13. An African American Raised in China
When Carter was nine, his mother abandoned the family and left him with his father. In 1927, his father moved him and his siblings to China, which back then used to be a huge magnet for missionary activities. Carter’s African American and Indian mixed background had already set him apart as quite unusual for his era. Getting raised in India and China, viewed at the time as the epitomes of the mysterious and exotic Orient, added more layers of complexity to the young man as he grew up. For all that China was the biggest attraction for Christian missionaries in those days, foreign missionaries and their families were still relatively thin on the ground there. That in of itself would have set Carter apart as he came of age in China. Blacks were even thinner on the ground in China, which would have set him apart yet even more.
