Jimmy Carter was elected president in 1976, following the years during which the Watergate scandal had ended Richard Nixon's presidency and deeply damaged the Republican Party's reputation. Carter, who had been Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, was seen as someone different from Washington insiders. He also was a deeply moral man and active in his church as a Sunday School teacher. At the time, that gave him an air of trustworthiness that was welcomed by an electorate who had grown deeply skeptical of government during the Vietnam war era and the Nixon presidency.
Walter Mondale, who became Carter's Vice-President, had served for 12 years as US Senator from the state of Minnesota.
The oil crisis made it hard for many people to get oil. Lots of people didn't have transportation. Gas stations were either limited or completely out of fuel.
Du Bois was one of the founders of a letter campaign in the 1920s called NAACP. They wanted publications, like New York Times, to capitalize the "N" in negro.
