{"response":{"docs":[{"id":"gych_rogp_005","title":"Carl Sanders, 01 October 2006.","collection_id":"gych_rogp","collection_title":"Reflections on Georgia Politics oral history collection, 2006-2010","dcterms_contributor":["Short, Bob, 1932-"],"dcterms_spatial":["United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018"],"dcterms_creator":["Short, Bob, 1932","Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014"],"dc_date":["2006-10-01"],"dcterms_description":["Sanders discusses his upbringing in Augusta, his rise to Governor of Georgia in 1963, the 1970 gubernatorial race, and his career after politics. He shares his political philosophy on such issues as civil rights, education, and transportation.","Carl Edward Sanders was born in Augusta, Georgia, on May 15, 1925. He attended the University of Georgia, where he accepted a football scholarship. In 1943, before he could finish his college education, he enlisted in the Air Force and trained as a B-17 pilot. After World War II he returned to the University, finishing three years of law school in two years and passing the bar in 1947. Sanders entered private practice in Atlanta and eventually started the law firm of Sanders, Thurmond, Hester and Jolles. In 1954, he made a successful bid for the Georgia House of Representatives. In 1956, he won a seat in the Georgia Senate. At the time, the seat rotated between Richmond, Glascock, and Jefferson counties. Sanders was subsequently elected to the same seat by both Jefferson and Glascock counties due to his overwhelming popularity, becoming the only man to serve three consecutive terms in a multi-county district. In 1959, Governor Vandiver named Sanders floor leader of the senate. He went on to serve as president pro tempore of the senate from 1960 to 1962. Sanders took the next step in his political career by running for governor in 1962 against Marvin Griffin. Sanders won the election, making him at 37 the youngest governor in the country at the time. Sanders could not succeed himself as governor and, therefore, retired back into private life in 1967. Instead of returning to Augusta, he and his family remained in Atlanta where he started a new law firm. Sanders' final campaign for public office was in 1970, when he was defeated by Jimmy Carter in the governor's contest. Sanders never ran for public office again, but worked for many other Democratic candidates such as Zell Miller, Andrew Young, and Sam Nunn. He also went on to serve as finance chairman for the Democratic Party of Georgia during George Busbee's term as governor.","Finding aid available in repository.","Interviewed by Bob Short."],"dc_format":["video/mp4"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection","http://sclfind.libs.uga.edu/sclfind/view?docId=ead/RBRL220ROGP.xml"],"dcterms_subject":["Georgia. General Assembly. Senate","Georgia. General Assembly. House of Representatives","Legislators--Georgia--Interviews","Governors--Election","Governors--Georgia","Civil rights--Georgia","Civil rights--United States","Education--Georgia","Educations--United States","Transportation--Georgia","Transportation--United States","Civil rights","Education","Governors","Legislators","Transportation","Augusta (Ga.)--History","Georgia","Georgia","United States"],"dcterms_title":["Carl Sanders, 01 October 2006."],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL220ROGP-005/video"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":["Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection, ROGP 005, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641."],"dlg_local_right":["Resources may be used under the guidelines described by the U.S. Copyright Office in Section 107, Title 17, United States Code (Fair use). Parties interested in production or commercial use of the resources should contact the Russell Library for a fee schedule."],"dcterms_medium":["oral histories (literary works)","interviews"],"dcterms_extent":["1 interview (50 min.) : sd., col."],"dlg_subject_personal":["Carter, Jimmy, 1924-","Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014"],"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":"Carl Sanders interviewed by Bob Short \r\n2006 October 1 \r\nYoung Harris, GA \r\nReflections on Georgia Politics \r\nROGP-005 \r\nOriginal: video, 50 minutes \r\n \r\nsponsored by: \r\nRichard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies \r\nUniversity of Georgia Libraries \r\nand \r\nYoung Harris College \r\n \r\n BOB SHORT:  I'm Bob Short, and this is Reflections on Georgia Politics here at Young Harris College.  We're delighted to have you as our guest, and we're anxious to speak to you about yourself and your administration.  \r\n \r\n CARL SANDERS:  Well, I'm delighted to be here and I'm looking forward to talking to you.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Good.  Before we get into a serious discussion about your administration, would you mind telling us just a little bit about your early life and family and growing up in Augusta? \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Well, I was born in 1925.  My father was with Swift \u0026 Company, the meat packing plant -- a salesman with them.  I grew up in Augusta and I grew up in an even-handed family that was god-fearing and dedicated to doing the right thing.  My mother was one of the most wonderful individuals that I have ever known.  And so, I had a very fine childhood.  \r\n When I was about seven or eight years old, my mother took me down and enrolled me in the YMCA.  They taught me how to swim.  They taught me how to play football, basketball, baseball.  Those sports were not in the public schools at that time.  And later, as a result of that, when I went to high school in Augusta at Richmond Academy, which is one of the finest schools that I have ever attended, I had played enough football that I got a scholarship -- a football scholarship -- to the University of Georgia.  Otherwise, I would not have gone to college.  I was the first individual in my family that ever attended college, and if it had not been for the athletic scholarship -- if it had not been for that training that the YMCA gave me -- I doubt if I would have gone.  So, I grew up in a family that was not very poor, but was not considered to be well-off.  I doubt seriously if my father ever made more than a couple hundred dollars a month.  And back in the Depression, much to my -- without my knowledge -- everybody got their salary cut in half in the Depression, including my family.  We had to give up buying a home and rent a home from the insurance company because of that.  But I never knew that, because I always had a good, healthy family relationship.  I had a brother.  As I said, my mother was just absolutely dedicated to her two sons.   \r\n And I assumed the opportunities in leadership that I could at a very young age.  I was captain of the school board patrol.  I used to stand out on the corner and protect the children coming and going from school.  I was President of my class in high school.  As I said, I made the all-state football team.  I had many good opportunities, but they were because I had a good family.  And I always look back on my life and treasure my mother and my father for helping me grow up and grow up in an environment where I could continue to go on and do other things.  \r\n Of course, when I left the University of Georgia after a year, I -- World War II came along.  There I was at Georgia, playing football, when I was on the freshman team of the University of Georgia's Rose Bowl team in 1943.  And I went to Georgia because I was -- at a very young age -- because back when I was in school, you only had eleven grades.  You didn't have the twelfth grade.  So, I went into the University of Georgia at a time when I was sixteen.  When I became seventeen-years-old, the war had broken out, and I did what every red-blooded young American boy wanted to do -- I came over here to Atlanta, and enlisted in the naval air corps.  They took my papers, filled them out, and after taking the papers, the Naval instructor said, \"You've got a problem.\"  I said, \"What kind of problem have I got?\"  He said, \"You're only seventeen years old.  You've got to go home and get your parent's consent.\"  So I said, \"Ok.\"  So, I went back to Augusta that weekend.  I got to thinking about trying to land an airplane on one of those carriers out in the ocean, with it bobbing up and down!  And I thought, you know, I don't believe I want to do that!  So, I went out to the air force base in Augusta and enlisted in the army air corps, at eighteen years old.  I went through pilot training.  I went through World War II as a first bomber on a B-17 bomber, which was the largest air craft that we had there, except for the B-29 at the end of the war.  I was the chief bomber.  The first bomber.  I had a ten-man crew.  I was the youngest.  I was nineteen years old, flying that plane.  I was the youngest man on the crew, but I was responsible for the crew.  \r\n I -- the war came -- ceased in 1945, when we dropped the atomic bomb.  I was headed to the eighth air force, having finished my overseas training, and the war ended.  I had a choice -- either stay in the air force for four more years, or get out and go back to school.  I chose to get out and go back to school.  In 1945, I went back to the University of Georgia.  I re-entered my athletic scholarship.  My brother and I -- who had come up -- who was two years younger than I was, and had not been in World War II, but later went to the Korean War, he and I played on the 1945 Georgia football team.  We went to the Oil Bowl, which was in Houston, Texas.  We beat Tulsa.  \r\n At that time, I had taken exams.  I really had only -- as I said -- a year of college work before I went in the service.  Georgia had an opportunity -- or gave me an opportunity to take exams -- as a returning veteran -- and anything I could pass, they'd give me college credit.  I took enough exams that I was able to go to law school with one quarter's work as an undergraduate.  So, I went into the law school, and when I did, I went to see Coach Butts, and said, \"I can't play football and go to law school.  It's just impossible for me to do both of those things.\"  Plus, the fact -- I was backing up to Johnny Rauch, who was playing -- who was an All-American that year, so I was playing more defense than I was offense.  So, it wasn't a big decision on my part. \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter* \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  So, I went to law school.  And, the law school at that time was crowded with World War II veterans returning.  The law school takes three years, normally, but they gave me an opportunity -- and others -- if we wanted to, to go around the clock.  Twelve months out of the year rather than just nine months.  I finished three years of law school in two years.  When I was in law school, switching over to politics, there were lots of people that were already running for Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and so forth.  I had no interest at that point in politics, other than trying to get through law school, go back home, and get a job and go to work.  But anyway, I went around the clock for two years.  I took the bar exam before I finished law school.  You can't do that now, but back in those days they would allow you to do it.  I came over here with some friends who were taking the bar exam for practice.  I lucked out and passed the bar exam before I got out of law school.  Knowing that I was a lawyer then, and I could practice law, I asked my present wife of fifty-eight years, if she would entertain a marriage.  We got married in September of 1947, which was six months before I picked up my law degree.  We went back to Augusta, and I entered a small law firm in Augusta, Hammett \u0026 Kennedy.  It later became Hammett \u0026 Kennedy \u0026 Sanders.  I practiced law, primarily trying cases in the court room in front of juries for two or three years.   \r\n Richmond County was in the control, back in those days, of what was known as the Cracker Party, which is sort-of like the Tammany Hall was in New York.  One of the big participants in that was Roy Harris, who had previously been the Speaker of the House and the Georgia legislature, and who was an avowed segregationist in every way, shape, and form and fashion.  Some of us that had served in World War II and were veterans, decided that we didn't like the idea of having the county and the city controlled by the Cracker Party.  So, we joined the Independent Party, and took on the Cracker Party and beat them.  That was my first election in 1955 to the House of Representatives.  I came to Atlanta.  I served for two years in the House of Representatives.  \r\n Vandiver was running for Lieutenant Governor at that time, and he was getting ready to run for Governor.  I then decided to run for the Senate.  I ran for the Senate, which was a rotation back in those days of two or three counties for each Senatorial district.  My district was Richmond, Jefferson, and Glascock County.  I ran for the Senate as a -- for Richmond County.  I won the election.  I ran for the Senate for Jefferson County.  They gave up their right to have a Senator appointed, and I got elected again.  I ran for the Senate for the third time for Glascock County.  They gave up their right to have a Senator, and I served three terms in the Senate.  I was Vandiver's floor leader.  I later was elected President Pro Tem of the Senate, and that's when I then decided that maybe I ought to try to run state-wide.   \r\n Well, at that time, the Lieutenant Governor's position, of course, was not a very strong position, but it existed.  The candidate of the -- of the Vandiver group, initially, was Peter Zack Geer, who was Ernie Vandiver's Executive Secretary.  I was President Pro Tem of the Senate, so I announced that I was going to run for Lieutenant Governor and Peter Zack Geer announced that he was going to run for Lieutenant Governor.  We started campaigning.  This was in 1961 and '62, and while I was campaigning for Lieutenant Governor, I was down in Dublin, Georgia, making a speech, and the editor of the local paper came up to me and said, \"Have you heard the news?\"  I said, \"No. What's the news?\"  He said, \"A retired Atlanta policeman, who's now a lawyer by the name of Carl F. Sanders, has just announced that he's going to run for Lieutenant Governor.\" \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter* \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  I said, \"You've got to be kidding!\"  He said, \"No, it's on the news.\"  So, I went back to Atlanta and I thought about how I was going to get people to distinguish between Carl E. and Carl F. Sanders.  I knew that Peter Zack Geer and some of his friends had gotten that guy to get in the race.  So, I said to myself, \"That seems like an impossible thing.\"  So, I said, \"I'm going to run for Governor.\"  And then all of a sudden these people from all over Georgia started coming in, saying, \"Don't get in the Governor's race.  We've got the county locked up for you for Lieutenant Governor.\"  And I said, \"It's too late.  I'm in the Governor's race.\"  \r\n So, I started in the Governor's race.  Marvin Griffin announced -- who was the former Governor -- with Garland Byrd, who was the Lieutenant Governor, and two or three other non-descript candidates.  And we started running in 1962, campaigning for the Governorship for Georgia.  I opened my campaign in Statesboro, Georgia, which was the home of my wife.  And, of course, I didn't know at that time how much it took -- what kind of effort it took to really run a state-wide race, but I learned very quickly.  It took a lot of money back in those days, not the kind of money that it takes today, but it also took an all-out effort.  The county unit system was still in existence when I announced.  And I knew that.  But I still believed that I could win.  The county unit system in the middle of the campaign in 1962, the Supreme Court of Georgia -- of the United States, not Georgia -- came down with a decision outlawing the county unit system, and putting it on a popular vote.  I campaigned, both under the county unit system and under the popular vote system.  I won the election over Marvin Griffin.  I would have won it whether we were under the county unit system or under the popular vote system.  I would have won it if we'd been voting just with white votes.  I would have won it if we'd just been voting for black votes.  And I won it anyway you could win it.  And, of course, that was a wonderful experience, and something that I'll never forget.  \r\n But, right after I won the campaign for Governor, the -- Vandiver announced -- or the courts announced that we had to redistrict the state of Georgia, the Senate, the House.  And Vandiver said to me, \"You are now the Governor elect.  I don't have anymore time other than to serve out my term.  That's your responsibility, not mine.\"  I said, \"You've got to be kidding.\"  He said, \"Yeah, you've got to redistrict the Senate.\"  So, I had to take on -- before I became Governor -- I was still a member of the Senate -- the responsibility of recreating the legislative districts for the Georgia Senate.  I saw men and women -- not too many women in the General Assembly back in those days -- stand up after I explained to them that most of them, when they were in their new districts -- would never again be able to sit in the Senate and serve, because they were -- their district wouldn't allow it.  And I was able to get enough Senators to agree that we had to go ahead and redistrict the Senate, even though many of them would never come back -- to put that bill through the General Assembly.  Therefore, that took me up to the inauguration.   \r\n At the inauguration, of course, we had the normal things that you have when a Governor.  We moved from Augusta to Atlanta, and moved into the old mansion out in Ansley Park.  The Ansley Park mansion was a -- recently had been a residence -- a home.  It was a big rock house.  And it was not the most delightful place to live.  In fact, many of things didn't function that normally would function in a house.  The type of labor that you had was prison labor.  My wife, god bless her soul, said to Ben Fortson, who was the Secretary of State, \"I don't know whether I would like to live in a house being manned by prison labor.\"  Mr. Fortson said, \"Well, if you don't want to do that, we'll hire some civilian labor.\"  Well, he hired some civilian labor.  He was in charge of the upkeep of the mansion.  Of course, civilian labor came to work at eight o'clock in the morning, and got off at five o'clock in the afternoon.  Prison labor came to work at whatever time you needed them in the morning, and didn't go back to the prison till sometime when you needed them -- when you finished later in the evening.  So, after that short period of time, my wife said, \"You know, I wouldn't mind going back to prison labor. See if we can do that.\"  So we did that.  And, of course, we lived in that mansion through the four years that I was Governor.  But we knew -- and I knew -- from the very beginning, that that was not the kind of mansion that Georgia needed for the kind of state that we were.  So, I undertook while I was Governor, the job of building the new mansion, knowing that I would never live in it.  Because you can't build a mansion for yourself, you've got to build it for whoever will succeed you.  We were able, through my wife's efforts and the efforts of many other good Georgians, to put together the land out on West Paces Ferry Road to build a beautiful new mansion.  While I was building that mansion, the biggest critic -- one of the biggest critics in our hair -- was Lester Maddox, who was writing a column in the Atlanta papers every week, telling me what an idiotic fool I was for building a new mansion.  And the irony of it was that he wound up being the first one to live in it, and he never wanted to move out after he lived in it! \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter*  Well, there's no doubt, Governor, that you and your administration completely turned Georgia around.  You were responsible for a lot of the programs and, particularly, the national image that changed while you were in office.  Would you explain to us how the state of Georgia survived the great crisis of school integration and the loss of the county unit system? \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Well, I think one of the most important decisions that I ever made was the decision that I was involved in before I became the Governor.  Ernie Vandiver had run for Governor on a campaign of \"No, not one.  Not ever one in the public schools.\"  Meaning, not ever one -- not having a black student.  The Supreme Court and the federal courts had come down with the order of integrating the schools.  The University of Georgia was under the gun for the admission of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, who were two black students.  Ernie Vandiver called a meeting out at the Governor's mansion in 1961, I guess it was. '61 or '62.  And said to the group that was there -- and I was invited because I was the President Pro Tem in the Senate -- that, \"I've got to make the decision of whether or not to close the University of Georgia.  And I'd like to go around the room to find out what the sentiment is as to what I might want to do.\"  There were fifty-some odd leaders from all over the state.  He went around the room asking for an indication of what he should do.  Forty-eight out of the fifty said close the University of Georgia.  Myself and Frank Twitty, from Camilla, Georgia, who was a House member, were the only two individuals at that meeting that said to Governor Vandiver, \"You cannot shut down the University of Georgia.  If you did that, you not only would ruin the state, but you would create a generation of illiterates.  And you shouldn't do that.\"  He took our advice and the advice of the others, thought about it, and fortunately decided that he would not close the University of Georgia.  So, that was a decision that was made by me, and I think it helped him.  He -- he certainly gets credit for not closing the University.  But I think the decisions and encouragement from me and Frank Twitty had a heck of a lot to do with him making the decision that he wouldn't go through with closing the University of Georgia.  Therefore, that was a very important decision in the dynamics of the state of Georgia.   \r\n After I ran for Governor, and, of course, I ran on a ticket of what we needed to do for this state, not on a ticket of what we were -- shouldn't do so far as races were concerned.  I have never run a political campaign, either as a legislator or as a candidate for Governor of Georgia, and used racial division as the basis of my campaign.  When I ran for Governor, every Governor that I've ever known prior to that time, had always had some racial card that was involved in their gubernatorial campaign.  I don't know what caused me to think that way.  Maybe it was my mother, maybe it was some co-chairs or maybe it was some people that I grew up with.  But I just never had the feeling that there was a big difference between whether my skin was white and whether your skin might be a different color.   \r\n I had a paper route when I was a kid.  Made seventy-five cents a week.  Gave my mother fifty cents and kept a quarter.  I didn't know how to throw papers -- to throw them up on the steps of the people.  There was a -- a black paper carrier named Charles Butler, who told me how to fold the papers so that I could throw them.  He later became the principal of the high school in Augusta, Georgia, and I put him on the state Board of Education when I was the Governor of Georgia.  But I grew up with no bias, no prejudice, and I never had any prejudices or bias.  \r\n I have always been a strong supporter, as you know, of the YMCA.  The YMCA eventually encompassed no racial division.  I work out, now, three times a week, with one of the best friends that I've got.  I met a black trainer by the name of Tony McKlinnon.  He and I have been working out for twenty-five years, starting at the Luckie Street YMCA in Atlanta, Georgia.  And I've got friends on all sides.  \r\n But I never did -- when I was Governor -- I never did get -- I kept Georgia from being dragged down the path and the race that took over in Alabama and took over in Mississippi and took over in Arkansas.  I kept pointing to the future of Georgia as a place where people can come and live in peace, people can raise their children, people can get a good education.  And those were the things that I kept focused on while all this other turmoil was going on all around us.  And as a result, Georgia became the leader of the South.  Georgia -- Atlanta still maintains, I think, the leadership in the South.  People move into Georgia that wouldn't have moved in otherwise.  Companies came to Georgia -- industries are located here.  All of those things took place because people looked at Georgia as a different type of state in the South -- than you could find in other Southern states.  That, I think, is one of the legacies that I have helped leave to the people of Georgia, and one that I am most proud of.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  You also opened Georgia on the national scene by cooperating, instead of criticizing, the federal government, which all your predecessors had done.  You became a good friend to President Johnson and the national administration, which we all believed helped Georgia.  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Well, I did become a good friend of Lyndon Johnson, because in 1964 -- when he ran for the Presidency -- and I was the Chairman of the Democratic Party and he was the Democratic candidate, the two United States Senators from Georgia -- Senator Russell and Senator Talmadge -- Senator Russell went to Spain and spent the summer in Spain inspecting military bases, Senator Talmadge went underground and wouldn't show up at any of the functions.  So I carried that Democratic banner.  And I carried it to -- to my political disadvantage, later in 1970, when I offered again to run for Governor.  But I felt like -- that Lyndon Johnson had been good to Georgia.  While he was President, we got the largest contract ever granted out in Lockheed to build the C-5A transport plane.  I got to be Chairman of the Appalachian Governor's Commission.  We got all kinds of federal funds for hospitals and schools and other types of things in northern Georgia that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.  But you know, I -- I would have been an ingrate in 1964 if I had done what others had done and had refused to ride with -- step up with and vote for the individual who done so much for my state.  So that's why I did it.  Later, it was used by my opponent in 1970 as a way of defeating my campaign.  But I don't regret one minute of it.  I would do it over again if the circumstances were still the same. \r\n \r\n SHORT:  When you took office, your prime goal, as outlined in your inaugural address, was education.  If I recall correctly, you said, \"If there is a star in the show in the next four years, it will be the Georgia child.\"  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  You got that right!  And I meant to -- and we accomplished that.  And I'll tell you why I did that.  To me, the most precious thing that any individual can have, is freedom.  Freedom to think.  Freedom to act.  And the only way you can have freedom, in my book, is through education.  Education creates freedom, and therefore, it was my intention to make sure that we had the best educational program that we could ever have.  \r\n When I was in the Senate, I went to California.  I stood at the California community college system.  I found that out there you could go to a community college any time you wanted to, tuition free.  And I came back to Georgia and said if I ever got elected Georgia's Governor, I was going to create something similar to that.  Because you couldn't put all the boys and girls who lived in Georgia -- either up in Athens or in Atlanta -- at Tech or the University of Georgia.   \r\n So, we built eight or ten junior colleges and converted four junior colleges into four-year community colleges while I was Governor.  Those colleges allowed boys and girls to stay at home and go to the community college, and later go to the senior colleges if they wanted to, when in many cases, those junior colleges became senior colleges.  And that elevated the educational opportunity for boys and girls in Georgia, to a greater step than they had ever been elevated before.  I put sixty cents out of every dollar of revenue into education.  No Governor has ever done that since, no Governor has ever done that before.  I raised the faculty salaries of the University of Georgia faculty thirty-five percent.  I built more buildings and more brick and mortar in four years, than had been built in the entire previous history of the University of Georgia system.  So, education was primary in my administration.  I was awarded the National Golden Key award, for the best education program in America at that time.  It's in there on my -- in my conference room.  And, of course, I had the privilege of taking my seventh-grade school teacher up to New York with me to receive that award.  But I had been as proud of the education program that we put into effect when I was Governor, as anything that I have ever done.  \r\n We did many other things.  You know, to me -- people ask, \"Well, what does the Governor really do?\"  A Governor takes advantage of the opportunities that come before him while he's Governor of Georgia.  And he either takes advantage of those opportunities and makes things happen, or he let's them go by and doesn't let them happen.  And that's what leadership is all about.  You have leadership, you've got to take some risks and you've got to step forward and take -- take advantage of the opportunities when they come before you, or something's going to go by and it's too late to do it.  I took advantage of every opportunity that I could possibly take advantage of when I was Governor of Georgia.  \r\n Another program that we got a great deal of industrial development out of was the building of airports.  I campaigned in 1962, in a little single-engine Comanche airplane, because I'd been a fighter pilot in the war.  We only had about twenty-five to thirty airports in the entire state of Georgia, and half of those were auxiliary fields in World War II.  I landed on tops of mountains, in cow pastures, in other places that you've never dreamed about.  They'd have to shoo the cows off the pasture for me to be able to take off!  So, I said to myself, when I became Governor, \"I'm going to look into what we can do about airports.\"  I went to the County Commission Association meeting and the I said to the County Commissioners, \"Wouldn't you fellows like to have an airport developing program?\"  They looked at me like I was crazy and said, \"No, we are interested in roads, not airports.\"  And I said, \"Well, thank you very much.\"  So I went back and I checked into the -- the airport funds in Washington, D.C., and I found out I could get a grant for a community airport provided that the state put up half the money, and then the national government would put up half the money, and all the County Commissioner would have to do is provide a strip of land -- three thousand feet long -- to build a community airport.  My administration built seventy-three community airports in the four years that I was Governor.  That was the number one airport development program in America for every one of those four years.  What that did -- that allowed industries who were located -- were looking for locations in Georgia and who lived outside of the state -- to get in their King Air's airplanes, and fly to a community that had an airport.  Probably a rural community that had an industrial site that needed a plant.  They could fly in there, look at this industrial sites, fly back and make a decision.  Before, they would have had to go to Atlanta, get in an automobile, drive two or three hours to the location.  And they wouldn't do that!  So, we brought in more new industry than we could have ever imagined, because we had those airports!  You can't get ten thousand feet in Georgia today, and look around in an airplane, and not see an air strip in Georgia.  We've got more community airstrips than any state that I know of, and -- that was a great program.  We just had a variety of programs. \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Well, along with that, you created the Department of Family and Children Services.  From the old welfare system --   \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  I did do that.  I did that because back in those days they'd take kids -- juveniles -- that had gotten into trouble and they'd put them in the common jail for the weekend with the hardened prisoners.  And god knows what they would learn over in that three or four day stay.  We didn't have juvenile detention centers.  But I built juvenile detention centers in every one of the Congressional districts of Georgia, so that it was not a prison, but if a kid got in trouble, they could take him into the juvenile detention centers.  We had psychologists there that could train them and work with them for the weekend.  They weren't thrown into a prison with a common criminal.  And as a result, we saved many -- many of the young people who otherwise would have gone down the road of the criminal life.  But we made them productive and brought them back into our society and gave them an opportunity to become good citizens. \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Another hallmark of your administration was the Governor's Honors Program.  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  That was another program that we developed.  We took the top students from the high schools around Georgia, and sent them on down to Macon, Georgia -- I think Wesleyan College is where we located it -- and let them learn for the first time.  They were sort of like me when I went to Georgia on a football scholarship.  We had sixty freshmen football players.  I thought, because I'd been an all-state football player, that I was one of the best football players in the state or in the southeast.  When I got up there, I found out that it was -- a lot of them could outrun me, were bigger and stronger than I was, and that I wasn't nearly as invincible as I thought I was when I was playing football at Richmond Academy.  I used that same theory on these high school students.  Kids that thought they were the smartest kid that had ever come down the drain in their particular school went to Wesleyan.  Went down there for eight weeks or ten weeks in the summer, and found out that they weren't nearly as smart as some of the kids in other parts of the state.  They had to work harder, but they went back home with a whole different attitude about what they needed to do to improve their old situation.  That was a very successful program.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  You had a great administration.  You left office as one of the most popular Governors Georgia has ever had.  But it was rumored at one time that you were considering running for the United States Senate.  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  That -- that rumor went around.  It was rampant.  It got so hot that President Johnson and Senator Russell called me up to the White House and said to me, \"Would you like to be a judge?\"  This is my last year, I'm getting ready to get out.  And they said, \"How about the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals?\"  I said, \"No, I don't want to be a judge.\"  They said, \"Well, how about being the ambassador to the Philippines?\"  I said, \"What would I do in the Philippines?\"  They said, \"Well, you'd help us get rid of those Communists over there.\" \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter* \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  I said, \"No, I don't want to do that.\"  And finally, they said, \"What about something like the Secretary of Commerce?\"  And I said, \"No, I'm not interested -- I'm really not interested in coming to Washington.  What I would like is -- I'd like for the next appointment to the federal bench in the northern district of Georgia to go to Hiram Undereofler, who I had taken away from his law practice in Americus to put him as the Revenue Commissioner.  And I knew that after four years he had had difficulty going back home to try to recreate a law practice.  Senator Russell said, \"No problem.  He'll get the next appointment.\"  Well, the next appointment came up, and he didn't get it.  I found out, which most people already know, if you don't get your half of the political deal up front, you better watch out.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter* \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  You may not ever get to the other half!  So, the appointment came up and Neil Redfield got it, who turned out to be a very good judge, and I had no problem with him.  But I had been promised the appointment for Hiram Undereofler.  Fortunately, I had in my coat pocket when that happened, the resignation of one of the justices of the Georgia Supreme Court.  And I was able to put Hiram Undereofler on the Supreme Court.  He later became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and had an outstanding career.  \r\n But I never really wanted to go to Washington and serve in the Congress.  Most of the Governors that I served with, when I was Governor -- who later went to the United States Senate -- said to me, \"It's different.  You're not in charge of your own decisions.  You can't make the decisions like you made when you were Governor of Georgia.  You sit in there with a body of 110 individuals, and you sit and vegetate for about twelve years before you get enough influence to be effective at all.\"  At that time too, the -- my children were teenagers.  My wife was not anxious to go to Washington.  The hippie movement was moving through the country.  I did not want to take my children and my wife to Washington during that period of time. I -- I didn't know what might happen to them, but I knew that if I stayed home and I looked after them and they looked after me, then I'd have a much better situation than I would if I were sitting in the Senate in Washington, D.C., waiting for my time ten or twelve years later to do something effective for Georgia.  So, I didn't do it.  I've never regretted it.  I  glory in the people who have done it and who have had successful careers in Washington.  I made up my mind when I left the Governor's office, that I would stay in Georgia.  That I would go back to the practice of law.  And that I would look after my family.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Well, in the interim between your leaving the office in 1970, you established this law firm.  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  I started this law firm in 1967 with two lawyers -- Norman Underwood, who you know, and another lawyer who graduated from the University of Georgia named Dale Schwartz.  I moved into the commerce building with the two lawyers, and started to practice law.  I could have gone into any other one of the big law firms in Atlanta, but I would have been just a partner, and I would not have been the originator or the founder.  I chose to build the law firm myself, rather than do that.  Some others have done that, and that's not a bad way to go.  But I've always liked to build things and try to stay in charge of my own destiny.  So, I started with the two lawyers.  I continued to attract more lawyers to the firm.  I was able to increase the business of the firm.  Today, almost forty years later, we have 650 lawyers.  We have offices all over the world.  We're in Hong Kong, Shanghai, London.  We're in New York.  We're in Washington.  We're in Richmond.  We're all over Virginia, North Carolina, and Atlanta.  And the truth of the matter is, it's gotten too big.  I get on the elevator and I don't know whether I'm looking at a partner, an associate, or a client, or some fellow who just got on the elevator by mistake! \r\n \r\n SHORT:  *Laughter* \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  But it's been a wonderful experience to be able to go back to the field of law, the practice of law, and be able to find the heights that I've got now.  And, of course, I'm now at the point in life where I recently told them, \"Make me the Chairman Emeritus, and I will do what I need to do and what I want to do.  And I won't be worried about getting up every morning -- early in the morning, and working till midnight at night.  But I'm going to let the rest of you do that while I try to relax for a while.\"  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  And then we come to the 1970s.  You had made the decision to run again for Governor. \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Correct.  And I thought that it was a good opportunity because I still had some things in my mind that I hadn't finished, and some things that I thought I might want to do that had come to mind during the time that I was out of the Governor's office.  So, I announced for Governor, and, much to my surprise and my gratitude, I got the endorsements of most of the newspapers in the state.  I got the support of most of the business community in the state.  And, of course, I found my opponent to be Jimmy Carter, who had previously run against Lester Maddox, and who was running again for the Governor's office.  That didn't bother me, because I thought we would have a very solid campaign, and we would discuss the issues -- education, the industry, and things of that kind.  But much to my surprise, we didn't have that type of campaign.  He took the position that I was now an Atlanta lawyer, and that I was a friend of Lyndon Johnson, and I had had something to do with integrating the public schools, and that that was not the kind of things that you wanted in a Governor.  He took the position that he -- that he believed in segregation, that George Wallace was his cousin, and that the segregated type of operation in government was preferred over the kind that I had stood for.  I got positioned and politicked as an Atlanta lawyer, who was a friend of Georgia's integration policy.  He positioned himself as a south Georgia redneck candidate, who didn't believe in that.  But, contrary to everything else, people, when they voted -- because of the race card that they had been played -- voted in favor of his election, and not mine.  I look upon that sometimes, as a disaster.  But, in reality, I look upon it as an opportunity for me to do the other things that I've done in life -- in business and in law.  Ironically, the inaugural address of Governor Carter was that if you've come to him to talk about segregation, you've come to the wrong place.  Integration is here, segregation is over, Martin Luther King, Jr. is the man that I most admire and the things that I told you during the election, you forget about those, and discard those.  They were just campaign opportunities.  I'm a completely different person.  And I think he is.  And I -- as a result of serving as Governor, he didn't have an easy role, because Lester Maddox got elected Lieutenant Governor at the same time he got to be the Governor.  So, everything that he tried to do as Governor was always a fuss and a fight with Lester over whether it could be done.  But later he undertook the campaign for Presidency of this country.  He got elected, much to the surprise of many of us when he first started.  And, of course, he's been -- I think, a better ex-President than he ever was a President.  He has gone out into the world and done some great things.  And I admire the things that he's done.  \r\n I've come to the conclusion that politics, you know, is a tough business.  Sometimes it's dirty.  But, you've got to be willing to take the good with the bad if you want to participate.  And I've had a little bit of all of it.  But, I've come out of it, and in good fashion.  And I've still got my family and I've got my friends and my law practice and I've got my former political career.  I'm not mad at anybody.  I'm not trying to get - trying to take retribution on anybody who didn't support or didn't vote for me.  I'm as happy as a clam can be.  I'm 81 years old.  My health is still good.  My family is in good shape, except for the loss of a grandson a few months ago.  But I thank the lord everyday for what he has provided me with, to do the things that I've done in life.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  You've been a great public servant.  Now, may I ask you one more question?  What do you think about today's party politics?  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Well, it's hard to figure out what party is which party!  When I was in politics, many of the so-called Republican party supporters were Democrats.  Today, the Democratic party in Georgia is not made up of the same types and the same groups that it was made up of when I was in office.  When I was in office, the community leaders  Ivan Allen in Atlanta and a lot of others all through the state -- they ran as Democrats.  Today they would run as Republicans.  I don't know how this thing is going to finally balance itself out.  But, too often, people say, if you're a Democrat, you're a wild-eyed liberal.  If you're a Republican, you're a conservative.  That's a lot of malarky!  People -- good people -- can be found in either one of the parties.  But it looks like Georgia, for the time being, has taken the road that they're going to be Republicans -- for how long, I don't know, over the fact that the Democrats ran and ruled this state for a hundred years.  \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Thank you, Governor.  \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Amen! \r\n \r\n SHORT:  Amen!  \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n "},{"id":"gych_rbrl1750ohd_009","title":"Carl E. Sanders interviewed by George Justice, 17 August 2004.","collection_id":"gych_rbrl1750ohd","collection_title":"Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary collection, 1986-2006","dcterms_contributor":null,"dcterms_spatial":["United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018"],"dcterms_creator":["Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014","Justice, George"],"dc_date":["2004-08-17"],"dcterms_description":["Carl E. Sanders was born in Augusta, Georgia on May 15, 1925. He attended the University of Georgia, where he accepted a football scholarship. In 1943, before he could finish his college education, he enlisted in the Air Force and trained as a B-17 pilot. After World War II he returned to the University, finishing three years of law school in two years and passing the bar in 1947. That same year he married Betty Foy of Statesboro, Georgia. Sanders entered private practice in Augusta and eventually started the law firm of Sanders, Thurmond, Hester and Jolles. In 1954, he made a successful bid for the Georgia House of Representatives. Two years later, in 1956, he won a seat in the Georgia Senate. At the time, the seat rotated between Richmond, Glascock and Jefferson counties. Sanders was subsequently elected to the same seat by both Jefferson and Glascock counties due to his overwhelming popularity, becoming the only man to serve three consecutive terms in a multi-county district. In 1959, Governor Vandiver named Sanders floor leader of the Senate. He went on to serve as president pro tempore of the Senate from 1960 to 1962. Sanders took the next step in his political career by running for governor in 1962 against Marvin Griffin. With his positive campaign, Sanders emerged victorious, making him at 37 the youngest governor in the country at the time. Sanders could not succeed himself as governor and, therefore, retired back into private life in 1967. Instead of returning to Augusta, he and his family remained in Atlanta where he started a new law firm. On April 25, 1970, Sanders reemerged to announce for what would be his last attempt at public office. His campaign for governor, however, ended in defeat, with Jimmy Carter taking office. Sanders never ran for public office again but worked for many other Democratic candidates such as Zell Miller, Andrew Young, and Sam Nunn. He also went on to serve as Finance Chairman for the Democratic Party of Georgia during George Busbee's term as governor.","Interviewed by George Justice.","Finding aid available in repository.","Related collections held by this repository: Carl Sanders Papers; Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection, ROGP 000-10 Carl Sanders and Norman Underwood on George Busbee; Reflections on Georgia Politics Oral History Collection, ROGP 005 Carl Sanders.","George Justice interviews Carl E. Sanders about his activities as a Georgia state senator, governor, and business leader. Sanders discusses his early life, his involvement with the YMCA, and the state of youth during the Great Depression. He recalls serving in the ROTC, Army Air Corps, and World War II. Sanders comments on his time in law school at the University of Georgia and his competitive spirit. He reflects on his campaigns the general assembly and for governor. Sanders recalls the integration of the University of Georgia, the establishment of Augusta College (later Georgia Regents University), and the effect of World War II on young politicians. He discusses his relationships with John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard B. Russell. Sanders discusses his political legacy, Georgia's progress, and the effect of press on the office of governor."],"dc_format":["video/mp4"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":null,"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary collection, 1986-2006","http://russelldoc.galib.uga.edu/russell/view?docId=ead/RBRL175OHD-ead.xml"],"dcterms_subject":["College integration","Legislators","Press and politics","Governors","Governors--Georgia--Interviews","World War, 1939-1945","Georgia--Athens","Legislators--Georgia--Interviews","College integration--Georgia--Athens","Universities and colleges--Alumni and alumnae","Political campaigns--Georgia","Press and politics--Georgia","Georgia","Georgia. General Assembly. Senate","Political campaigns","Augusta College (Augusta, Ga.)","University of Georgia. School of Law"],"dcterms_title":["Carl E. Sanders interviewed by George Justice, 17 August 2004."],"dcterms_type":["MovingImage"],"dcterms_provenance":["Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://purl.libs.uga.edu/russell/RBRL175OHD-009/ohms"],"dcterms_temporal":null,"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":["Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary Collection, OHD 009, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641."],"dlg_local_right":["Resources may be used under the guidelines described by the U.S. Copyright Office in Section 107, Title 17, United States Code (Fair use). Parties interested in production or commercial use of the resources should contact the Russell Library for a fee schedule."],"dcterms_medium":["interviews","oral histories (literary works)"],"dcterms_extent":["1 interview (95 min.) : sd., col."],"dlg_subject_personal":["Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973","Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963","Russell, Richard B. (Richard Brevard), 1897-1971","Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014"],"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":"JUSTICE:  Hello. I'm George Justice. On behalf of the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, the University of Georgia, it's the 17th day of August 2004 and we're at the Van Der Kloot Film Studios in Atlanta. We're here today with former Georgia Governor Carl E. Sanders to discuss the highlights of his most distinguished public service career and to provide an oral history documentation that will accompany his papers at the University. Governor Sanders is a former state Legislator, state Senator, Floor Leader, and President Pro Tempe of the Georgia Senate before being elected to the governor's office in 1962. He was the first Georgia governor to be elected by popular vote and was, at age 37, the youngest governor in the nation. Governor Sanders led the state during a time of tremendous political, social, and economic changes in the 1960s and brought both energy and professionalism to a reform agenda unmatched by many of his predecessors. Currently he is the chair and co-founding partner of Atlanta's prestigious law firm of Troutman Sanders and has been involved in numerous investments, corporate boards, and charities. We appreciate your taking the time to speak with us today Governor. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Glad to do it.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Let's begin with our first question. Governor Sanders, you grew up in Augusta, an old Georgia city with a very colorful history and one of its most interesting and important  legacies is the political leaders the city has provided to the state. This is especially true in the twentieth century; people like Tom Watson, Roy Harris and even yourself rose to political prominence and became indelible figures in Georgia history. But even the local politics of the states second capital has included a very contentious, often contentious, political history with party strife and I was wondering whether or not that during your youth whether you were aware of any of the partisan struggles?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well Augusta of course politically was dominated and ruled by a party called the Cracker Party for years and in fact it got to the point where if you wanted to hold public office of any sort or you wanted to work for the city or the county you had to go through the Cracker Party in order to achieve employment. I was aware of that as a young man growing up but I was not so concerned about it until I came back after the war and after I went to law school and returned home to practice law. We had a situation where the Safety Commissioner who used to be the head of the fire department, by the way was named John Kennedy, control the Cracker Party. And after I had returned from the Air Force I practiced law in a firm called Hammond and Kennedy, later Hammond, Kennedy, and Sanders and I was approached by some of the local elders who had decided that the Cracker Party needed to be broken up because it was like Taminy Hall in New York. And they prevailed upon me and a few other young veterans to run against the candidates proposed by the Cracker Party. That was my entry into politics; that was in 1954 I believe it was and I ran as a member of the Independent Party and we successfully broke up the Cracker Party's hold on the public offices in Richmond County. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  As a youth were you aware of--was politics a topic of household conversation at your home? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Politics was not a topic of household conversation in my home. My father was employed by Swift \u0026 Company, the meat packing company. He grew up in Rex, Georgia south of Atlanta. He went to work for the company in Atlanta and then they transferred him to Augusta. He was with them for forty-four years. When I was growing up he didn't indicate any interest in politics and I had no interest in politics. I was more concerned about whether I was going to go to the YMCA and learn how to swim or play basketball of football or all the sports programs were not in the public school but were in the institutions like the Y. My father later, after I came back after the war, did become a County Commissioner and he became a County Commissioner when the Cracker Party was still in its heyday. I learned in short order that that was not a very attractive job. Everybody wanted you to pave their driveway or pick up their trash or build a new road somewhere. So when I went to law school I really had no political ambition. My ambitions were to go through the University law school and come back home and practice law. And when I was in law school there were a lot of students who were already running for Governor, running for Lieutenant Governor and Officers. Most of them, for reasons that I never understood, never really achieved much success politically. But I came back to Augusta. I finished law school in--really in December '47 and I returned in January of '48 and joined the law firm. They worked me to death. I didn't have time to be worried about politics. I was worried about making a living. My wife who I married in September had--actually in August, September was our anniversary--anyway, my wife became seriously ill so I had to try to provide for her. I not only had to practice law during the day but I taught law school at the Augusta Law School three  nights a week so I was fully occupied and employed looking after my wife and practicing law. When I was asked about running for public office, I really didn't know whether I wanted to do that or not. I went home and I talked to my wife about it. She was not too happy about it but she said if you decide to do it fine. I thought about it at length and decided that maybe the time had come for me to try to do something about what the situation was politically in my home town, so I ran. And I luckily won, led the ticket, ran against a boy that I had played YMCA football with, another lawyer-- \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Billy Barton? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Billy Barton. Later he was the District Attorney in Augusta some years later. But we had a very vigorous race but there were no monumental issues. The issue was, are you going to vote for the Cracker Party candidate or are you going to vote for the Independent Party candidate? And that's how I got started. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  So, was your lack of interest then, in politics when you initially came back to Augusta, because of the experience that you'd seen your dad go through? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, my lack of interest really was just what I said. I was so busy trying to make a living. I made $150 a month practicing law. I got a $600 bonus at the end of the year. In 1954, my first year's salary and bonus was $2400. So you can imagine how I was trying to live and in addition to that my wife was sick. I finally took her to John Hopkins Hospital. They diagnosed her condition as Regional Ileitis--she had to have surgery. At one time earlier than that right after we were married, she was in the hospital in Bullock County, her home of Statesboro. The minister told me one night that she'd never live through the night. I got down on my knees with the minister and prayed as I never prayed before. Fortunately she lived through the night. She recovered. We didn't think that we would ever be able to have children. Fortunately we had a daughter and a son and so I was really busy trying to make a living more than trying to determine whether I wanted to get into politics. But I knew that a political job like the County Commissioner was not everything that people thought it was cracked up to be, that it was a tough job. So, when I got into the legislative race it was different--I knew then that I would be going to Atlanta if I was successful and I would be serving in the General Assembly of Georgia.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You've talked about before a couple of things that had a lot of impact on you in your youth and one of those things was the YMCA.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  The YMCA has had a great impact on my life. That's why I'm so interested in supporting the Y today, why I've tried to give back some of the material goods that I've acquired over the years back to the Y because my mother took me down to the YMCA on Broad Street in Augusta, Georgia when I was about seven, eight years old. That's where I learned how to swim, first. Secondly, I learned how to play basketball. Thirdly, I learned how to play football. I went to the YMCA camps in the summer time. They were not very sumptuous camps but I went there and I developed an athletic ability and it was as a result of that athletic ability that when I went to high school at Richmond Academy I played football and I eventually became the most valuable player on the football team, I became a member of the all-state GIAA football team, I earned a football scholarship to the University of Georgia. Had it not been for some of the programs and so forth that I learned from the YMCA I doubt if I'd ever had an opportunity to get an athletic scholarship to go to Georgia. I don't know whether I would have gone to college because my mother and my father neither one of them had ever gone to college   and my father's income working for Swift \u0026 Company was not such that you could just automatically put a kid through college. But I had worked in various and sundry forms before I went to college when I was in the high school and my dad, since he was with Swift \u0026 Company, got me a job with the Big Star supermarket. I worked from 7 o'clock on Saturday morning to sometimes 8 or 9 o'clock at night. I started out sacking groceries. I wound up catching flour sacks in the back of the store and when I was in college I came home, I carried the mail. During the Christmas holidays the postmaster was a friend of my fathers and I knew him. When I was in school, even in grammar school and during the summer time when school was out I had a paper route. I made seventy-five cents a week. I folded the papers in the morning and I gave my mother fifty cents to save and I spent a quarter. But I grew up in a wonderful middle class family but I grew up with a work ethic that I still have today. I grew up realizing that if you really wanted to get something, get ahead, you had to work and things were not going to be handed to me on a silver platter but if I was going to achieve anything in life, education or otherwise, I was going to have to go out and work for it. My mother was a very wonderful woman. She worked before she married my father she was a cashier at S.H. Crest and Company in Augusta and as I told you my father was a salesman with Swift \u0026 Company. So, growing up when I did, I was born shortly before the big stock crash in 1929. I was born in 1925 and of course I grew up in the depression. Now I didn't realize that the depression was a severe as it really was. But what happened is that we had a little brick bungalow house on the corner of Johns and Wrightsboro Road that we were buying, that my family was buying. My father's salary was cut half in two like many other people during the depression. We had to give that house back to the bank or to the insurance company and rent it instead of purchasing it. But I never really realized that I was suffering as a part of that depression. I didn't have wonderful play toys, but I had skates and I had a football and I could play cops and robbers and we had some woods not too far down the street from where I lived and we had wonderful opportunities. We had a nice neighborhood with a lot of kids. We had some football games in the street. We had a basketball rim in somebody's backyard. We just enjoyed a wonderful upbringing in my   early years. I walked to school, to Monta Santa Grammar School. I served as a captain of the state patrol--safety patrol. Get there early in the morning. Make sure that the kids got across the street when they were coming to school and not get run over by an automobile. I, as I said earlier, I was active in the Y. I had a bicycle. I never had an automobile until I came back out of the service and I bought a black Plymouth Coupe; paid $640 for the automobile, brand new automobile by the way. You can imagine how that compares to automobiles today.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  So, these middle-class values, the values that you learned from the Y, do you think any of those values translated over into your political career? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah they did, for instance when I went to the paper route, you had to fold the papers in order to throw them so you can hit them on somebody's front porch. I didn't know how to fold the paper into the form that you could throw it. And one fellow that I got to be a good friend was a fellow named Charles Butler who was an African American. He taught me how to fold my papers so that I could put them in my sack and I could ride by bicycle and throw the papers. I learned from him right off the bat that he was a good solid individual and became a good friend of mine. Later when I was Governor I appointed him to the Board of Education. He later became principal of one of the high schools in Augusta and his name was Charles Butler but they called him \"98\" because that was the route, the paper route that he threw. So I learned early on that it really didn't make any difference what the color of your skin was it was what the people--the person that you dealt with, what they stood for and how they felt about you and how you felt about them. So I really learned early on that I didn't have any prejudice, racially, against anybody because of the color of their skin.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Tell me about the ROTC and what kind of impact that had on you as a youth.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, Richmond Academy when I went there was a thousand boys, military ROTC. We wore uniforms every day except Thursday and that's when you supposed to put them in the laundry and you could wear civilian clothes. I didn't fully realize what an impact that would have on my life. It was a fine school. The girls had a school several blocks down the street called Tubman High School but Richmond Academy was fully all male. So I initially started in the military ROTC program. I became a Corporal, a Sergeant, later became an Officer, later became an Officer, later became one of the top officers at the high school. I was elected President of my freshman class in high school and as I said I played athletics. But I learned how to do left face, right face, about face, and all the oblique left, oblique right, and how to march in the parades and how to take an old Springfield rifle and take it apart and put it back together. When I was an officer I wore Saber and had the tassels on your shoulders like a military thing. Well, all that was wonderful and I enjoyed it but what really happened was when I enlisted in the United States Air Force after I'd gone to Georgia for a year and I was seventeen and I had an alternate appointment to West Point that Congressman Paul Broun had awarded me but I thought the principal who was at the Citadel would not take the principal and he took the principal appointment to West Point so that left me out. And so I went over and enlisted in the Naval Air Core in Atlanta and they told me that I had a problem and I said, \"What's my problem?\" They said, \"You're seventeen years old. You've got to go home and get your parents' consent.\" So I went home the next week to get my parents' consent. Thought about trying to land a plane on one of those aircraft carriers somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean and I said, \"You know, I don't believe I want to do that.\" I went out to Daniels Field in Augusta and enlisted in the Army Air Core. Well, a month later they called me up and my first stop was Kessler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi. Well that was just a beginning of a military career. I began to realize, though, that most of the people that were--that I was in the service with had never had any military training whatsoever. They didn't know left face, right face, about face or anything about the military. So when I went into the service the military experience and training that I had in high school stood me very well. I later became the wing commander when I was in primary training, flight training. I had an official officer position all throughout my training to become a pilot and I even had a choice at a time to decide where I wanted to go to take advance training but much of it was because all the military had come so easy to me and so difficult to some of the others that I was miles ahead of the, militarily wise, and that was because of the ROTC program at Richmond Academy which, by the way, was one of the finest schools in the country. Was actually started, originated before the adoption of the United States Constitution. And I went back some years ago to the 200th Anniversary of that school. They had a faculty that was as good as any college faculty and it was a wonderful educational process.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  And this military experience led to your participation in World War II, is that right? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, that's right. I mean, you know, I was like every other young man at that time. I was anxious to go out and defend my country. I didn't want to stay at home and I certainly didn't want to be classified as some people were back in those days, 4F is the terminology that was used. But I was anxious not only to go to the service and defend the country but I wanted to learn how to fly. I wanted to be a pilot. I didn't know whether I could fly or not. I eventually went to Santa Ana, California where they had preflight school and they classified you bombardier, navigator, or pilot. I took all of the tests of written and the dexterity tests that they gave you and I came back and thought, \"Man, I'll never be a pilot.\" Some of my friends and buddies said, \"Oh, that was easy. We going to get to be pilots.\" Well they wound up becoming bombardiers and navigators and I wound up as a pilot. But, there were a couple--in fact there was one boy from Augusta that was with me at that time named Ben Popkin. Ben Popkin later, I think, became a navigator. Ben's dead now. But Ben was in the military about the same time that I was. I went in at--enlisted at seventeen, went in at eighteen, became a P-17 bomber pilot at 19 years old, first pilot with a ten man crew and of course was in the military almost three years and returned to civilian life and went back to the University of Georgia.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Did the war itself have any impact on you?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah, the war had a lot of impact on me. The first thing it did, it matured me far beyond my teenage years. I didn't have those sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old experiences that some of these kids have today because I was in the service and we were at war and I was trying to make the best of whatever I could do to help my country. What it did for me was when I was at Richmond Academy and I made reasonably grades, I had some good grades in Chemistry. So I thought, \"Well, someday I'll be a chemist.\" I didn't know what a chemist did other than it was in a lab and had a uniform of some sort on and tried to look at test tubes and things. But I said that because I really didn't know anything else at that time that I wanted to do. While serving in the Air Force and in the military I began to realize that I didn't want to be a chemist and I began to think about what I really wanted to be. I think the war matured me to the extent that it gave me an opportunity to make some judgment calls that I don't believe I would have made if I had not gone to war. When I came out of the war I knew that I did not want to be a chemist but I had decided that I wanted to go to law school. The reason that I decided that I wanted to go to law school was because almost everybody that I heard about that were leaders and movers and shakers in the country at the time, in the world at the time had some type of legal education or legal background. And I thought if that's the kind of education that it takes for you to really become successful in life in what you want to do, that's what I want to do. So when I came back out of the Air Force September '45 I'd only had about one year of academic work in college. But they gave veterans an opportunity to take tests and if you could pass the test in any subject that you took they gave you credit because we had all types of educational courses when I was training for pilot. I passed enough tests to where I needed to take only one quarter to qualify for law school. So that was in '45. I played football that year. I returned to the football dormitory. Went back on the football team; played in the Oil Bowl which later became the Blue Bonnet Bowl. And then I applied to law school. I went into law school in January of '46. It didn't take me but a few weeks to realize that I could not continue to play football and get through law school. Law school was very competitive and I wanted to get in and get through law school as quickly as possible. So I went to Coach Butts and told him I was going to give up my athletic scholarship and I was going to continue to take my GI Bill of Rights and go to law school. That's another thing, before I went into the service I played that year of football under Wally Butts and the University of Georgia football team and I promise you I thought the war was easier than playing football for Wally Butts as a freshman because it was tough. We not only had to play football on the football field but we had rat courts at night, we had belt lines, we had to run through--we had all kinds of obstacles to stay on athletic scholarship. But anyway, I got in law school. Law school normally takes three years. They allowed us to go around the clock, twelve months instead of taking the summer off. So I was able to finish law school in two years rather than three years. And back then, which they do not allow you to do now, you could take the Bar Exam if you felt like you could pass it. I went over at the end of my second year in law school, took the Bar Exam thinking I was taking it for practice with a couple of students who lived in the same house that I lived in out on Springdale Street and I lucked up and passed the Bar Exam after my second GI still had a year to go in law school but I passed the Bar Exam so I knew that I could practice law no matter what. That's when I got serious about marrying my wife who was at Georgia at the time and who was in art school. And so we actually got married about three months before I finished law school and about six or eight months before I picked up my diploma. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You're talking about law school and you're talking about the football at Georgia. You were very competitive, weren't you?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  I was very competitive, but I don't think I ever realized how competitive I was. I mean, I was competitive because I enjoyed what I was doing. I enjoyed athletics, I enjoyed flying, I enjoyed responsibility, I enjoyed work but I was never obsessed and never felt like it, you know, I'm a real competitive guy. I never felt that way.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Did you take that competitive spirit with you into politics? \r\n  \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I think I did. I'm pretty sure I did because I never would have run for Governor if I hadn't taken that into politics with me because when I went to the Legislature in '55 and served two years in the House I sat the first year and listened and kept my mouth shut and tried to find out how the General Assembly operated. Second year I became a little more involved in taking on some issues and then I went to the Senate and of course when I went to the Senate. The Senate back in those days, except for Fulton County, rotated within three counties for each district. Fulton County had the only permanent Senator. My district was the eighteenth Senatorial District. It was Richmond, Glascock, and Jefferson County and I first served the first term in the Senate from Richmond County. After two years in the Senate from Richmond County, Jefferson County allowed me to serve and for the Jefferson County term so I served a second term. The third term that I served in the Senate was for Glascock County. They allowed me to serve as their Senator. I was the only Senator and have been the only Senator in the history of the state that served in the Senate for three different counties representing those counties. If I had not done that I would not have been Governor today. But as a result of that I was Vandiver's Floor Leader in my first term in the Senate. I later became the President Pro Tempe of the Senate. That's when I decided before I was having to practice law and serve in the Senate at the same time so I was going to the political arena when I had to in Atlanta and I was coming home on the weekend and trying to cram in a weeks law practice and I decided that I either had to get in or get out of this political thing because it was taking too much time to try to squeeze in both ventures. So I decided well I think I'll run for Lieutenant Governor. The county unit system was in full bloom. Segregation was still the law of the land. And I decided to run for Lieutenant Governor. Anyway, Ernie Vandiver--Peter Zack Geer had a closer relationship with Vandiver than I did and he was going to run for the same office that I thought I would run for. So I started campaigning for Lieutenant Governor and going around the state and visiting the various counties. And I got to Dublin, Georgia one day and the head of the newspaper down there was a gentleman by the name of Champion and he said, \"Have you heard the news today?\" And I said, \"No, what's the news today?\" He said, \"There's a former policeman in Atlanta who's got a law degree from a night school named Carl F. Sanders. He has announced that he's going to enter the race for Lieutenant Governor.\" Well I knew what had happened. I mean, I knew that Peter Zack Geer and some of his friends had gotten this individual to offer for Lieutenant Governor. That would leave me in the position of having people to go to the poles and decide whether they wanted to vote for Carl E. or Carl F. and that would have been impossible. So I said to Mr. Champion, \"Well, you know, if that's the way they going to play the game I'll just run for governor.\" And that's when I got in the governor's race. Believe it or not it was as a result of that particular incident. At that time when I went back to Atlanta to my office I had phone calls and I had people coming in saying, \"Oh, don't do that. You're making a mistake. We've got the county locked up for you for Lieutenant Governor. We can't carry it for Governor. Don't make that change.\" And I said, \"It's too late. I've decided to make the change.\" So I got in the Governor's race. The county unit system was still in full force and effect. I didn't have any wonderful political machine. I was a bright young man on the white horse but I had a long way to go to get to the Governor's office. But I had made up my mind that I either had to get into the political arena full time and serve the people of Georgia or go back to Augusta and practice law and be satisfied with that.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  That was a very bold move going from Lieutenant Governor-- \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well it was a crazy move when I think about it in retrospect because I had no campaign funds of any consequence. I knew that I had friends in my home town that would help raise money but I really didn't have--I was not a Talmadge, member of the Talmadge dynasty. I was not a member of the Russell family. I was from Augusta, which was one of the metropolitan areas in the state. The county unit [End Side 1, Start Side 2] was willing to work hard so I thought, you know, everything else being equal it's just another opportunity to exceed and I got in the race. \r\n  \r\nJUSTICE:  In all fairness, you had made quite a name for yourself in the Legislature, hadn't you?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well I had and I had gone out on the legislative tour as when I was President Pro Tempe of the Senate the year before I announced and at that time the big question was \"What are we going to do about the public schools in Georgia?\" The Supreme Court Brown v Board of Education had already been decided. No longer were we supposed to have segregated schools but the Separate but Equal doctrine that the Supreme Court for so many years used to keep segregation in the country had been done away with. I realized, thinking about my own life and thinking about the lives of other people, that you could not have a state with nothing but private schools for the people who could afford them and have public schools, if any public schools at all they would be sub par. So I took the position that if I was elected to any public office in this state we were not going to close the public schools. Frank Twitty who was the member of the House that was on the tour with me initially took the position that we had to close the public schools and we had to build private schools and we had to succeed from the Union or whatever we had to do. But by the time we got through traveling around the state and speaking three times a day in various cities and counties, he finally came to the conclusion that I was right and he was wrong and we both wound up advocating that the public schools of this state would stay open no matter what. Now that translated into the situation with Governor Vandiver who was confronted with the problem of whether he was going to allow the two African American students Hamilton Holmes and-- \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Charlayne Hunter. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Charlayne Hunter was going to allow them to enter the University of Georgia. He called fifty some-odd leaders, legislative leaders, business leaders, political leaders, out to the mansion one night and said, \"I've got to make a decision about closing the University of Georgia and I want to know how ya'll feel about it.\" He went around the room and took the statement from all fifty people. Forty-eight out of the fifty said close the University of Georgia, Frank Twitty and I said, \"Do not close the University of Georgia. You can't do that. We can't wind up with a generation of illiterates in this state.\" Vandiver took our advice and kept the University of Georgia open but it was that close. It was only two of us out of the fifty people that he called in to give him advice and counsel that were willing to stand up and say, \"Let's keep the schools open.\" \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Why do you think he listened to the two of you over everyone else? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I think inherently, I think, he felt like we felt that you couldn't have these private schools. But he had campaigned and gotten Roy Harris being one of the supporters when he was elected Governor had gotten him and a few other people to make this wonderful speech about \"No Not One\" not ever one will we ever admit to the public schools of Georgia. And I think he was confronted politically with that in mind and he knew that he would be going against what he had said in a political campaign so he had a lot of reservations. But basically and fundamentally, he was a good man, is a good man and I think he understood that education is a centerpiece of anybody's life and that we couldn't have private schools on the one hand for  white students and public schools, if we had any public schools at all, on the other hand for black students. So I think he took our advice. Twitty was well known in South Georgia from Camilla and I was from Augusta and I think he believed that we had analyzed the situation properly and he followed our recommendation.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Education had been high on your agenda early on in your political career. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  That's because I had to work for it. That's because if I hadn't had to work for it I wouldn't have gotten where I'd been in life and I realized early on in life that the only free people that I know anything about are people who've had the benefit of an education. When you're educated you're free to make choices; you're free to analyze situations. When you're uneducated you're blocked; you're not free to do very much of anything and you're imprisoned in your own life because of a lack of education.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  In fact you helped get Augusta College established, didn't you? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  That's right. Augusta College started out as--they had a junior college attached to Richmond Academy, a local junior college. And it, to some of the faculty members there, used to also teach in the high school. When I was in the legislature property that was formerly known as the United States Arsenal Property up on Walton Way in Augusta, beautiful track of land of fifty something acres with buildings on it had been declared surplus. I went to work with the local people there to get that land transferred to the local board of education to move the junior college from the Richmond Academy building up to the arsenal property. I also went to work when I was in the legislature to get that two year junior college into the university system to become a part of the University of Georgia system. I was able to do that. When I was elected governor I made it along with three or four other junior colleges into a four year community college and created another ten or twelve junior colleges throughout the state. When I was in the Senate and serving in the Senate I went to California. I studied the community college system in California. Out there you could go to school free of charge in any community college that you wanted to enter. And I came back and realized that we couldn't educate everybody at the University of Georgia in Athens or Georgia Tech in Atlanta. And so I came up with the idea that we needed to create a series of junior colleges, community colleges where kids could stay at home, could go the first two years and then back in that day and time transfer to a four year college if they wanted to. Many of those junior colleges today are senior colleges and of course that program turned out to be a wonderful educational program for the state of Georgia. At the same time we created these junior colleges. We created these vocational-technical schools which are a different type of educational process where kids could learn a trade, learn how to operate machinery and if they wanted to if they were not going for an academic degree in the junior college or the community college they could go back and forth between the vocational-technical school and the liberal arts junior college or senior college. It was a wonderful educational program. For instance, in Augusta a kid can go to high school, go to college, go to medical school, and get a medical degree without ever leaving home. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Another issue at the top of your agenda early on in was honesty and efficiency in government.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  That's right. I was on the Honesty and Efficiency Committee that was set up when Marvin Griffin was governor and Ernie Vandiver was lieutenant governor and I was a member of the Senate. And I saw first-hand what could happen when people decided to become corrupt and use the resources of the government and the offices that they served in for corrupt purposes. So I realized that you couldn't serve in government and if--unless you were going to be totally honest and if you couldn't serve in government and be partially honest you had to be absolutely honest and you had to make sure that whatever decision you made was made with an honest intention and an honest purpose and not to feather somebody else's nest or to try to do something that would benefit you personally for something that you should not be entitled to. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  And that was one of the focal points of your platform for governor, wasn't it? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  That was a big focal point for my platform for governor because the Griffin  administration when Governor Griffin was in there had a very corrupt administration. Readers Digest had written an article, \"Never Have So Few Robbed So Much from So Many,\" and they had rural roads that were built with a little grease on the road and that was about it. They bought gasoline and saving up machines that came off of boats and tried to put them on trucks. They favored some of their cronies and in all kinds of purchasing of equipment and so forth and that was one of the big issues in my campaign along with the racial issue.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  So, how were you able to garner all the support that you did in your campaign for governor, enough to win? How were you able to win that race? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I think--well another thing happened too in the meantime. After I got in the race, after we were campaigning the county unit system went out of the window. So this was the first time that we had the popular vote. I just outworked the rest of the people; I outworked Marvin Griffin. I went from morning till noon till night every day. I campaigned in every county in the state. I was supported by many of the people that I had gone to college with. I was able to get the support of Mills B. Lane who headed up the CNS Bank in Atlanta at the time. He had initially was going to support Garland Byrd who was the Lieutenant Governor who had a heart attack and dropped out of the race. He helped me raise financial funds. I later, when Byrd dropped out of the race who Ernie Vandiver was supporting up until then, I got the support of some of the Vandiver people such as Jim Gillis Senior and some of them. But basically and fundamentally I just outworked the Griffin crowd. I knew that if I went every day as hard as I could go to as many places as I could go that they were going to call him up eventually and say, \"You better come down here to this county and talk to some of these people. This young man has been in here shaking hands and garnering votes and if you don't come down here we don't know what's going to happen.\" He had the politicians; I had the people in that race. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  When you won that election you were part of a whole generation of young politicians across this country.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Generation of young politicians--young men and women who had returned from World War II who now wanted to do something that they had seen the rest of the world, they had fought for the freedom of the world and they wanted now to make some of these changes in their local communities and they were active and they went to the polls and voted when before the only people that generally went to the polls and voted were the professional politicians who had a hardcore supporters most of whom they gave jobs to after they got elected.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  And you also were part of that generation that had a special connection to John Kennedy.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, John Kennedy was a young, handsome, energetic senator who decided to run for President after he had tried to get the nomination several years before. He was a returning World War II veteran. And of course he had a lot of charisma and a lot of people like myself and others of that age and that ilk liked what we saw in John Kennedy and supported him. And he carried Georgia percentage wise with the greatest percentage of any state in the union. But he, of course, his career was eclipsed by the assassination. I knew him well. He did me some great favors; one great favor he did for me was something that I will never forget. After I was elected in August of the primary of 1963 before I took--'62--before I took office in January of '63 Fort Gordon, which was located in Augusta, Richmond County--was the biggest payroll in my county. And the United States Defense Department announced that they were going to close Fort Gordon. Well, I said, \"This can't happen.\" I'd just been elected governor. I can't afford to let the biggest payroll in my home town get shut down. So I went to see Senator Russell who was the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate and who was a senior Senator from Georgia. And I said, \"Senator Russell I've just been elected. I can't allow Fort Gordon to be closed. Can you help me try to keep them from closing Fort Gordon?\" Senator Russell said, \"I'm sorry but I've already signed off on the base closings in Georgia. There's nothing I can do about it now.\" I said, \"Thank you very much.\" I decided to go see President John F. Kennedy. I went to see John F. Kennedy in the Oval office at the White  House, explained to him my predicament, told him that I was elected and they were about to shut the fort down, could he help me? He said, \"Let me see what I can do.\" I went back to Atlanta. A week later he called me up and said, \"The order to close Fort Gordon has been rescinded.\" I said, \"Can I make that announcement publicly?\" He said, \"Yes.\" I made the announcement; it made Senator Russell mad because I had gone to the President. But John Kennedy was the one who kept Fort Gordon from being moved from Fort Gordon, Georgia to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. Later, several years later, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey was moved to Fort Gordon, Georgia and it became the largest military telecommunications center in the world. But had it not been for John F. Kennedy more than forty years ago Fort Gordon, Georgia would have been shut down and would have been moved to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  But you actually had a fairly close relationship with him. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Oh I had a close relationship with him. I did. I visited him many times before he was assassinated. I had a very close--very close relationship with Lyndon Johnson who later became president. I campaigned for the democratic ticket in 1964 when I was the only state-wide official that was willing to campaign for the ticket. I knew at the time that it was not the popular thing to do but I had been elected by the Democratic Party. I was head of the Democratic Party. Senator Russell went to Spain and spent the summer inspecting military bases, Senator Talmadge went underground and didn't surface for the campaign so I was about the only state-wide candidate when they would come to Georgia that would stand up and appear on a platform and try to help him get elected. Goldwater carried Georgia and there wasn't much I could do about it but that still--I knew that it was my responsibility. I had been elected head of the party, I had been elected by the Democratic Party as governor and I felt like it was my responsibility to continue to lead the party and not abandon the party as a lot of the other public officials did.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Is it true that John Kennedy had considered putting you on the ticket in '64? \r\n  \r\nSANDERS:  Well I've heard that rumor, I've heard that story. There was always a very bad relationship between Bobby Kennedy who was John Kennedy's brother and who was of course the Attorney General--he and Lyndon Johnson didn't get along at all. And I think Bobby Kennedy would float names every day about who they were going to put into place of Lyndon Johnson when Jack Kennedy ran for reelection. And my name might have been put in there along with others but I never had any serious consideration to my knowledge about being on the ticket. Nobody had come to be and said, \"Now we going to put you on the ticket.\" I think they were--Bobby was using that for leverage to keep Lyndon Johnson in line for the programs that he and his brother were advocating. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  But did that ever create any tensions between you and Lyndon Johnson? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  None whatsoever. In fact, I sat in the family's box when he made his inaugural speech to the Congress. I was the only other outside member of the family with one other exception and that was Mad Dick Daily from Chicago. He and I were the two members--non-members of the family sat there. I hunted at the Johnson ranch. Johnson was good to the state of Georgia. Johnson, later part of our state qualified for the Appalachian Region and we got hundreds and millions of dollars for hospitals, roads, schools, and all sorts of things through the Johnson administration. Dora, I think it was that hit--the hurricane hit the Georgia coast and just about tore up the whole seaboard the whole Georgia coast. He allowed me to put huge amounts of rock along the coastal lines of Georgia. Johnson's administration paid for every dime of it, didn't cost the state a nickel, but it saved the Georgia coast. The people of Georgia benefited from Lyndon Johnson's administration in many ways.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Your relationship with Johnson, did that affect your relationship with Dick Russell?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, Dick Russell and Johnson were very close when Johnson was a majority leader of the Senate. And based on some tapes that I've been hearing recently they still, even after Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act, Dick Russell apparently still had a cordial relation with Lyndon Johnson but I think the relationship that they used to have before Johnson advocated the Civil Rights Bill had tempered their relationship to a great degree. But it did not affect my relationship with Johnson and it didn't affect--I didn't have a close relationship with Dick Russell. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You didn't? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, no, and when I was in the Senate another experience that I had, when I was in the state Senate the first time they made me head of the Veterans Affairs Senate Committee which was a do-nothing, know-nothing committee. But anything it had to do with the state military was involved with it. And we lost an Air National Guard pilot flying an old F-84 Dog they called them back them and he died. He crashed. And I went to Washington to see Congressman Carl Vinson who was the head of the Armed Services Committee in the House and who absolutely built the United States Navy as part of his duty as a chairman of the Armed Services Committee and told him about the loss of the pilot. And he asked me what I wanted and I said, \"I want fifty new aircraft for the Air National Guard of Georgia.\" And he said, \"What kind of aircraft are you talking about?\" And the hottest aircraft in the world at that time was the F-100 so I said, \"I want fifty F-100s\" and he laughed and said, \"What'd you say Senator?\" And I said, \"I want fifty F-100s.\" He laughed and he said, \"Well, we'll see what we can do.\" I knew and he knew that I was not going to get fifty F-100s but a few weeks later I got a call from the head of the National Guard Bureau in Washington who I could tell was mad as a wet hen because I'd gone to Congressman Vinson and told me that they were going to send us new aircraft, F-86s, which were much more modern than the F-84s. They were not F-100's but they were going to send those aircraft. Now this was in the 50's. This was still when the schools were segregated in Georgia and everything else was segregated. So, sometime later I got a notification that they were going to deliver the first F-86 aircraft out at Dobbins Air Base in Marietta and so we had a big event. We had bands and we had people and we--here comes this F-86 aircraft in and he rolls--it's a beautiful plane and I thought what a wonderful plane this is our first aircraft. And the band's playing and all that and the airplane taxies up to the ramp. The pilot pulls back the canopy and out steps the blackest pilot you've ever seen and I knew that Air National Guard general said, \"I'm going to deliver the aircraft but I'm going to deliver it with a pilot that they wish we hadn't delivered it with.\" It was funny. And of course he was a good pilot and we were glad to get the airplane. And, of course, subsequently to that point all the racial discord and so forth began to heat up and it was in full bloom when I became governor. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Back to Dick Russell, you considered running against him in '66, is that right? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  '66, I thought about it. But Senator Russell was suffering from emphysema and I didn't know whether he was going to offer for re-election. He had come to the legislature to make a speech and he used to have to carry one of these oxygen bottles around with him. So I didn't know whether he was going to offer for reelection or not. I thought about it, but he was determined to continue his service to the people of the state and to the nation and I finally decided that that was not what I wanted to do for two reasons. One was, it would have been a very difficult race and the second reason was my wife was not interested in me going to Washington. My children were teenagers, that was '66, that was when the hippie thing had started and I had seen too many families that had left their home states and moved to Washington for a year and then the family would move back and the senator would stay up there, the congressman would stay up there and they'd wind up in the divorce courts or the kids would get in trouble. So I decided that rather than do that I had an opportunity to build a law firm and I decided that I would build a law firm and if I wanted to get back into public life that I'd run for governor again four years later because I had to leave the office for four years under the Constitution at that time.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  When you went into the governor's office--let's talk about goals versus achievements. What did you hope to accomplish when you became governor? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I hoped to do as much as I could possibly do within four years that anybody had ever thought about doing. And I hoped to reform the educational system of the state, particularly the higher education system. I hoped to bring more industry in than anybody had ever brought in before. I hoped to elevate the teacher's salaries of the state. I hoped to build airports. I campaigned in a little 250 horsepower Piper Comanche aircraft. The first time anybody in Georgia, a politician had ever campaigned in an aircraft. And we only had thirty paved airports in Georgia; most of them were auxiliary fields from World War II. When I left office we had 100 paved airports in Georgia. We built seventy paved airports. All I ever asked the county commissioner to do was furnish me a strip of land 3,000-3,500 feet long. I'd put up half the money, the state would the federal government would put up half the money and we'd build an airstrip. And so we had the number one airport development in the country for four straight years. That brought more industry into this state than you can ever imagine because people before were not thinking about flying to Atlanta and then driving two hours to look at an industrial site in a rural county but if they could fly to that rural county, land on that 3,000 foot strip of airport they would go out and look at the industrial sites in those counties and many of them built plants that never would have been built in Georgia.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Was there anything that you had hoped to accomplish that you didn't achieve? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, I accomplished much more than I ever thought I was able to accomplish. I had one disappointment but it was not because I didn't accomplish what I sought out to do. And that was I decided to rewrite the Georgia Constitution which it had not been rewritten in years and there was no place in the state where you could sit down and actually read the Georgia Constitution because it had been amended thousands of times. So I had a special session to rewrite the Constitution and remodel the election laws. And that was in 1965 or 1966 in the summer and of course I rewrote the Constitution which was one of the toughest jobs that you could ever have and I rewrote the election laws. Immediately somebody filed a petition saying the legislature was mal-apportioned. They went to the federal court and the federal court to this day, I'll never understand, it was a fifth circuit court of appeals, they decided that both of those pieces of legislation had been done in the same session that it was all right to rewrite the election laws that they were not going to declare them invalid because of mal-apportionment but it was not permissible to rewrite the Constitution and they were going to declare that unconstitutional because it was mal-apportioned. I appealed that decision from the court but by the time that the Supreme Court of the United States voted upon it which was too late to get it on the general ballot in '66 I was not able to get it on the ballot. That was a big disappointment because that was a big piece of work that I had done and I was unable to get it finished.  \r\n \r\n[End Tape 1] \r\n \r\n[Begin Tape 2] \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You were succeeded by Lester Maddox as Governor and the 1966 gubernatorial race was contentious and controversial.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Very much so. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  And, with the Republican Party running Bo Callaway as their nominee and with Ellis Arnall and Lester Maddox. James Cook, your biographer, writes that you had some very strong reservations about that election. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, what happened in that election, the truth of the matter is Bo Callaway, if he had played his political cards correctly, would have been elected Governor. But Bo Callaway ran as a republican candidate and of course Ellis Arnall--I don't know Ellis Arnall and Lester Maddox--but I think Ernie Vandiver at one time was in that race. There were several candidates that were trying to run for governor. Maddox wound up in a run off with Ellis Arnall in the democratic primary. Bo Callaway had no opposition in the republican primary and he was supported by a lot of the business leaders in Atlanta, some of whom are my good friends. And Ellis Arnall had a campaign deficit after the run off. My recollection is something like $50,000 that he still owed for his campaign and his run off against Maddox. Some of Ellis Arnall's friends in Atlanta went to see Bo Callaway and said, \"If you'll help us, when you get elected Governor pay off Governor Arnall's campaign deficit we'll throw our support to you.\" For reasons that I never understood, Bo Callaway declined that opportunity. They said, \"Well if you're not going to help us get rid of Ellis Arnall's campaign deficit if you get elected Governor, we're going to run Ellis Arnall again as a write-in candidate in the November general election.\" That's what they did. Ellis Arnall polled enough write-in votes to keep either Bo Callaway or Lester Maddox from getting more than fifty percent of the vote as required by the Constitution and the election laws. Under those circumstances at that time the Constitution said in that event the election of the governor will then go to the House of Representatives and the governor will be elected by the members of the House of Representatives each of whom will have one vote. The democrats were not very happy about Maddox but they didn't want Callaway as a republican governor. So the democrats sort of held their nose and voted for Maddox and that's how he got appointed Governor and Callaway got defeated for Governor in that particular situation. Subsequently, the Constitution was changed and now today if you have that type of a situation you have a special election, it does not go into the House of Representatives.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Tell me about Maddox's stint as Governor. How would you rate it? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, Maddox did pretty well. He did better than I thought he was going to do for one reason:  all these people that had been called Maddox supporters that had been running around with Ax handles and egging him on in his campaign he realized that they were not  qualified to hold the high positions of office in the state government. So he kind of took the position that he was not going to change many people that were already running departments in the state government. In fact, I made up the budget for the two years, his first two years, and he didn't change a bit of that budget so I really had six years of budget to submission for the state. But his position was that he was going over and take the Governor's office and protect the public from those scalawags that he might find in government but he was not going over there and try to change all the offices and change the people. So he left most of the people that had worked with me in office and he didn't meddle too much with--the only thing that he did that I regret was that he allowed the General Assembly of Georgia to take over much of the executive power that the governor previously had. And they created their own budget and they became independent and ever since Lester Maddox, the governor of Georgia has been a lot less politically forceful than he was when I was in office. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You think if Maddox had of been a stronger executive that that would not have happened? \r\n \r\nSANDERS: I think if he had ever held public office, I think if he had ever been in the General Assembly like I had been before I was elected governor, I think even if he had been mayor of Atlanta or something I think he would have been much stronger in controlling the executive power and not allowing it to be taken over by the legislature.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  You think that that--that a strong executive could have survived much longer in Georgia? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah I do. I think that's the best form of government. I think the governor goes out and lays his program out in front of all the people of the state. The people vote on that program. And I think the governor ought to have the responsibility of implementing the program that the people had voted on rather than the way it is now. Legislators, they don't represent the entire state; they represent their own county or district. And they now put programs though the legislature that the governor may not want or other people may not necessarily have ever approved. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Well, after Maddox's term as governor you decided to run again.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Talk about that campaign. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, that was not a very nice campaign. I stayed in Atlanta and built a law firm. I probably should have gone back to Augusta and returned to my law firm in Augusta rather than doing what I did, but I had an opportunity to represent companies and clients in the Atlanta area that were national and they were much more interested in good legal representation than I would have had if I had gone back to Augusta. If I'd just wanted to be a politician the rest of my life I probably should have gone back to Augusta. So I didn't do that. Jimmy Carter, who had been in the Senate when I was governor, had spent--and who had been in the race in '66 with Maddox and that group and who had failed in that race, spent four years traveling around the state, planting seeds to run for governor in 1970. I thought, just like many people think, that the people of the state or the people of the country have a memory of the things that you did when you were in public life and the accomplishments that you were able to achieve for their benefit and that I had such a good administration, no scandals, a lot of progress, a lot of opportunity for people that they never had before, that to run in 1970 that would give me a good edge to be reelected. Jimmy Carter, much to my chagrin, took the position that he was going to play the racial card. He took the position that he was supporter of George Wallace, which I was not, and that I had not allowed George Wallace to come over and take over the Georgia legislature that he would if he was elected. I happened to--while I was in Atlanta--happened to own a part of the Hawks, Atlanta Hawks basketball team. They took pictures when they won the Western Division in the locker room with me and some of the ball players pouring champagne over my head and these were African American ball players. Carter's campaign took those pictures in all spread them all over South Georgia, all over the rural counties of the state and took the position that I was a rich Atlanta lawyer and that I was a--one who favored integration. That he was a southern peanut farmer in south Georgia who supported segregation and who was a big friend of George Wallace and I got positioned as an Atlanta lawyer who supported people regardless of their race and he put himself in the position as a south Georgia farmer who supported the white race and not the black race and that's how that campaign was run. It was a mean, dirty, campaign. But it was politics. And the truth of the matter is everything is fair in love and war in politics. Now the irony of it, if you go to the Carter library today and ask to see the gubernatorial papers of the 1970 campaign they will tell you that those papers are still being processed some thirty, forty years later because immediately when Jimmy was elected governor at his inaugural speech he said, \"Forget about all this racial stuff that I've been running on and all this stuff that I've been telling you to vote for me on. That's not me. The greatest friend that I've got in America today is Martin Luther King Jr. and I believe in integration and I don't believe in segregation and I ran that kind of race to get elected and now I'm going to put that aside and operate in a completely different manner.\" \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  He used race and class, didn't he?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Because he called you \"Cufflinks Carl.\" \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Oh yeah, well course he claimed that I was wealthy and finally we disclosed our net worth and he was worth more money than I was. But for the time being I was the rich lawyer living in Atlanta, and the truth of the matter is too nobody up until that point running for state-wide office had ever lived in Atlanta as their permanent home. All the officer holders that ran the state government lived outside of Atlanta in some other section of the state. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  So how would you rate Carter's stint as governor? \r\n \r\nSANDERS: Carter didn't have a very good gubernatorial experience but I've gotta say this in his behalf: one of the reasons he didn't have such a good four years was Lester Maddox was his lieutenant governor. And Lester Maddox and Jimmy Carter disliked each other tremendously and they never got along and everyday they'd have a fight over what kind of legislation that they were going to try to entertain. And Maddox would be in one corner and Carter would be in another. And that went on for four years. So he didn't have too much of an opportunity to do too many things without having to run through Maddox and try to stomp him down in order to get something passed.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  What was the source of tension between them?  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, Maddox believed Carter was hypocritical and dishonest when he ran as a segregationist and then turned into an integrationist and Maddox says you know, \"I'm a segregationist, have been, always will be,\" and Carter has changed his stripes and his colors and I dislike the man because he hadn't been honest. You know Maddox all--for all of his faults one of the things that he believed in and one of the things that I think he tried to do was he tried to be honest no matter how different or how un-political some of his views might have been. He at least said, \"This is my honest viewpoint. I'm not going to change on you if you elect me and I'm not going to be something that I said I was not before I ran for the office.\"  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  How do you explain Carter's winning the presidency in '76? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  He just absolutely outworked the rest of the candidates who thought they were going to sit back and somebody was going to nominate them and put them into the democratic nomination. Carter, I'll say this for he and his family and his friends, he started--that's another reason he didn't have as much opportunity to do as many things as governor as perhaps he would have been if he had not been already looking to run for President. The last couple of years of his office--of his tenure as governor he was out in the country campaigning for President. And of course a lot of these people in Washington who sit in the congress thought they could sit in the Senate and the House and never have to go out into the rural areas or the other parts of the country but they were just going to go to the convention and they'd get nominated. Carter just outworked them. He out politicked them and he got the nomination of some of these states that they never dreamed he'd get and that's how he got the nomination for President. The people never thought he had a chance but he just absolutely outworked and out-campaigned the rest of the people who thought they were going to be President. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  And it doesn't seem that the press seized on this characteristic of Carter from switching from one side to the other. \r\n \r\n SANDERS:  Well, they didn't do that in the Presidential race. He had already spent his four years of redeeming his self as a racial George Wallace supporter when he ran in '70 and the press didn't hop on him for that when he ran for President. He--what they did do they gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was an outsider and all these other people who thought they were going to run for President at that time were insiders, inside the beltway in Washington. And Washington was in such a mess that it was time for an outsider to come in and clean it up. And that's what Carter ran on primarily as, \"I'm not one of the insiders in Washington but I'm an outsider. I'm a governor and if you'll elect me I'll go to Washington and I'll straighten out this Washington mess that's created by all these people who spend all their time inside the beltway.\"  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Do you think he was a better President than he was a governor? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, I think he had a tough time being President. I think he tried to be a good President but I think he got caught up in inflation and I think he got caught up in the Iran hostage situation. I  think he had a lot of problems that were not necessarily his making but you know, interest rates during the Carter's Administration for the President got up to be twenty percent. People didn't have jobs. People couldn't afford to borrow money. The hostages got taken over in Iran. He just had a huge--you know in politics, let me tell you something:  you can be smart but you've got to have a little luck along with it. The economy went bad. He couldn't turn the economy around. The hostage situation went bad. They even waited to release the hostages until the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as a President. They could have released them earlier; they didn't do that. And Jimmy went up to Washington, I think, with the idea that he would straighten out a lot of the old pros that had been around. And he had a terrible relationship with Tipper O'Neal, Speaker of the House and some of the other old Washington pros. He liked to micromanage too much. In my opinion, if he had delegated more authority to more people he probably would have had a better administration. I think he's learned that since he left the presidency and I think he has done some rather remarkable things following his tenure as President. He certainly has continued to campaign and work harder as an ex-President than any ex-President I've ever known. Some people, some of these sitting Presidents have sort of resented maybe some of his meddling, as they would put it. But he's been out here trying to relieve problems in the world. Most ex-Presidents go back to their ranch, they go back to their home and don't do that. He's taken a different approach and I think as a result he'd been elevated; history has elevated him higher as an ex-President than they give him credit for being a president or a governor.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  After 1970 you considered one more office in 1972; briefly you considered a run for the Senate, didn't you? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, that's when Russell died. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Right. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  And I thought about it again. But I had a good law firm being built at that time and I was involved with my family as I always am and I decided again that I didn't want to go to Washington. I had talked to too many governors that I had served with when I was governor, some of which went to Washington. And they told me, and just like most people know, that you got to sit in the Senate for about twelve years and vegetate before you get enough influence and power to do anything. And I was helping build a bank and I had some other business ventures that I was involved in. So Sam Nunn who had never run for state-wide office and who was a member of the General Assembly who was Carl Vinson's nephew decided he was going to run and I like Sam Nunn, knew him, and I took Norman Underwood who was one of my law partners and asked him to go over and help Sam Nunn run his campaign which he did. And Sam Nunn got elected to the United States Senate and served twenty-four years in the Senate. Came out with his reputation in tact. And I never regretted making the decision in '72 that I thought about going to the Senate again because most of the people, as I said earlier that I knew that had served as governor and when you serve as governor and you're Chief Executive and you can run the state (it's like running a big business) that's different than being one of one hundred in the Senate where you sit there and hope you can get your name on a bill. And in the mean time you just almost vegetating for years and years and that's not my demeanor. That's not my personality and they told me, most of them said after they served one term they wanted to go back home. Herman Talmadge, when he left the governor's office and served in the Senate for a number of years, every six years when--every four years when the governor's race would come up you'd always see where Talmadge is thinking about coming home and running for governor again. It's much more fun to be governor than it is to be a United States Senator.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Well why didn't you consider running for governor again? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Why didn't I consider running for governor again? \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Right. \r\n \r\nSANDERS: Well, I felt like that I had accomplished a great deal as governor the first time. I felt like that the people had decided that they were going to elect somebody else to be governor and I still at that time when I ran in 1970 I still had in my mind a lot of programs that I still wanted to do more about. But by the time that I got an opportunity to run again I had gotten so immersed in my own personal affairs and my family's affairs and building a bank and building a law firm and getting involved in some real estate transactions that I felt like, \"Well, I gave the people the best I could give them for the four years that I was governor. Now the people selected somebody else, rather, when I ran for reelection.\" I'm going to look after my family and look after my personal business and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Because otherwise I might, I don't know what'd I be doing today but I wouldn't be where I am today with my family, with my business, with my law firm, none of those personal accomplishments I don't think would have taken place if I had continued just to devote my time to the political arena.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  So you weren't really dissuaded by the bitterness of the '70 campaign? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  No, you know, I--politics--I've been there and done that. And I've got a good record and I put sixty cents out of every dollar into education. Nobody's ever done that before or since. And I accomplished all those things and I thought too, you know, if I go back ten years later I may not be able--the Maddox thing the legislature had taken over the power, I wouldn't be able to accomplish the things that I accomplished when I was governor and instead of having the record that I have I'd probably have a good record back then and a mediocre record later. So I said, \"Look, the people decided that they wanted somebody else to carry the flag in 1970. I'm going to look after my personal business and be happy,\" and I've got no regrets and I got no ill will toward anybody.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  What would you, if you had to put it in a sentence or two, what is your political legacy? What have you left to--? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  The most progressive administration in the history of Georgia in all aspect of the operation of the state government. If you look at every department in the state government and you look at the accomplishments that were made and the programs that I inaugurated, nobody has come close even when the governor's served eight years have come close to putting into full force and effect what I put into full force and effect in all the areas of government and done so without scandal and done so--I left $140 million in surplus funds when I left the office. Nobody had ever done that before.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  In the end, do you think that you were more affected by Georgia politics or that you affected Georgia politics more? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I think I affected Georgia politics more in that a lot of things back before my term as governor was sort of accepted politicians, you know, could do things personal benefits and things that politicians today wouldn't dare do but they could get away with it. Gene Talmadge, when he ran for governor, they said, \"You stole so many bales of cotton when you were the commissioner of Agriculture.\" And he said, \"Yeah I stole them but I stole them for you.\" And the people said fine and voted for him. Well you couldn't get away with any kind of statement like that today and I think that I was at the crossroad at the time in history when the political arena in this state changed. I think, too, because of that particular time with all the Civil Rights and all the changes that took place I took the high road. And some of the other southern states around us, Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, they took a different road. But because I took the high road and I accepted the law of the land as being, we being a government of laws and not a government of men, I think Georgia came into the limelight--at that particular time when I was elected governor Birmingham, Alabama was better situated economically to take the leadership of the south in Atlanta, Georgia but because we took the high road when I was elected governor and accepted the law of the land and eliminated all these racial barriers and things. I opened up the National Guard, I opened up the State Patrol, Atlanta and Georgia took the leadership in the south. People living in other parts of America moved to Georgia that never would have moved here before. Educators came into our schools that never would have moved into Georgia and taken jobs in our schools. We captured the leadership of the south and that's what we have today and I think I happened to be at the right time with the right attitude about what we needed to do in the state in order to do that. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Many of the issues that were on the table in the 60's such as the national and state economy, civil rights, international relations, are still at the forefront of controversy today.  \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Yeah, the racial business is still very much involved. People don't call it racial but it is. It's still involved. And the economic situation is of course very much involved today. The foreign relations is a tremendous problem. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Do you think we've made progress since the 60's? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  I think we, in the south and particularly in Georgia, I think Georgia has made a lot of progress but I'm not so sure many other places have made as much progress as we have. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Why do you think Georgia has--? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Because I think we had more enlightened leadership at the critical time than other parts of the country had. And I think enlightened leadership brought on more enlightened leadership later on and it's just like anything else, you get into the habit of enlightened people seeking public office. They give you a better form of government and a better economic opportunity than if you put people in there who are not enlightened, who still want to live in the past and who still want to fight the Civil War over again and all that sort of stuff, who still want to keep this country isolated from the rest of the world. I think we, fortunately, went down a more enlightened road in this state than most any other state that I know anything about. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  What do you think is the most critical issue facing us today, politically speaking? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Politically I think the most critical issue is that we are not looked upon today in the world in the same manner that we used to be looked upon. We used to be admired and respected all over the world for our political beliefs, our economic beliefs and everything else. I think we are, today, more isolated economically and more isolated foreign relation wise than we've ever been. I used to take my grandchildren, when I was out of office, at least on a trip once a year somewhere else in some other part of the world and did that so that they would have a benefit later on in life to being better educated about the world. Today I wouldn't do that because I think there are too many places in the world today if you come in there and say you're an American instead of them saying, \"We're glad to see you. We respect you so much and your country,\" they say, \"Well, you're an American. We don't like you. We want to harm you,\" and we've got a long ways to go to regain the credibility that we are a nation of--free nation who believes in freedom for all people and we've got to do something about it or I don't know where we're headed.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  How do we go about fixing that? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  I think we're going to have to do what we said earlier and that is we're going to have to elect more enlightened leadership in this country in order to do that.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Philosophically speaking, and the bigger picture, what are the marks of a good governor? What are the benchmarks that make a good governor? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well, I think he first has to understand the government and he has to understand that he's representing all of the people of the state. And secondly I think he's got to lay out in front of him and in front of the people that he's serving a program that they understand. And then thirdly I think he's got to be willing to pay the price to whatever it takes to work as hard as he needs to work to implement the program that he has run on. And most people sometimes get the impression, I think, that they can run on some issues and then once they get elected they can discard those issues and forget about them. I think a good governor has got to stick to his guns and stick to his programs and tell people that he's doing exactly what he told them he would do when he ran and asked them to vote for him. And I think if you abandon that process and you say well I may have said that but I lied, I shouldn't have said what I said you never make a good governor. And you gotta be independent enough where you're willing to accept the fact that you're not going to win every battle and you're not going to be able to accomplish everything that you feel like you would have liked to accomplish but you gotta be willing to say, \"If I lose a battle I'll win another one and I'll keep on until I accomplish what I said I would accomplish  when I went in front of the people and said 'Elect me and I'll do what I said I'd do if you elect me.'\" \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Are there any governors since your term in office that have distinguished themselves in meeting these benchmarks that you've laid out? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Oh, I think a lot of them have. It depends on what you mean by distinguishing themselves. I don't know of anybody right off the top of my head that I think has not distinguished themselves in the office. I just think that they haven't had the tools or the power to work with that I had. Now Zell Miller when he was governor did something, when he ran for governor, did something that I probably would not have done. He ran on creating a state lottery and of course I thought that was sort of living in the Bible belt and living in this thing. I didn't think that was a [End Side 1]--Good governor's, in my opinion, some of them have been impeded with reluctant Speaker of the House or reluctant lieutenant governor at times and they just maybe haven't been able to accomplish as many things as they would have liked to accomplished.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  How much effect do you think that the press has on the effectiveness of the governor? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Oh the press has a lot of influence. The press can take a piece of straight bread every day and twist it into a French roll and if they twist it there's not much you can do about it. You can say something and if they twist it the way they want to twist it won't look anything like what you said. So the press has a great deal of influence on anybody's public chair. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Now has that changed since the 1960s? \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  Well I think it's worse now than it was back then. Now they go after your family and they go after--go into your bedrooms and things like that. Back in my day and time they didn't do that. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  The press was fairly kind to you in your day. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  I thought they were very kind to me.  \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Well, thank you for your time and speaking with us today. \r\n \r\nSANDERS:  I enjoyed it. I hope somebody later in history will take the time to listen to it. \r\n \r\nJUSTICE:  Well, thank you very much.  \r\n \r\n[End of Interview] \r\n \r\nBiographical Information \r\nRBRL OHD 009 \r\nCarl Sanders \r\n \r\nb. May 15, 1925 \r\n \r\nOccupation: \r\nU.S. Army Air Force \r\nHammond Kennedy and Sanders Law Firm \r\nGeorgia House of Representatives \r\nGeorgia Senate \r\nTroutman and Sanders LLP Attorneys at Law \r\n \r\nSubject Analysis \r\nRBRL OHD 009 \r\nCarl Sanders \r\no Early political life \r\no Involvement with the YMCA \r\no Youth during the depression \r\no Time in the ROTC \r\no Time in the Army Air Corps \r\no Involvement World War II \r\no Law School \r\no Sander's competitive spirit \r\no Time in the Georgia House of Representatives and the Georgia Senate \r\no 1962 Gubernatorial Race \r\no Sanders role in Segregation \r\no Hunter and Holmes admission to the University of Georgia \r\no Sander's role in the establishment of Augusta College \r\no Honesty and efficacy in politics \r\no The effect of World War II on young politicians \r\no Relationship with John F. Kennedy \r\no Relationship with Lyndon B. Johnson \r\no Relationship with Richard B. Russell \r\no Accomplishments as Governor \r\no Election following Sander's term \r\no Lester Maddox as Governor \r\no 1970 Gubernatorial Race \r\no Jimmy Carter as Governor \r\no Jimmy Carter as President \r\no Sander's Political Legacy \r\no Sander's affect on Georgia politics \r\no Progress in Georgia \r\no America's current position in the world \r\no The affect of the press on the office of governor \r\nAlphabetical Index \r\n \r\n \r\nArnall, Ellis Gibbs, 29, 30 \r\nBarton, Billy, 4 \r\nBroun, Paul C., 9 \r\nBrown v Board of Education, 15 \r\nButler, Charles, 7 \r\nButts, James Wallace (Wally), 12 \r\nCallaway, Bo, 29 \r\nCarter, Jimmy, 33, 35, 49 \r\nCracker Party, 2, 3, 4 \r\nGriffin, Marvin, 19, 20 \r\nHarris, Roy Vincent, 2, 17 \r\nHolmes, Hamilton, 16 \r\nHunter-Gault, Charlayne, 16 \r\nJohnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 23, 24, 25, 49 \r\nKennedy, Bobby, 24 \r\nKennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 2, 21, 23, 24, 48, 49 \r\nMaddox, Lester, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 40, 49 \r\nMiller, Zell, 46 \r\nNunn, Samuel Augustus, 39 \r\nReserve Officers' Training Corps, 8, 49 \r\nRussell, Richard Brevard, 22, 23, 25, 26 \r\nTalmadge, Herman Eugene, 23, 39 \r\nThe University of Georgia, 1, 5, 10, 12, 16, 18, 49 \r\nTwitty, Frank S., 16 \r\nVandiver, Ernest, 14, 19, 20, 30 \r\nVinson, Carl, 25, 39 \r\nWallace, George C., 33, 37 \r\nWatson, Thomas Edward, 2 \r\nYMCA, 3, 5, 49 \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n23 \r\n \r\n "},{"id":"gsu_ggdp_5157","title":"Carl Sanders oral history interviews, 1986 August 5 and 12","collection_id":"gsu_ggdp","collection_title":"Georgia Government Documentation Project","dcterms_contributor":["Cook, James F."],"dcterms_spatial":["United States, 39.76, -98.5"],"dcterms_creator":["Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014"],"dc_date":["1986-08-05","1986-08-12"],"dcterms_description":null,"dc_format":["application/pdf","audio/mpeg"],"dcterms_identifier":null,"dcterms_language":["eng"],"dcterms_publisher":["Georgia State University Library"],"dc_relation":null,"dc_right":["http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/"],"dcterms_is_part_of":["Georgia Government Documentation Project","https://archivesspace.library.gsu.edu/repositories/2/resources/1508"],"dcterms_subject":["Education--Political aspects","Apportionment (Election law)","Segregation","Georgia. General Assembly. House of Representatives","Georgia. General Assembly. Committee on Schools","Georgia. Governor (1963-1967 : Sanders)","University of Georgia","Georgia Bulldogs (Football team)"],"dcterms_title":["Carl Sanders oral history interviews, 1986 August 5 and 12"],"dcterms_type":["Sound","Text"],"dcterms_provenance":["Georgia State University. Special Collections"],"edm_is_shown_by":null,"edm_is_shown_at":["http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ggdp/id/5157"],"dcterms_temporal":["1980/1989"],"dcterms_rights_holder":null,"dcterms_bibliographic_citation":["Sanders, Carl, Interviewed by James F. Cook, 5 \u0026 12 August 1986, P1986-06, Series A. Georgia Governors, Georgia Government Documentation Project, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta."],"dlg_local_right":["This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. In addition, no permission is required from the rights-holder(s) for educational uses. For other uses, you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s)."],"dcterms_medium":["oral histories (literary works)"],"dcterms_extent":["3 hours, 18 minutes, 20 seconds of audio spread over 4 sides of 2 tapes, and a 79 page transcript."],"dlg_subject_personal":["Geer, Peter Zack","Williams, Hosea, 1926-2000","King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968","Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014","Griffin, Marvin, 1907-1982","Talmadge, Eugene, 1884-1946","Bond, Julian, 1940-2015","Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973"],"dcterms_subject_fast":null,"fulltext":null}],"pages":{"current_page":1,"next_page":null,"prev_page":null,"total_pages":1,"limit_value":12,"offset_value":0,"total_count":3,"first_page?":true,"last_page?":true},"facets":[{"name":"type_facet","items":[{"value":"MovingImage","hits":2},{"value":"Sound","hits":1},{"value":"Text","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":16,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"creator_facet","items":[{"value":"Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014","hits":3},{"value":"Justice, George","hits":1},{"value":"Short, Bob, 1932","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"subject_facet","items":[{"value":"Georgia","hits":2},{"value":"Georgia. General Assembly. House of Representatives","hits":2},{"value":"Georgia. General Assembly. Senate","hits":2},{"value":"Governors","hits":2},{"value":"Legislators","hits":2},{"value":"Legislators--Georgia--Interviews","hits":2},{"value":"Apportionment (Election law)","hits":1},{"value":"Augusta (Ga.)--History","hits":1},{"value":"Augusta College (Augusta, Ga.)","hits":1},{"value":"Civil rights","hits":1},{"value":"Civil rights--Georgia","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"subject_personal_facet","items":[{"value":"Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014","hits":3},{"value":"Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973","hits":2},{"value":"Bond, Julian, 1940-2015","hits":1},{"value":"Carter, Jimmy, 1924-","hits":1},{"value":"Geer, Peter Zack","hits":1},{"value":"Griffin, Marvin, 1907-1982","hits":1},{"value":"Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963","hits":1},{"value":"King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968","hits":1},{"value":"Russell, Richard B. (Richard Brevard), 1897-1971","hits":1},{"value":"Talmadge, Eugene, 1884-1946","hits":1},{"value":"Williams, Hosea, 1926-2000","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"name_authoritative_sms","items":[{"value":"Sanders, Carl, 1925-2014","hits":3},{"value":"Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973","hits":2},{"value":"Bond, Julian, 1940-2015","hits":1},{"value":"Carter, Jimmy, 1924-","hits":1},{"value":"Geer, Peter Zack","hits":1},{"value":"Griffin, Marvin, 1907-1982","hits":1},{"value":"Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963","hits":1},{"value":"King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968","hits":1},{"value":"Russell, Richard B. (Richard Brevard), 1897-1971","hits":1},{"value":"Talmadge, Eugene, 1884-1946","hits":1},{"value":"Williams, Hosea, 1926-2000","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"event_title_sms","items":[{"value":"Housing Act of 1961","hits":2},{"value":"University of Georgia Integration","hits":2},{"value":"Integration of Clemson University","hits":1},{"value":"Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Nobel Prize","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"location_facet","items":[{"value":"United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018","hits":2},{"value":"United States, 39.76, -98.5","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"us_states_facet","items":[{"value":"Georgia","hits":2}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"year_facet","items":[{"value":"1986","hits":1},{"value":"2004","hits":1},{"value":"2006","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":100,"offset":0,"prefix":null},"min":"1986","max":"2006","count":3,"missing":0},{"name":"medium_facet","items":[{"value":"oral histories (literary works)","hits":3},{"value":"interviews","hits":2}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"rights_facet","items":[{"value":"http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/","hits":3}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"collection_titles_sms","items":[{"value":"Georgia Government Documentation Project","hits":1},{"value":"Reflections on Georgia Politics oral history collection, 2006-2010","hits":1},{"value":"Richard B. Russell Library Oral History Documentary collection, 1986-2006","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"provenance_facet","items":[{"value":"Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies","hits":2},{"value":"Georgia State University. Special Collections","hits":1}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":11,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"class_name","items":[{"value":"Item","hits":3}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":100,"offset":0,"prefix":null}},{"name":"educator_resource_b","items":[{"value":"false","hits":3}],"options":{"sort":"count","limit":100,"offset":0,"prefix":null}}]}}