Jimmy Carter’s single term in office was a springboard for Black women in politics

By Donna M. Owens, NBC

When Alexis M. Herman first met Jimmy Carter back in the 1970s, she never imagined how their fates would intertwine, nor the heights to which their careers would rise.  

“He was governor of Georgia then, and I was just a few years out of college,” Herman said. Herman, an Alabama native and Xavier University alumna, was a volunteer on civil rights leader Andrew Young’s congressional campaign when “Andy introduced me to Jimmy Carter and told him of the work I was doing.”

At the time, Herman was involved in an experimental project to create a minority women’s employment program in Atlanta. “It was the height of the women’s movement,” she recalled. “But women of color were not getting certain opportunities.” 

Her efforts helped place the first Black women in professional and technical roles at major corporations such as General Motors, Coca-Cola, Xerox and Delta Air Lines. From Georgia, the initiative spread across the South.  

Carter seemed impressed. After he defeated incumbent Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election, he nominated Herman to be director of the Women’s Bureau in the Labor Department.

Years later, during the Clinton administration, Herman returned to the department — this time as the country’s first Black labor secretary. 

From judgeships to Cabinet-level appointments, Black women broke ground in Carter’s administration. He was in office from 1977 to 1981, amid the wave of feminist and gender activism that followed the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

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More recently, Carter recognized the racist vitriol thrown toward Obama, but he has also been accused of denying racism in America.

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