Speaks about her life and growing up koreanamerican in u dpeen eugene, oregon. And find a full schedule on your Program Guide or watch online anytime at book tv. Org. A Professor Emeritus of history at Mississippi State university. The author of two volumes of history of jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, the first georgia years, 1924 through 1974 and now, jimmy and Rosalynn Carter power and human rights. As i say, he was professor of emeritus at Mississippi State, hes the author of three other books, Ellen Glasgow and the woman within, Christopher Gadson and the american revolution, and confederate colonel and cherokee chief, the life of William Holland thomas. But its the biographies of jimmy and Rosalynn Carter that brings us here tonight and ng theres probably no better person to be in conversation with stanly than steve. He helped research and edit carters bookkeeping faith and really had a hand in every other book that carter has written or projects or classes at emory university. So, sit back, enjoy, its time to learn a lot about president and mrs. Carter. Steve, stanly. Thank you, tony. Thank you, tony, and it is really quite an honor for me to be invited to come here and i appreciate it. I especially appreciate it because i dont know what percentage of my life ive spent in the Research Room here, but i would say pretty close to 30 . [laughter] well, lets start out back in 1987. Thats when the Research Room opened at the Jimmy Carter Library. You werent here for that occasion, but that was the year, i believe, when you decided to work on the carters. What made you decide to take that topic up . Summer of 1987 i was involved in a similar article, religion and politics in western society. I just finished a book and i was just looking around for another topic. Writing a president ial biography was beyond my imagination, but that summer i happened to pick up the newspaper and saw where jimmy carter had attended a writers fair in nashville, tennessee and i wondered what jimmy carter would be doing attending there. And i looked him up and discovered how much he had written and so i thought, well, while im trying to decide what to do next with my life, i will write a little essay about jimmy carter as a writer. So my interest in carter interesting was carter as a writer, not carter as a president. In fact, for the whole 32 years i worked on it, my interest in him remains to a large degree, carter as a writer and he didnt disappoint me because in 1987 he hadnt written very much, but eventually of course, he wrote a lot of stuff. Well, publishing a book on jimmy carter isnt so unusual today, but your decision to write a joint biography of jimmy carter and Rosalyn Carter was and is exceptional. When and why did you make that decision . Well, when i i had a sabbatical beginning august 1990 and thats when i came over to the library because i was already interested in carter as a writer and so i just started looking to see what was available in the library and of course, there was a huge treasure trove of untouched primary materials and i started reading a little bit more about him and i didnt get very far into it before everything i read rosalynn was involved in it. So it occurred to me you cannot write about jimmy carter without writing about rosalynn and also, now, i know all of these years later, you cant write about rosalynn without writing about jimmy carter. Theirs was a unique partnership and almost everything we know today all of these years later and magnificent accomplishments, its a result of that partnership. It was just an unusual partnership. And people asked me, and there was a newspaper review recently, that talks about the influence rosalynn had on jimmy and i dont like the word she had much more than an influence on him, she was involved. She was, so, and i realized that and i thought, well, why not give it a shot. So, thats what i did. Well, thats great. Well, as you say, started coming here to the Jimmy Carter Library in 1990. And i know you came back many times. In fact, id like to see the statistics on this. I believe that he was in the Research Room more than any other researcher. [laughter] ever. Well, tell us how you researched. The two books, the two volumes, not only at the Carter Center, but at other president ial libraries and with interviews of other people, too. First ill talk about my experience at the Carter Library because those were obviously some of the happiest times in my life. I knew nothing about president ial library. I had written several books. I had been in university libraries, i had been library of congress, in other libraries where you just walked in as a researcher and you said, i want to see what you have on thomas, but you cant walk into a president ial library specifically for jimmy carter and say i want to see what you have on jimmy carter. So theres an Orientation Program which i never have forgotten. There werent that many people doing research on him so they pulled out their top gun, second, second top gun interviewed me because they teach you how to use the president ial library so martin was explaining things to me. He was explaining all different kinds of records, executive records, different collections of records and this went on for about an hour. And they usually do this in 10 or 15 minutes, but i was and went on for about an hour and then martin looks up at me and i must have had a blank look on my face and he said, i have no idea what you were going to do when you walked through those doors. And you know, he was remarkably perceptive because i had no idea what i was doing when i walked through those doors. And jody powell, he was close to carter and let me start by looking at the jody powell side and i didnt want to tell martin that i want today see everything they had available for jimmy carter and i did see a lot of it, thats why i was here so much. One time at the end of the year i was looking only had any statistics and i had spent 221 days out of the 365 in atlanta and jeanie used to say that when i used the word home, i wasnt referring to the house we lived in in mississippi. I was talking about the Carter Library. The people were wonderful. So few of them are still out there. So wonderful to see old friends. They were friendly, they were helpful, they became friends, then they became family and then they became support group. I mean, this book probably wouldnt be here had it not been for some of the Staff Members who are so kind and helpful. And i have to mention another researcher. There was one other researcher here on a regular basis when i was, it was carl, who was a professor of economics at georgia tech. And so he and i became fast friends. We referred to the library as our library, because so many times there would be nobody else here. And we corresponded and it was a good situation. I reached a point when it was time for me to come back to the library, wasnt work, you know . I was excited about it, i was ready to get back here. When the first volume was published i was giving a speech and somebody wanted to know what did i enjoy most about the Carter Library. That was one of the easiest questions anybodys ever asked me. I said lunch with the staff. [laughter] we had some very good lunches. And sometimes i would be invited to go along. You would be invited to go along. I was over on the Carter Center side so i wasnt at the Jimmy Carter Library every day, but im glad that i got to know stanly during those early years. Oh, well, we had a mutual friend, i think, here in atlanta. Linda mathews. Oh, yes. And then some others from my ph. D. Days, phil chase and visit and so we had lots of things in common right after that. And you gave a lot of help, too, a little bit later. Steve was the one, he was carters assistant and when i reached the point i wanted to get an interview with carter, of course, you have to go through the proper channels and youve got to get secret Service Clearance and all of that. But steve is the one who really did all of the leg work that made that interview possible, which was in october of 1994. And it included interviews. And ill just mention briefly about other libraries. I learned how president ial libraries work from the here. So when i went to other president ial libraries, and since those were not specifically about jimmy carter, i didnt have to spend years there. The one was the ford library in ann arbor, michigan, most of the records 1976 election were not open here and they were open at the ford library. So, those folks were very good and all of that. The Kennedy Library, they werent very friendly and in fact, the carters and the kennedys didnt get along very well. And jeanie and i went downstairs, you had to check downstairs when you went in an elevator to the Research Room and i told them i was working on a biography of jimmy carter and i really thought they were going to turn me away, but they finally decided, you know, that i was a legitimate person, researcher, so they let us go in and it wasnt terribly long after Jackie Kennedy had died, Jackie Kennedy onassis, and so they finally decided they had a collection of local newspapers on the occasion when carter, carter as president dedicated the Kennedy Library and so they let me see the local newspapers. They were it was a good source because the local newspapers did have information this them that wasnt elsewhere. The bush library, i went several times, george h. W. Bush library. The first time they wouldnt they let me see a bit of stuff, but a lot of the stuff was closed because george w. Bush was governor and then later most of the stuff i wanted to see the bush library did not open until obama became president and im sure there were political reasons, there were political reasons for that. The last time i went to the bush library was as i was wrapping up, to research the socalled october surprise, the idea that the reagan camp had cut a deal with the ayatollah to hold the hostages until after the election and i was told in no Uncertain Terms i would find nothing about that in the bush library. They kept me under surveillance the whole time i was there and i found a lot of information i could use anyway. The last one ill mention is the reagan library, when it first opened, it didnt have much information about carter, but for some reason that i know not what, someone convinced nancy reagan to open the papers on the 1980 election, the election when carter was defeated by reagan and supposedly where the outcome. I dont know that nancy reagan knew what was in the papers someone fooled her because there was a vast collection of papers and most of them were not complimentary of ronnie. So theres a lot of evidencen that election, the reagan people had not been totally honest, but jeanie went with me, and she often did and we had friends in dallas, had lived there and friend would sometimes travel together. One was an attorney and another was a medical doctor, who knew a lot about research. And ill never forget it, the archivist on duty was a young woman named mandy, dont remember the rest of her name and when she saw all the helpers i brought, some of them coming from texas, she teased me for the rest of the time we were there for bringing a posse with me. It was Good Research and they didnt try to hide anything and a lot of papers related to casey, and meese, and the socalled truth squad of that election were available and thats where i got a lot of evidence that i later used to say, as a professional historian, im ready to take the stand the october surprise did take place, even though theres still some things that we would like to know about so ive gone all over the country for president ial libraries. Well, lets talk about some of the themes of the book and the most important one is the relationship between jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and how did it change over the years from your first volume into your second volume and did you see much change while you were writing the second volume . Well, the first volume just goes through his governorship. They both grew up in plains, and as they said. So they had the similar backgrounds except the carters were a prominent family, the smiths were not. And they hardly knew each other because jimmy was older and went off to college and the Naval Academy and all of that. They got married when he had seen her before, but he saw her on the church steps and his sister ruth set up a date and he announced that night to his mother that he was going to marry her. The carters didnt think of course, was good enough to marry jimmy, but anyway, they had the and interesting story about rosalynn, they were out at sea and came back and rosalynn is quiet, shy, but also brilliant and when they took over the peanut business, she was the business manager, and if you really analyzed how that business went from not much income to actually it was a multimillion dollar business by the 1976. So much of it was because of rosalynns work as a business manager. And when he decided to run for the senate in 1962, rosalynn pitched in as well and became an expert campaigner. But in the first book, through the governors time, rosalynn was always very much there, but she wasnt nearly as much in the limelight as when he ran for president and actually when he became president. She was aggressive. She intended to be the first lady. If somebody was going to take her if joan mondale, for example, was standing at the podium. Rosalynn withstand beside her, but pretty soon you would know who was the first lady and who wasnt. Very smart, very aggressive, and of course, the media picked up on that. The media couldnt believe Rosalynn Carter. They couldnt believe this petite woman, very pretty, very soft spoken, they cant believe that she was so smart, that she was so tough, and she was aggressive. She had to be aggressive in the first place because of miss lillian. Because she had to stand up to jimmys mother because shes very powerful and jimmy, of course, helped her do that. But she stood up to jimmy, too. And she didnt really care if the tv cameras were going if she wanted to disagree with him. So she was a very strong person. Very important in the campaign. She had her own issues, mental health, but then other things as well and carter also told the press and others that she was an equal partner. I dont think many people believed it, but once i got into the research, i discovered very quickly that she really was an equal partner and once the presidency was over and they established the Carter Center, they made it their cochairs of the Carter Center. Hes the chairman and she cochairs. They have equal status in the Carter Center. So, she becomes more and more popular, better known. I think this is a place that id like to comment about carters relationship, not in his heart, but in a positive way and with the use of women in his governing and especially in diplomacy. Of course, what was it, six months or less into the presidency went on a solo trip to latin america, and she had the authority of the president. Anything she said had the same authority as if the president himself had said it. But and so carter realized her value and her ability, but if you look at the camp david accord, for example camp david accords took place, and it was her suggestion to do it, but when carter invited them to come do camp david he specifically wanted them to bring their wives. He wanted the wives to be involved. Because that would be a mirror of the way he did the way he did things, but also, he now how hard it was to get any kind of agreement and he believed in personal diplomacy and he thought it would be much better if the wives were there, too. And everything that is written about camp david, god only knows how much has been written about camp david and one of the hardest part of my research, how much to believe, how much not to believe and how much to look at because i only had one lifetime, but when i started looking at the involvement of the women and i stumbled across sadats autobiography about egypt and i promise you nobody can understand the camp david accords if they dont read her autobiography and so we know what went on. He called and said im coming home and she said shall no, carter has been good to you, why dont you stay a while, stay a while longer. And another point i think im talking too long another point, the photographs as we were talking earlier in this huge book, 100 photographs in chronological order, they were chosen very carefully to suit the theme of the book and if you cant bear to think about reading all of those pages, you can always look at the pictures and get a pretty good idea of what the book is call about. And the camp david photographs, one that was published before, but shows Rosalynn Carter and Alicia Biegun at camp david and theres no coincidence that that photograph is in the book because beigun was the hardest person to deal with and his wife was even harder to deal with and rosalynn spent hours and hours and hours with alicia trying to help the agreements finally work. And one last the use of women when in 1994, i guess, when there was a military coup in haiti and carter bill clinton was president and carter goes down there with then colin powell to try to negotiate, try to get the military coup to leave before clinton sent in the troops, and he succeeded in doing that. But what falling through the cracks of history was the role of his wife. Carter wasnt going to go and she called him and she called him and carter said and then carter agreed