Former President Carter, the humble Georgia peanut farmer whose unlikely political rise led him to the governor’s mansion outside the White House, died peacefully Sunday in Plains, Georgia, according to the Carter Center.
He turned 100 in October, making him the longest-living president in the country’s history.
“My father was a hero, not just to me, but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights and selfless love,” Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said in a statement from the Carter Center. “My brothers, my sister and I shared it with the rest of the world through this common faith. The world is our family because he brought people together, and we thank you for honoring his memory by continuing to live these shared beliefs.”
The former president is survived by his children Jack, Chip, Jeff and Amy; 11 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. His wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Smith Carter, died on November 19, 2023.
The Carter Center announced on February 18, 2023 that the former president had done so began receiving hospice care After a series of compact hospital stays, he decided to “spend the remaining time at home with his family” rather than undergo additional medical intervention.
Former President Carter, a Democrat who was 52 when he entered the Oval Office, spent four disordered years in the White House marked by the Iran hostage crisis, oil shortages and high inflation.
Carter’s term as president lasted an astonishing more than four decades.
It enabled a shift in opinion about a man whose presidency was widely viewed as a failure after it ended after one term and a landslide victory for Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. Carter won only six states and the District of Columbia in his re-election.
In the decades that followed, Carter restored his public image by devoting his presidential term to humanitarian causes. Carter and his wife Rosalynn founded the Carter Center in Atlanta and spent the next 40 years advocating for peace, democracy and human rights.
Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his decades of tireless efforts to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, advance democracy and human rights, and promote economic and social development.”
“War can sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary it is always an evil, never a good. “We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said in his Nobel Prize speech this year.
He helped spread the word about Habitat for Humanity’s work across the country and around the world. The group helps low-income people build and purchase their homes and access pristine water.
“After he left the White House, he continued to inspire people, not just in America but around the world,” said Rep. John Lewis, the slow civil rights activist and fellow Georgia Democrat, who spoke to The Hill before his own death about Carter spoke in 2020.
“He used his ability to inspire and motivate people. He has a good spirit, a good heart,” Lewis said at the time.
Carter’s longevity was remarkable. He held the record as the oldest living former US president in history and had survived a series of health problems in recent years.
He witnessed the deaths of his own Vice President Walter Mondale in 2021 and former President George HW Bush, who was Reagan’s vice presidential running mate, in 2018.
Rosalynn Carter died on November 19, 2023, at age 96, just days after she was admitted to hospice. She was diagnosed with dementia in March.
Former President Carter and his wife Rosalynn Carter celebrated their 75th anniversary in 2021. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)
James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924 in Plains, Georgia, the same town where he and his wife lived after leaving the White House. Carter’s father ran a farm and business while his mother was a nurse.
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in 1946, the same year he married his childhood friend Rosalynn Smith. His work in the Navy focused on submarines and his deployments took him all over the country, from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to San Diego to Schenectady, NY
But when his father died in 1953, Carter left the Navy, returned home and took over the family peanut farm. Carter also followed his father, who served in the Georgia Statehouse, into politics and won election to the state Senate in 1962. Only eight years later he became governor and from there fought against racial discrimination and poverty.
In the 1976 election, Carter ran as a Washington outsider, at a time when the wounds of the Watergate scandal were still fresh. He narrowly edged out Ford, the former House minority leader and D.C. insider who became vice president and then president after the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon.
Carter received 297 electoral votes, Ford 240.
As president, Carter did his best to connect with everyday Americans by speaking plainly and often wearing a sweater. But he found it complex to find his way around Washington.
Lacking connections on Capitol Hill and K Street, the maverick president saw his welfare reform and consumer protection laws go up in flames, despite having Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
File Image: Former President Carter walks toward Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House as he departs for Camp David. (AP Photo/Ira Schwarz)
During his presidency, the economy continued to suffer from high unemployment, rising inflation, and an energy crisis caused by America’s dependence on foreign oil and excessive consumption.
Television images of long lines at gas stations plagued Carter’s presidency after the Iranian revolution contributed to an oil shortage and rising prices.
Carter warned in his renowned televised “malaise” speech that America was suffering from a “crisis of confidence.”
Things only got worse as he prepared for re-election. On November 4, 1979, pro-revolutionary Iranian students took 52 American diplomats and other citizens hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
While Carter successfully negotiated their release after 444 days, the protracted hostage crisis pushed down his already withering approval ratings and contributed to Reagan’s victory over Carter in the 1980 election. In fact, the hostages were not officially released until immediately after Reagan took office on January 20, 1981.
“He missed the economy and he missed the Iranian revolution, which drove up oil prices around the world and created a theocracy in Iran in the 20th century,” said presidential historian Robert A. Strong, who interviewed Carter many times and wrote the book, “Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy.”
“Faced with the hostage situation, Carter said he would get her out alive and argued, ‘I got her out alive.’ But many would say it was a significant failure.”
But Strong, a politics professor at Washington and Lee University, said Carter has achieved more success than he is given credit for and his presidency will be viewed more positively over time.
Carter brokered the Camp David Accords with then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which led to a historic peace treaty between those two nations.
He was also responsible for a treaty that provided for the transfer of control of the Panama Canal to Panama, thereby preventing a potentially long-term U.S. military conflict in Central America.
Carter also continued to pressure other world leaders over human rights abuses.
“Carter was consistent. Every time he met with a foreign leader, he had a list of prisoners and put in a word on their behalf,” Strong said.
“His conclusion was: words matter. If you talk about human rights long enough, with the right people and seriously, you can advance this very difficult agenda.”
“I’m not saying he was a great president, I don’t think you can,” Strong added, “but I agree there were more accomplishments than were acknowledged.”
It appeared that Carter became even more energetic after leaving the White House. He traveled the world helping with Habitat for Humanity International, raising money for disaster relief and building homes for the less fortunate. Other presidents called on Carter to support resolve diplomatic disputes in countries like North Korea and Libya.
Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and former President Carter. (AP Photo/Jack Thornell)
But he and his wife also lived simply and frugally back in the small town of Plains, Georgia, captured in a viral Washington Post story titled “The Unprominent President.”
Even in his 90s, Carter could still be found most Sundays teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, despite being diagnosed with melanoma of his liver and brain in 2015. The crowd would line up early and come from Indiana, Florida and New Jersey.
During a service in 2018, a little girl told Carter she had traveled from Washington, DC
“Oh, I used to live there,” Carter replied with a smile.
Updated at 4:30 p.m. EST.
Julia Shapero contributed to this report.
