… For the Kings, closing the 1976 convention affirmed their continued reach — and their pragmatism — eight years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. For (Jimmy) Carter, it marked the evolution of a white politician from the Old Confederacy: As a local leader and state senator who aspired for more, he had mostly avoided controversial stands during the civil rights era. During all their years in Atlanta, he never met the movement’s leader. “Carter never did anything racist himself. But he didn’t participate,” biographer Jonathan Alter said. “And King was right there.” Yet the alliance Carter later forged...