Southern man Jimmy Carter flipped Georgia from a white supremacist state to one where every citizen was equal. Of course, he had help from other, now-famous Georgians — Andrew Young, Atlanta’s first black mayor; Rep. John Lewis; and Martin Luther King — and ones whose acts of principle went mostly unnoticed.
Similar transitions played out in those years in every county courthouse and state capital in the South. Jim Crow was buried, a better South was born, and it was Southern men – black and white – who did most of the heavy lifting.