really come?”

December 6, 1963 cover of LIFE magazine

December 6, 1963 LIFE Magazine

A Real Wartime Couple in Casablanca, 1943

December 15, 2019November 22, 2016 by

World War II was still years from its conclusion when the city of Casablanca was immortalized at the intersection of love and war. The 1942 classic film Casablanca highlighted the Moroccan locale as a place where Allied and Axis forces lay in uneasy balance, and a place to which, and from which, European refugees hoped to escape. It was there that Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart) told Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), “Here’s looking at you, kid.” In 2016 another film, Allied, again brought moviegoers to Casablanca in 1942, but this time with Brad Pitt playing a Canadian military officer who meets and falls for a French resistance fighter played by Marion Cotillard.

In February of 1943, though, LIFE magazine followed a real-life couple through Casablanca for an installment of LIFE Magazine’s “Life Goes to a Party” feature. The photo essay followed an American naval lieutenant on a date with a French refugee whom he’d met there.

The two enjoyed a day out, with a picnic and a walk at the beach, but could not forget the world around them: they “hurried back for curfew” at the end of the outing.

Jim and Nikki went out on the town in Casablanca, 1943.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The couple watched the setting sun near Sidi Ab Der-Rachman.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jim took his date’s picture as the tide went out.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jim provided Nikki with a then-coveted American cigarette.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nikki negotiated the rocks in high heels.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The couple was high up on the peak above the resort of Anfa,

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The picturesque beach at Sidi Ab Der-Rachman.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Though the temperature was 70 degrees, the water was still cold.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Casablanca was safe enough to go out in during the day, but much less so at night.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Nikki spoke French and a little Arabic during a bargaining session.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

They enjoyed a lunch cooked by Casablanca’s best chef, Papa Gouim, late of Paris and the S.S. Normandie; the lunch included hardboiled eggs, sardines, herring, beans, and African red wine.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

At the Navy fliers’ club in Casablanca, called the Airdale Club, Nikki met Jim’s friends. The Navy rented the villa that was confiscated from Axis sympathizer.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Music and dancing for the Muslim `Feast of the Mutton’ was paid for by Jim. Nikki was the only unveiled woman present.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Locals watched the couple touring the town.

Eliot Elisofon The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

How Tabloids Inspired Film Noir

January 14, 2020August 31, 2016 by

By covering political scandals such as the Teapot Dome bribery incident, and giving ink to poker-game shootings and boozy brawls, the New York Daily News America’s first successful tabloid paper dredged the depths of ’20s and ’30s culture, replacing staid journalism with lurid photos and a shocking, sleazy sensibility. In the process, it offered narratives tailor-made for the burgeoning world of pulp fiction and the films noirs that ensued.

Novelist James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, for instance, were based on the murderous machinations of Ruth Snyder, who killed her husband with the help of her lover. Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and David Grubb’s The Night of the Hunter are among other works that were “ripped from the headlines.”

The tabloids also influenced the distinctive look of the films that were inspired by these fictions. In the 1930s, flashbulbs, new cameras, and faster shutter speeds allowed newspaper photographers to ply their trade pretty much anywhere, anytime. The result: a daily documentation of the previously unexplored underbelly of urban existence. Even the look of these photos added to their impact: “The lack of naturalness in these pictures was not a shortcoming but a source of their melodramatic power,” wrote John Szarkowsi in Photography Until Now. “It is as though terrible and exemplary secrets were revealed for an instant by lightning.”

Historian Luc Sante has even made a connection between specific photos and subsequent films. “A 1945 picture of a slaying at Tony’s Restaurant, with its violent angle, oblique window approach, and mocking use of advertisements, anticipates the blunt force of Anthony Mann’s T-Men . . . and the jazzy chill of Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly,” he wrote, adding that a 1930 shot of a homicide at New York’s Chinatown People’s Theater reflects the look of Howard Hawks’s 1932 film Scarface.

No photographer was more identified with tabloid journalism than Arthur Fellig, a.k.a. Weegee, who made his name freelancing out of Manhattan’s police headquarters. (“Here was the nerve center of the city I knew,” he wrote, “and here I would find the pictures I wanted.”) With relentlessness and relish, he covered auto accidents, deli holdups, gambling joints, and “jumpers,” turning a nation of readers into rubberneckers even as he imbued ghastly Gotham with a kind of poetry. “Crime was my oyster,” Weegee said, “and I liked it.”

Weegee’s first photography book, 1945’s autobiographical Naked City, inspired the 1948 noir film The Naked City. Reflecting the documentary style that gave many noirs their sense of authenticity, The Naked City was shot entirely in New York City and ended with the iconic line “There are eight million stories in the naked city this has been one of them.”

The success of the book and film led to a minor acting career for Weegee. In a self-reflexive Hollywood hall of mirrors, he appeared in a few of the films his work had helped shape: 1949’s classic boxing noir, The Set-Up, and 1951’s forgettable remake of Fritz Lang’s proto-noir M. Even as the photographer disdained L.A.’s natives as “zombies” (“they drink formaldehyde instead of coffee, and have no sex organs”), he was collecting material for his next book: Naked Hollywood, naturally.

Read more in LIFE’s new special edition Film Noir: 75 Years of the Greatest Crime Films, available on Amazon.