A Moment with Dr. Moore

Living Out Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Dream

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s family admires Jimmy Carter, and so does five-year-old Ryan Ramos. Ryan’s interest in Carter began on Presidents Day two years ago when he was learning about U.S. presidents in preschool, according to a story that appeared this month in People magazine. His fascination with Carter grew as his grandmom told him about the peanut farmer from the South who became a president known for his decency, kindness and sense of faith. Ryan loved that Carter was a champion of Habitat for Humanity, that he supported environmental efforts and that he set up the U.S. Department of Education since his mom, Lauren, is a teacher. Lauren read Ryan a book about Carter every night, so the young boy was upset when Carter died at age 100 in December 2024. “There were some tears,” as Lauren recalled. “His passing started a conversation about Jimmy’s long life and legacy,” a topic that sparked wider discussion when the White House held a Jimmy Carter Day of Remembrance on January 9, 2025.

One of the many who joined in the conversation was Bernice King, Dr. King’s youngest daughter, who lost her father to a bullet in 1968 when she was about Ryan’s age. She, too, mourned the former president’s passing because Jimmy Carter embraced Dr. King’s dream of a “beloved community” without hunger, prejudice and hate. Carter, she said, “lived out the thrust of what my father was trying to do, which was to eradicate the triple evils of poverty, militarism and racism around the world.”

King spoke out widely against these scourges, and Carter brought King’s message to the South. “The time for discrimination is over,” Carter declared upon becoming Georgia’s governor in 1971. He shocked most people, Black and white alike, in an inaugural speech that challenged segregation. “No poor, rural, weak or Black person,” he said, “should ever have to bear the additional burden of being deprived of the opportunity for an education, job or simple justice.” They were words that led Time magazine to put Carter on its cover with the headline “Dixie whistles a different tune.” And the tenor of state politics changed as Carter defied Jim Crow laws. He appointed numerous Black Georgians to government positions and welcomed civil rights leaders to the governor’s office. He spoke out for criminal justice reform to give the poor a fairer shot and unveiled a portrait of Dr. King in the state capitol building while Ku Klux Klan members protested outside.

High-profile Black leaders in Georgia, many of them from the civil rights struggle, went on to support Carter when he ran for president in 1976. King’s father, Martin Luther King, Sr.; King’s wife, Coretta Scott King; and his close colleague, Andrew Young, went before groups of Black leaders to support Carter’s bid for office. On the campaign trail, Carter spoke of King’s legacy at a hospital in Los Angeles named for the slain hero. King was a “doctor to a sick society,” Carter said, and “a prophet to a new and better America.” So, he hoped to continue King’s work by building “an America in which Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream is our national dream.”

Inspired by King’s dream, Carter went on as president to open government contracts to Black-owned businesses and appointed record numbers of Black citizens to executive and judicial posts. He also steered more money to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, opposed tax breaks for discriminatory private schools and doubled the budget for Head Start, a program launched in 1965 when the civil rights movement was making strides. And I, too, made strides decades later when I attended the program as a young boy from a low-income home in Birmingham, Alabama. I’ve experienced the benefits of Head Start, which launched me on the path to my current role as Council CEO, and Carter also had firsthand knowledge of the need for Head Start in his first public job as a member of the school board in Sumter County, Georgia.

“I was heading up an eight-county planning and development commission,” Carter said at the 15th anniversary of Head Start, “and as soon as I heard about Head Start, I began to implement it where I lived.” Despite a lack of support for his efforts, Carter managed to identify about 2,000 Black and white children who qualified for the program, he recalled. “It was the first integrated classroom in the state, and it was very difficult to get other county school boards to agree to let the program live,” Carter explained. “So, I spent a lot of time moving among those 19 or 20 Head Start classrooms. While there, I also spent time sitting on the floor with the children who were participating in Head Start and talking with them,” conversations that starkly showed him just how much the program mattered.

“Many of those children had never seen a book, and they had never held a pencil,” Carter remembered. “They had never tied a shoelace. Some didn’t know their last name. They had never had a balanced diet for as long as a few days. At the time, they had never had their minds stretched or challenged, and their hearts could have shriveled in the future had they continued in a state of existing deprivation,” Carter said as he promised to keep nurturing the program. “Head Start is a program that works,” he explained, by making children healthier, improving their test scores, boosting their confidence and helping them grow emotionally and intellectually throughout their lives.

Supporting Head Start was a way for Carter to build the future for children from low-income families like mine. It was also a way to honor Dr. King and his campaign to build equity for all. Since its start over 60 years ago, the goal of the program has been to break the poverty cycle, also a key goal of the civil rights movement that King led, and his legacy is alive in Head Start classrooms. Head Start programs across the country use stories, art and discussions to teach children about Dr. King’s message of peace, equality and justice, values to which Carter gave concrete form.

During his term in office as president, Carter paid tribute to Dr. King and “the importance of his vision for a just society,” as he said in 1977 when presenting Coretta Scott King with a posthumous Medal of Freedom for her husband. Carter also helped her raise millions toward building the King Center and signed legislation setting up the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park in Atlanta, where King lived, worshipped and worked. In addition, he helped spread King’s message of peace worldwide by naming Mrs. King to the U.S. delegation of the United Nations. She led goodwill missions to four continents, communicated with many world leaders and lent her support to pro-democracy movements worldwide.

Carter also traversed the world in the most rewarding post-presidency of all time. In 1982, he established the Carter Center next door to the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park, and the center also preserved King’s spirit, as Carter explained “At the Carter Center, we try to make the principles that we follow the same as Dr. King’s—emphasizing peace and human rights,” values that guided Carter as he embarked on a mission of humanitarian work and global relief. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” as King pointed out, and Carter took these words to heart.

Over the next three and half decades, Carter served as a shining example of service, setting a precedent for successors like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Like many people, I admired Carter as he set a mold for life after the White House by making a commitment to do “whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can and for as long as I can to try to make a difference.” This sense of purpose led Carter to undertake a host of projects, including fighting river blindness in Uganda, helping small farmers triple corn yields in Ghana and Zambia, and pressing for democracy and peace in Latin America and the Middle East. In addition, he led the Jimmy Carter Work Project for Habitat for Humanity International, which built nearly 5,000 houses in 14 countries. Each year, he and his wife, Rosalyn, gave a week of their time to join volunteers in building homes and raise awareness of the need for affordable housing.

Carter found the Habitat for Humanity housing project especially rewarding, he said, “because we actually interact with families and with people,” many of them in some of the poorest parts of the world. The project took Rosalyn and him to a different location each year, but one thing remained the same. “The people who will live in the houses work side by side with the volunteers,” he explained, “so they feel very much that they are on an equal level.” And this was the heart of Dr. King’s vision of a beloved community based on a shared sense of humanity and belonging that encompassed both old and young. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” King said as he expressed his vision of the future in 1963.

Dr. King’s sense of vision still stirs hearts and so does Jimmy Carter’s, including the heart of Ryan Ramos, his five-year-old fan. It’s been over a year since Carter’s Day of Remembrance, and Ryan’s mom, Lauren, is keeping Carter’s spirit alive. “Ryan has built a playhouse for Habitat for Humanity,” she said, “and wants to volunteer when he’s old enough.” In the meanwhile, he tries to copy the example of kindness that Carter set. “We often ask what Carter would do in different situations, and Ryan responds that he would include people and be friends with everyone,” words Ryan acts on as “he tries to be like Jimmy every day,” Lauren went on to say. And we should encourage all children to follow Carter’s example, too. It will bring us closer to reaching the goal that Carter set out for America in that Los Angeles hospital while on the campaign trail. He urged us to build a country in which Dr. King’s dream is our national dream.