Jimmy Carter — Former President, Diplomat And Humanitarian — Dies

PLAINS GA — Former President Jimmy Carter, the World War II veteran and Georgia peanut farmer whose one-term presidency evolved into a post-White House life as a distinguished diplomat, active humanitarian and Nobel Prize winner, died Sunday, Dec. 29, at his home in Plains, Georgia. He was 100 years old.

His son, Chip Carter confirmed that the former president died about 3:45 p.m., both The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. His family was with the former president when he died, The Carter Center said.

The nation’s 39th president had been in hospice care since February 2023. After a series of short hospitalizations, Carter decided to “spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention,” the Carter Center said in a statement at the time.

“My father was a hero, not only to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and unselfish love,” said Chip Carter, the former president’s son, on the Carter Center website. “My brothers, sister, and I shared him with the rest of the world through these common beliefs. The world is our family because of the way he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”

Carter’s presidency is largely remembered for formidable challenges he wasn’t able to overcome — mainly the energy crisis, high inflation and staggering unemployment. He made progress in foreign affairs, reopening U.S. relations with China and brokering a historic accord in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but his presidency was irreparably damaged by the Iran hostage crisis in which 52 American diplomats were held for 444 days, from Nov. 4, 1979, to Jan. 20, 1981.

The hostages were released on the day Jimmy Cart’s successor, President Ronald Reagan, was sworn into office, a final blow for the nation’s 39th president. Carter returned to his peanut farm in Georgia and to about $1 million in debt. He had placed his farm in a blind trust during his presidency to avoid a conflict of interest and found it had been mismanaged by trustees.

As reactions poured in from around the world, President Joe Biden mourned Carter’s death, saying the world lost an “extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian” and he lost a dear friend. Biden cited Carter’s compassion and moral clarity, his work to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless and advocacy for the disadvantaged as an example for others.

“To all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning — the good life — study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility,” Biden said in a statement. “He showed that we are a great nation because we are a good people — decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong.”

Biden scheduled a state funeral in Washington, D.C., for Carter on Jan. 9. He also declared Jan. 9 as a National Day of Mourning across the nation and ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff for 30 days from Sunday.

President-elect Donald Trump also shared a statement reflecting on Carter's legacy.

"Those of us who have been fortunate to have served as President understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the Greatest Nation in History," Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. "The challenges Jimmy faced as President came at a pivotal time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude."

There will be public observances in Atlanta and Washington, D.C., followed by a private interment in Plains, Georgia.

The official tribute website to the life of President Carter — www.jimmycartertribute.org — includes an online condolence book.

In lieu of flowers, the Carter family asks that donations be made to The Carter Center, 453 John Lewis Freedom Parkway N.E., Atlanta, GA 30307.

Carter last appeared in public at his wife’s funeral in November 2023. Mrs. Carter died Nov. 19, 2023, two days after the Carter family said she had entered hospice. At the time, the former president said she had been an equal partner in all of his accomplishments.

“She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it,” he said at the time. “ As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Although his family said in May at the 28th Rosalynn Carter Georgia Mental Health Forum at the Carter Center that Carter’s life was “coming to the end,” his son, Chip, told The Associated Press that his father was “plugged in.”

“I asked him two months ago if he was trying to live to be 100, and he said, ‘No, I’m trying to live to vote for Kamala Harris,’” the younger Carter said.

The former president voted by mail after early voting started in Georgia on Oct. 15, according to a statement from the Carter Center.

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Carter was diagnosed with cancer in August 2015 at age 91 after having surgery to remove a lesion on his liver. The cancer had spread to other parts of his body, including his brain, where doctors found melanoma lesions. By March of the following year, he told his Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains that he was cleared of the disease.

The devoutly religious Carter said at a church service several years ago that he hadn’t expected to survive brain cancer in 2015.

“I assumed, naturally, that I was going to die very quickly,” he said. “I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death.”

“It didn't really matter to me whether I died or lived,” Carter added. “Except I was going to miss my family, and miss the work at the Carter Center and miss teaching your Sunday school service sometimes and so forth. All those delightful things.”

In 2019, he faced a series of health scares, including surgery to remove pressure on his brain and a broken hip, sustained as he prepared to go on a turkey hunt with his family. His health problems caused him to give up teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, which he had done for decades.

2002 Nobel Prize Winner

As a humanitarian, Carter earned a level of respect he never quite attained as president. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”

That work was largely accomplished through The Carter Center, which he established in partnership with Emory University in 1982 to champion the rights of the sick, the impoverished and the oppressed. The Carter Center has been a pioneer in overseeing elections and has dispatched more than 100 election observers to keep a check on the fairness of elections in Africa, Latin America and Asia since 1989.

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, also raised the profile of Habitat for Humanity — and the critical need for affordable housing worldwide — by working alongside 103,000 volunteers to build, renovate or repair 4,331 homes in 14 countries.

The couple celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary on July 7, 2023.

When he died, Carter was America’s oldest living ex-president, surpassing President George H.W. Walker Bush, who died in November 2018 at age 94.

Iowa Caucuses Become Prominent

Carter’s election in 1976 was as unexpected as his presidency was unremarkable.

He was tied for 12th place in early polling in the 1976 presidential election, well behind former Alabama Gov. Geroge Wallace and former nominee Hubert Humphrey. Then 52, Carter barnstormed Iowa, pulling the state’s now-celebrated first-in-the-nation caucuses out of sleepy obscurity. He finished second, behind “uncommitted,” but claimed a victory — convincing both the media and Democratic voters of the strength of his candidacy.

The Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974 had soured American voters, leaving them distrustful of government and politicians, including President Gerald Ford.

On the campaign trail, Carter’s unvarnished honesty was a refreshing change for voters.

“If I ever lie,” he told them, “or even make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me.”

They even forgave him a gaffe to Playboy magazine in an interview shortly before the election. In it, Carter said that he had “looked on a lot of women with lust” and had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”

He defeated Ford in the general election, winning just more than 50 percent of the popular vote and a 57-vote cushion in the Electoral College.

Difficult Time For America

Carter governed during one of America’s more difficult eras. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 had caused oil prices to jump 350 percent, and the effects rippled through the economy with long lines at gas stations and rationing in some places. High unemployment, interest rates and inflation rates, a combination known as “stagflation,” caused the economy to sputter.

Most expected Carter to address the energy and economic crises in a July 15, 1979, speech after a meeting with ordinary Americans at Camp David, but instead, he talked about the malaise of the American people in what has been called the “Crisis of Confidence” speech. He acknowledged a “fundamental threat to American democracy,” citing the lack of respect Americans held for public institutions and leaders. Restoring their faith, he said, was the “most important task” in America.

Although he did make substantial energy proposals, what stuck with Americans was the theme of malaise. His strategy backfired. He was seen as weak and ineffective in dealing with the problems that were crippling the American economy. Reagan capitalized mightily on that in the 1980 election, portraying himself as a strong, vigorous alternative to Carter and winning a landslide victory.

Carter took his folksy leadership style with him to Washington, taking on the power elite. A teetotaler who banished alcohol from White House dinners, Carter also had to manage a long controversy surrounding his younger brother, gas station owner Billy Carter. The “Billygate” scandal in 1979 involving the president’s younger brother, who secured a $220,000 loan from Libya, ruled at the time by dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was short-lived.

More damaging to Carter was a Democratic Congress that never warmed to him.

His relationship with lawmakers was rocky from the beginning, despite Democratic control of both chambers. Carter famously tussled with then-House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who immensely disliked the born-again Christian for his ban on alcohol at the White House and for serving sugar cookies instead of traditional eggs and sausage at breakfast meetings with Democratic leaders.

Their relationship further deteriorated when Carter vetoed some of the pet projects of O’Neill and other Democrats — pork-barrel projects designed to reward loyal Democrats with government-funded initiatives in their districts. To Carter, though, that was tantamount to influence peddling that bloated the federal budget, something he had campaigned vigorously against.

“As governor and during my campaign,” Carter once said, “I had repeatedly emphasized the need to eliminate waste and pork-barrel projects. Some of the people had heard and understood what I was saying. The members of Congress had not.”

Camp David Accords

Though Carter accomplished little of his domestic agenda, he made strides in foreign policy. The Camp David Accords brokered in 1978 between Anwar el-Sadat, the president of Egypt at the time, and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, are considered a crowning achievement. They established a framework for ending a state of war between the nations that had existed since Israel was founded in 1948.

“There was no compatibility between the two,” Carter later wrote of the peace talks. “Almost every discussion of any subject deteriorated into an unproductive argument.”

The talks broke down, but Carter persisted with 23 drafts of the accord over the two-week summit. Though imperfect, the agreement earned Carter wide praise at home. Still, Reagan vanquished him on Election Day 1980.

“We got a smaller percentage of the Jewish vote in 1980 than we had in 1976," Jody Powell, Carter’s press secretary, told Smithsonian in 2003 on the 25th anniversary of the historic agreement. “The reason is that if you're going to get an agreement, you're going to have to push the Israelis some too. If you do that, you're going to get a backlash in this country.”

Carter also brokered two U.S. treaties with Panama, reopened diplomatic relations between the United States and China, while severing ties with Taiwan, and signed a bilateral strategic arms limitation treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.

Before The White House

James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, a tiny town in southwest Georgia. The first on his father’s side of the family to graduate from high school, he entered the U.S. Naval Academy during World War II. He graduated in the top 10 percent of his class in 1946, and he and his wife, Rosalynn, whom he married on July 7, 1946, moved frequently as assignments changed.

Carter gave up his career in the Navy in 1953 after the death of his father to save his family’s peanut farm. He became involved in local politics, serving on a local school board and, later, the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967.

A Democratic Party activist, his opposition to racial segregation and support for the civil rights movement cost him the 1966 gubernatorial race. He adopted a more centrist approach four years later, positioning himself as a “traditional Southern conservative” and blasting his primary opponent, former Gov. Carl Sanders, as a member of the Atlanta social and economic elite.

After roughly three years at the helm of Georgia politics, Carter in 1974 announced his candidacy for the presidency.

In recent years, Carter has been outspoken against anti-gay and racist sentiments. In 2000, he announced he would be leaving the Southern Baptist Convention due to the body’s literal interpretation of the Bible, a move The New York Times said was mostly symbolic because he didn’t serve in an official capacity with the organization. In 2015, he told the Huffington Post he believed Jesus would favor marriage equality.

In 2016, he told The Times that Republican criticism of former President Barack Obama had “heavy” racial overtones and then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s successful campaign “tapped a waiting reservoir there of inherent racism.”

Carter is survived by his and Rosalynn’s four children, John William “Jack” Carter, James Earl “Chip” Carter III, Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff” Carter and Amy Lynn Carter; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.