Free A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety by Jimmy Carter Page B

Montgomery bus and Martin Luther King, Jr., became famous. This change was accepted with equanimity on our ship, and I don’t remember any backlash at all among the other crews with which I was familiar, but there was an outcry from many sources, especially among the members of the U.S. Congress from the South. South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond was nominated as the “Dixiecrat” candidate in the 1948 presidential election, and his name replaced Truman’s on ballots in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina.
    On the USS K-1 three years later, I played on a fast-pitch softball team that rarely lost a game, primarily because we had a black sailor named Russell, who was our pitcher and could throw the ball with blinding speed and good control. From just forty-six feet away (twenty feet closer than a baseball mound), the ball would arrive at the batter’s plate in the twinkling of an eye, and even the best batters could only guess ahead of time where the next pitch might be. Any hit was just an accident, and we would quite often win no-hitters. Thanks to a broad smile and a friendly attitude, our pitcher was the most popular man on the ship.

The USS K-1, 1950s. The K-1 operated mostly in the Atlantic-Caribbean area and spent as much time at sea as possible.

I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U.S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted—and relished. I was very proud of my ship.
    On leave later that year, Rosalynn, our two boys, and I returned to Plains for a visit with our parents. When I was describing this incident, my father quietly left the room, and my mother said, “Jimmy, it’s too soon for our folks here to think about black and white people going to a dance together.” I realized how much difference there was between my life in the U.S. Navy and what it would be if I lived in Southwest Georgia. When we came to live there a few years later, we learned that she was still correct.
Rickover’s Navy
    After serving on the K-1 for two years, I learned about the planned construction of two submarines that would be propelled by nuclear power. Captain Hyman Rickover was in charge of this highly secret program and was known as the world’s foremost expert on peaceful uses of atomic reactors for generating electricity, providing radioactive material for medical purposes, and now for driving a ship. He would be in personal charge of selecting young submariners to lead each of two precommissioningcrews to develop power plants that would be small, safe, and effective enough to be mounted in the hull of a submarine. One reactor would be built by General Electric Corporation in Schenectady, New York, and the other by Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh. Like a host of others, I applied for one of these positions, and after a few weeks I was ordered to Washington for an interview with Rickover.
    Captain Rickover was highly controversial, and almost universally condemned by more orthodox senior officers for his radical disregard of navy protocol and procedures. The admirals on the selection board voted repeatedly against his promotion from captain to rear admiral, which had always meant the end of a naval