Former President Jimmy Carter was never far from the issues that defined his one term in the White House, even decades later, while wielding a hammer and wearing a hard hat and tool belt on a home construction site in North Memphis.

“Before this, I’ve been to the site where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, which was a tragedy for us, but I think the aftermath of that has shown that we have a long way to go,” Carter said during a 2016 visit to the city, referring to the National Civil Rights Museum, which honored Carter with a Freedom Award in 1994.

Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president, has died at 100

Carter came to Memphis for the awards ceremony fresh from his efforts to mediate Haiti’s transition from the Duvalier family’s iron grip on the country.

After touring NCRM, Carter stopped to talk with Jacqueline Smith, a protester who has camped outside the museum since before its opening and remains a presence there. He extended his hand to Smith, who refused to shake his hand because he supported the museum.

“We see that long after Martin (Luther King) was assassinated, we also have realized that in the last two or three years, the disparity of treatment of African American people by an overwhelmingly white police force, even though the communities they serve are largely African American,” Carter said in 2016 as he talked about affordable housing, like the homes Habitat for Humanity builds, and its connection to issues of racial inequality.

Carter’s path to the presidency from being Georgia’s governor was swift and came through Memphis several times, starting with the 1976 Tennessee Presidential primaries, which also saw Republican incumbent Gerald Ford campaign here in a much tougher Republican primary fight with challenger Ronald Reagan.

Carter beat former Alabama Gov. George Wallace in the May 25 Tennessee Democratic primary with 78% of the statewide total. He carried Shelby County in the process.

Mark Flanagan marked a cultural and political transition in Midtown

Ford took the state by a close 2,000 votes, but Reagan carried Shelby County for the first of three times, including his 1980 and 1984 Republican primary campaigns.

The Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation and Ford’s taking office as his successor cast a long shadow over the Republican party two years later. Memphis was more than a distant spectator to the turmoil that engulfed both parties in the historic aftermath.

Watergate’s burden and Republican frustration with Carter’s change in policies were on full display in 1977 when the Young Republicans national convention was held in Memphis. There was also evidence that Reagan would be back in 1980.

The convention featured an appearance by Reagan at the old Holiday Inn Rivermont along with numerous Republican elected leaders from across the country.

Ford, still healing from the narrow path to winning the party’s nomination and then losing big to Carter in the general election, would refuse to make an appearance.

Local, state and national Republican strategist John Ryder dies

But he was in town at the same time for the pro-am of what was then the Danny Thomas Memphis Golf Classic.

The late John Ryder was among the local Republicans on the host committee. He got Ford to agree to accept a plaque from the YRs at the Rivermont after Ford hit a hole-in-one during the pro-am at the old Colonial Country Club golf course.

It was a tightly choreographed event that avoided any contact with Reagan.

Democrats held their 1978 midterm convention in Memphis, including an appearance by Carter, Vice President Walter Mondale and several members of Carter’s cabinet.

It came two months after the announcement of the historic Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt on the White House lawn — arguably the high point of Carter’s administration.

At the end of his term’s second year though, Carter was already feeling political pressure to balance what would become double-digit inflation with federal spending on social programs.

Carter told the Memphis gathering that without bringing inflation under control, the federal government could not continue to spend at the level it was on social programs. His most vocal critics within the party argued the pain from inflation required greater investments in those same programs.

As thousands of politicos gathered at what was then the Cook Convention Center, so did the grassroots group ACORN, civil rights leaders critical of Carter’s tenure to that point and Iranian students — including some at the University of Memphis — critical of U.S. support of the Shah of Iran. (The Iranian hostage crisis was still a year away.)

MPD to help Habitat for Humanity build North Memphis homes

The Memphis Police Department’s domestic intelligence unit was also part of the mix, keeping the Iranian students under surveillance outside the convention center. It violated a federal consent decree barring political surveillance by the MPD that city officials had signed off on earlier that year.

Also at the midterm convention was U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, who called for some form of national health care by the federal government. It would become his signature political cause until his 2009 death.

Kennedy would also challenge Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980. The challenge would play a key role in Carter’s defeat by Reagan in that year’s general election.

Carter overcame the challenge, winning Tennessee and carrying Shelby County on the path to the 1980 Democratic primary nomination.

Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker had dropped his bid for the Republican nomination, leaving Reagan to face future President George H.W. Bush on the ballot in Tennessee and other states.

Habitat for Humanity opening second ReStore, will carry building materials

Reagan carried the state and Shelby County in the primary easily, and Bush became his vice president.

Reagan then won the state and its 11 electoral votes in the November general election even as Carter carried Shelby County.

Carter’s journeys to Memphis throughout the years that followed weren’t to exercise any sort of political power among Democrats who continued to dominate state and local politics despite Reagan’s appeal to the party’s more conservative wing.

They came against the backdrop of a different use of his status as a former president, one that endured even as individual political fortunes changed and the role of the two parties began to shift.