Jimmy Carter built political ties and later homes in Chicago — and lasting memories

It’s been nearly half a century since a little-known Georgia peanut farmer hoisted a nine-year-old girl and her kid sister into the air at a South Shore church and gave them each a kiss on the cheek before introducing himself to Chicago.

“Hello everyone, my name is Jimmy Carter” Kimberly Ray can still hear the Democratic presidential candidate saying at that April 1976 campaign event.

“Although I was a little girl, I still remember the sound,” Kimberly Ray told the Sun-Times. “Just the electricity in the air. … I remember the palpable joy and expectation in the room. There was just this amazing feeling, it was riveting.”

Carter’s death on Dec. 29 “brought it all back” — a flurry of happy memories of her family and the moment of a lifetime, Kimberly Ray said.

And with Thursday’s funeral of the 39th U.S. president, Ray is one of many Chicagoans now reflecting on how they crossed paths with Carter as a presidential candidate or later when he helped to construct homes with Habitat for Humanity in West Garfield Park.

For Ray that path started with a dream her mother had.

Angie Ray dreamt of a farmer becoming president, and after researching the candidates for the upcoming election — shortly before Carter won the New Hampshire primary and Iowa caucuses — she picked Carter.

But it wasn’t just a vision that drew her to the future president: the two had similar beliefs about education and faith.

“She just felt like he had character and there was just something special about him,” Kimberly Ray, now senior pastor of Angie Ray Ministries Church on the Rock in Matteson, told the Sun-Times.

Soon after, Angie Ray began reaching out to the Carter campaign and bringing her children along to get the word out about the peanut farmer turned presidential contender. Angie Ray and her four daughters would hand out bags of peanuts with “Vote for Jimmy Carter” written on them.

She eventually arranged a visit for him at Monument of Faith Church at 7359 S. Chappel Ave. in April 1976.

Carter later appointed Angie Ray as the campaign’s Midwest coordinator of minority affairs and as an at-large delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

He visited Chicago several times in the months leading up to his election, attending a July fundraiser with Mayor Richard J. Daley and stopping in at the 1976 Illinois Democratic Convention in September.

Carter would come back to walk in the city’s Columbus Day Parade alongside Daley and to speak at the Niles Township Jewish Congregation in October, then again in December to attend Daley’s funeral.

But the passion of his Chicago supporters wasn’t enough. Carter won the presidency in 1976, but lost Illinois to incumbent President Gerald Ford. Four years later, he lost the state again again, losing his reelection bid to Republican Ronald Reagan, who was born in Tampico, Illinois.

Of course, that 1980 defeat did not end Carter’s legacy. As the nation’s longest living former president, Carter developed a reputation for his humanitarian efforts.

“I know my mother would have been so proud of him,” Kimberly Ray said of Carter’s work since Angie Ray’s death in 2005. “His body of work is not just being an amazing president, but genuinely caring about people.”

Habitat for Humanity’s legacy in Chicago

Less than a decade after losing the White House, Carter returned to Chicago, this time to bring attention to a Habitat for Humanity project. The home-building organization was founded a decade earlier, and the former president’s involvement raised its profile, said Jennifer Parks, executive director of Habitat Chicago.

“We got a huge push in awareness when President Carter joined us,” Parks said. “He helped put us on the map as an organization.”

During the trip, he stayed at the Guyon Hotel in West Garfield Park. The 289-room, 169-unit luxury residential hotel was built in 1928 and was once home to several radio stations, a no-jazz dance floor and Al Capone associate Jack McGurn before falling on hard times.

On the weekend of July 11, 1986, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, “stayed overnight in a roach-infested room, furnished with only a couch and a milk crate,” Crain’s reported at the time.

That weekend, a pair of two-bedroom homes and a pair of five-bedroom homes were built on empty lots at North Kildare and West Maypole Avenues, nicknamed the “Miracle on Maypole.” At the time, Habitat homebuyers were offered no-interest mortgages in the amount of whatever labor and material costs weren’t volunteered, or close to $25,000 for the two-bedroom homes — $72,000 in 2025 dollars.

Carter told the Sun-Times in 1986 that one of the families had been living without heat, electricity or running water and was paying $400 monthly — $1,100 today — for an apartment where rats crawled into the children’s beds.

“That ought not to be in the richest nation on Earth,” Carter said. “It’s our responsibility to see that people have food to eat, clothes to wear and a place to sleep. I don’t think that’s too much.”

A few of the homes Carter helped build in the 4200 block of West Maypole Avenue became derelict and were demolished in 2010, according to city building records. Parks said it was projects such as this that led to Habitat for Humanity changing the way it operates to try to ensure longer-term commitments to the areas where homes are built.

“Just because the Carter project did not have a successful legacy in Chicago doesn’t mean it hasn’t had a successful legacy overall,” Parks said. “[Now,] we do not walk away. It takes years to build trust and healthy neighborhoods. … We make sure we’re building for the distance because our neighbors deserve it.”