Written by Edan Khanian

James Earl Carter Jr was the 39th president of the USA and a member of the Democratic party. He served as the president from 1977 to 1981. He lived to be 100 years old, longer than any other president. Born and raised in Georgia, Carter joined the U.S. Navy in 1946.  On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown, resulting in radioactive water flooding the reactor building’s basement. This left the reactor’s core ruined. Carter was ordered to lead a U.S. maintenance crew that joined other American and Canadian service personnel to assist in the shutdown of the reactor. The painstaking process required each team member to don protective gear and be lowered individually into the reactor for 90 seconds at a time, limiting their exposure to radioactivity while they disassembled the crippled reactor. When Carter was lowered in, his job was to turn a single screw. During and after his presidency, Carter said that his experience at Chalk River had shaped his views on atomic energy and led him to cease the development of a neutron bomb. After some time Carter then joined the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967 as a member of the democratic party. As racial tension, inflamed in Plains by the 1954 Supreme Court of the United States ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, Carter favored racial tolerance and integration but often kept those feelings to himself to avoid making enemies. By 1961, Carter began to speak more prominently of integration as a member of the Baptist Church and chairman of the Sumter County school board. Later Carter was proven to be a major driving force in dissolving segregation.