Amy Carter#Life in the White House

{{For-multi|the politician|Amy Carter (politician)|the netball player|Amy Carter (netball)}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Amy Carter

| image = AMB Kwan hosts Amy Carter (cropped).jpg

| caption = Carter in 2023

| birth_name = Amy Lynn Carter

| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1967|10|19}}

| birth_place = Plains, Georgia, U.S.

| education =

| alma_mater = {{Plainlist|

Memphis College of Art (BFA)
Tulane University (MA)

}}

| death_date =

| death_place =

| spouse = {{ubl|

}}

| children = 2

| father = Jimmy Carter

| mother = Rosalynn Carter

| relatives = Jack Carter (brother)
Jason Carter (nephew)
James Earl Carter Sr. (paternal grandfather)
Lillian Gordy Carter (paternal grandmother)

}}

Amy Lynn Carter (born October 19, 1967) is the only daughter and fourth child of the 39th U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter. Carter first entered the public spotlight as a child when she lived in the White House during her father's presidency.

Early life

Amy Carter was born on October 19, 1967, in Plains, Georgia. Prior to her birth, the family held a vote whether their parents should try for a baby daughter. According to her brother: "The family voted a year before she was born on whether my parents ought to have a baby daughter, and a year later, there she was. We even picked out her name beforehand—out of a Webster's Dictionary."{{Cite news |last=Klemesrud |first=Judy |date=July 15, 1976 |title=Jimmy Carter's Three Sons They're Smiling in Amy's Shadow |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/15/archives/jimmy-carters-three-sons-theyre-smiling-in-amys-shadow.html |newspaper=New York Times}} She was raised in Plains until her father was elected governor of Georgia in 1970 and her family moved into the Georgia Governor's Mansion in Atlanta. In 1976, when she was nine, her father was elected President of the United States, and the family moved to the White House. Carter attended public schools in Washington during her four years in the White House; first Stevens Elementary School and then Rose Hardy Middle School.{{cite web|url=https://www.baltimoresun.com/1993/01/11/one-of-jimmy-carters-first-decisions-as/|title=Jimmy Carter's first decisions as president-elect...|newspaper=The Baltimore Sun|author=Lippman, Theo Jr.|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=January 7, 1993|access-date=December 30, 2024|archive-date=August 26, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150826213929/http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1993-01-07/news/1993007068_1_public-schools-sidwell-friends-amy}}{{cite web |title=Explore DC: Hardy Middle School |url=http://www.exploredc.org/index.php?id=332 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070311120203/http://www.exploredc.org/index.php?id=332 |archive-date=March 11, 2007 |access-date=March 8, 2013}}{{Cite web|url=https://archive.today/20120526032016/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n12_v24/ai_13251712|title=First choice: why Chelsea Clinton should attend a public school - Pre…|date=May 26, 2012|website=archive.ph}} After her father's presidency, Carter moved to Atlanta and spent her senior year of high school at Woodward Academy in College Park, Georgia.{{cite news |title= Amy Carter is 17 |url= https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/19/us/amy-carter-is-17.html |newspaper= The New York Times |date= October 18, 1984|access-date=September 2, 2011}} She was a Senate page during the 1982 summer session.{{Cite web |last=Allen |first=Ira R. |date=June 1, 1982 |title=Amy Carter takes oath as Senate page |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/06/01/Amy-Carter-takes-oath-as-Senate-page/3319391752000/ |access-date=December 31, 2020 |website=UPI |language=en}} Carter attended Brown University, where she was known for her activism against apartheid and the CIA. She was academically dismissed in 1987, "for failing to keep up with her coursework".{{Cite web |date=July 18, 1987 |title=Brown University reportedly dismisses Amy Carter |url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1987/07/18/Brown-University-reportedly-dismisses-Amy-Carter/4037553579200/ |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=UPI |language=en}} Carter later earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Memphis College of Art{{Cite web|url=https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2017/10/24/memphis-college-art-close/794024001/|title=Memphis College of Art to close|last=Beifuss|first=John|date=October 24, 2017|website=The Commercial Appeal|language=en|access-date=November 15, 2019}} and a master's degree in art history from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1996.{{Cite web|url=http://www2.tulane.edu/alumni/famousalumni.cfm|title=Notable Tulane University Graduates|website=Tulane University|access-date=November 15, 2019|archive-date=March 25, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170325180032/http://www2.tulane.edu/alumni/famousalumni.cfm|url-status=dead}}

Life in the White House

File:Amycarterjpg.jpg

In January 1977, at the age of nine, Carter entered the White House, where she lived for four years. She was the subject of much media attention during this period. Young children had not lived in the White House since the early 1960s presidency of John F. Kennedy (and would not again do so after the Carter presidency until the inauguration of Bill Clinton, in January 1993, when Chelsea moved in.)

While Carter was in the White House, she had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang, which was the last cat to occupy the White House until Socks, owned by Clinton. Carter also accepted an elephant from Sri Lanka; the animal was given to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.{{cite web |last1=Hofmeister |first1=Richard K. |title=Shanthi Received at Zoo by Amy & Rosalynn Carter |url=https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_14708 |website=Smithsonian Institution Archives |language=en |date=2 April 1977}}

File:Amy Carter poses with her doll house and cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang - NARA - 177849.tif

Carter roller-skated through the White House's East Room and had a treehouse on the South Lawn.{{cite news |last=St. Clair |first=Stacy |date=November 7, 2008 |title=American Girls: For Obama's daughters, White House life isn't going to be normal |work=Chicago Tribune |url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-first-family-07-nov07,0,6338748.story |access-date=November 11, 2008}} When she invited friends over for slumber parties in her tree house, Secret Service agents monitored the event from the ground.{{cite news|url=https://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0217/p19s3.html|title='Whatever happened to...?' Amy Carter|last=Steindorf|first=Sarah|date=February 17, 2000|work=The Christian Science Monitor|access-date=November 16, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080410223001/http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/02/17/p19s3.htm|archive-date=April 10, 2008}}

Mary Prince (an African American woman wrongly convicted of murder, and later exonerated and pardoned) acted as her nanny for most of the period from 1971 until Jimmy Carter's presidency ended, having begun in that position through a prison release program in Georgia.{{cite book|author=Jimmy Carter|title=Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis|url=https://archive.org/details/ourendangeredv00cart|url-access=registration|year=2005|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-0-7432-8457-8|pages=[https://archive.org/details/ourendangeredv00cart/page/84 84]–|quote=My last book, Sharing Good Times, is dedicated "to Mary Prince, whom we love and cherish." Mary is a wonderful black woman who, as a teenager visiting a small town, was falsely accused of murder and defended by an assigned lawyer whom she first met on the day of the trial, when he advised her to plead guilty, promising a light sentence. She got life imprisonment instead ... A reexamination of the evidence and trial proceedings by the original judge revealed that she was completely innocent, and she was granted a pardon.}}{{cite web|last=Chabbott |first=Sophia |url=http://www.glamour.com/inspired/blogs/the-conversation/2015/03/the-residence-book |title=The Residence: Meet the Women Behind Presidential Families Kennedy, Johnson, Carter |publisher=Glamour.com |date=March 19, 2015 |access-date=May 2, 2015|quote=Rosalynn Carter, who believed Prince was wrongly convicted, secured a reprieve so Prince could join them in Washington. Prince was later granted a full pardon; to this day she occasionally babysits the Carters' grandkids.}}

Carter did not receive the "hands off" treatment that most of the media later afforded to Chelsea Clinton. President Carter mentioned his daughter during a 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan, when he said he had asked her what the most important issue in that election was and she said, "the control of nuclear arms".

File:Amy Carter sitting in a tree on the White House grounds - NARA - 173811.jpg

On February 21, 1977, during a White House state dinner for Canada's Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, nine-year-old Amy was seen reading two books, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator and The Story of the Gettysburg Address, while the formal toasts by her father and Trudeau were exchanged.{{cite web

| url =http://www.firstladies.org/blog/presidential-daughters-attending-state-dinners-part-3/

| title =Presidential Daughters Attending State Dinners, Part 3

| last =Anthony

| first =Carl

| date =March 24, 2016

| website =firstladies.org

| publisher =National First Ladies' Library

| access-date =November 29, 2020

| quote =Art Buchwald said that people are overreacting to Amy sticking her nose in a book between courses and that sometimes he wished he could read during such dinners. }}

Activism

Amy Carter later became known for her political activism. She participated in sit-ins and protests during the 1980s and early 1990s that were aimed at changing U.S. foreign policy towards South African apartheid and Central America. Along with activist Abbie Hoffman and 13 others, she was arrested, while still a Brown student, during a 1986 demonstration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst for protesting CIA recruitment there. She was acquitted of all charges in a well-publicized trial in Northampton, Massachusetts. Attorney Leonard Weinglass, who defended Hoffman in the Chicago Seven trial in the 1960s, utilized the necessity defense, successfully arguing that because the CIA was involved in criminal activity in Central America and other hotspots, preventing it from recruiting on campus was equivalent to trespassing in a burning building.{{cite news |title=The Triumph of Necessity |newspaper=Valley Advocate |last=Kraft |first=Stephanie |date=April 20, 1987 |url=http://personals.valleyadvocate.com/25th/archives/triumph.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040122012722/http://personals.valleyadvocate.com/25th/archives/triumph.html |archive-date=January 22, 2004 |access-date=January 4, 2014}}

== Other work ==

Carter gave an interview on Late Night with David Letterman in 1982. She illustrated The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer, her father's book for children, published in 1995.{{Cite web |last=Bickerton |first=James |date=December 29, 2024 |title=Who are Jimmy Carter's children? Former president leaves behind 4 children |url=https://www.newsweek.com/jimmy-carter-children-where-now-1471272 |website=Newsweek}}

She is a member of the board of counselors of the Carter Center, established by her father, which advocates for human rights and diplomacy.

Personal life

From 1996 to 2005, Carter was married to computer consultant James Gregory Wentzel.{{cite news |last=Minor |first=Elliott |title=Amy Carter Weds At Family Estate |url=https://apnews.com/article/8cf8d42e843b3039f1584ae2812889ac |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230221015714/https://apnews.com/article/8cf8d42e843b3039f1584ae2812889ac |archive-date=21 February 2023 |work=AP News |date=1 September 1996}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/08/14/amy-carter-set-to-be-september-bride/f2adfe27-c7da-45fc-8e9c-4e024d658b91/|title=Amy Carter Set to be September Bride|last=Roberts|first=Roxanne|date=August 14, 1996|newspaper=The Washington Post|access-date=November 14, 2019}} They have a son, Hugo James Wentzel, who in 2023 was featured on the second season of reality TV competition show Claim to Fame.{{cite news |last1=Yu |first1=Yi-Jin |title=Former President Jimmy Carter died at 100: What to know about his kids, grandkids |url=https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Family/jimmy-carter-turns-99-kids-grandkids/story?id=97339877 |work=ABC News |date=January 9, 2025 |language=en}}{{cite news |last1=Gibson |first1=Kelsie |date=August 8, 2023 |title=Jimmy Carter's Grandson Reveals How Family Is Staying Close and 'Expressing Love' amid Hospice Care (Exclusive) |url=https://people.com/jimmy-carter-grandson-hugo-reveals-family-staying-close-amid-hospice-care-exclusive-7569575 |work=People |language=en}} Since 2007, she has been married to John Joseph "Jay" Kelly. They have a son.{{cite news |last=Lakritz |first=Talia |title=Where are they now: First kids of the United States |url=https://www.businessinsider.com/children-of-former-us-presidents-2015-7#amy-illustrated-a-childrens-book-that-her-father-wrote-26 |access-date=20 February 2023 |work=Business Insider |date=3 February 2022}}{{Cite web |last=Burak |first=Emily |date=2025-01-09 |title=Meet Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter's Family |url=https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/g43012397/jimmy-carter-children/ |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=Town & Country |language=en-US}}

In popular culture

Little House on the Prairie actress Alison Arngrim impersonated Carter on the 1977 Laff Records comedy album Heeere's Amy.{{cite magazine|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qiQEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT37|title=New Horizons For Laff's Second Decade|magazine=Billboard|date=January 7, 1978|access-date=July 1, 2023}}