[3] After receiving his law degree, he partnered with Mayor Leon M. "Rip" Blair in Marietta to form a practice.
[4] He decided not to seek a third term when his law firm took on a major client that did business with the state to avoid potential conflicts of interest.
[5] As Cobb County attorney, Carmichael teamed with Mayor Blair and Commissioner George McMillan to build an airport in 1941, called Rickenbacker Field (later part of Dobbins Air Reserve Base).
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the group was able to bring a base of the United States Army Air Corps to the site, and a branch of the Bell Aircraft Corporation.
He was skeptical of the New Deal labor and welfare programs but represented a progressive business philosophy that championed moderation in race relations, improved public schools and roads, and attracting major companies to Georgia.
[2] Carmichael won the popular vote 313,389 to Talmadge's 297,245, however, because of a unique Georgia law known as the "county unit system" he lost the election.
The rule favored rural Georgia over metropolitan areas in a take on the electoral college system, thus making Talmadge the winner of the Democratic primary.
[2] Carmichael was courted by Robert W. Woodruff to take the presidency of The Coca-Cola Company in the early 1950s, but the pain from his back injury wouldn't allow it.
He remained president at Scripto until 1964, when he was forced out by falling profits and a strike by the International Chemical Workers Union.
[1] He was on the boards of the Interdenominational Theological Center, the Atlanta School of Art, and the University System of Georgia, and a governor in the Kiwanis International.