Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, dead at 100

Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and a former peanut farmer whose vision of a “competent and compassionate” government propelled him into the White House, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center confirmed. He was 100.

The news was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shortly before the Carter Center, the late president’s nonprofit organization, made an announcement on X. “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the organization’s post read.

His specific cause of death was unclear. Carter’s death followed the passing of his wife Rosalynn on Nov. 19, 2023. She died at the age of 96 with her family by her side at the Carter home in Plains, just days after she had been admitted to hospice care. 

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The late former president himself had entered hospice care in February 2023. Carter survived for years after he had a “small mass” removed from his liver in early August 2015 and later that month announced he had liver cancer that had spread throughout his body. 

The Carter family had a history of cancer and the former president lost his father, brother, and two sisters to pancreatic cancer. His mother had breast cancer, which later spread to her pancreas.

Jason Carter, Carter’s grandson, had announced in May that he believed the former president was “coming to the end” of his life’s journey. But the former president hung on much longer.

Funeral details were still being planned, but the Carter Center announced he would be buried in Plains following public observances in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. The family encouraged donations to the Carter Center in lieu of flowers.

The soft-spoken leader with a signature Georgia drawl saw his single term in the Oval Office clouded by an economic downturn at home and a hostage crisis abroad.

His post-presidency life was marked by a very visible dedication to service, but also a series of sometimes controversial moves as he continued to wade into foreign affairs, particularly as it related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carter met with the leadership of terrorist group and Palestinian representative Hamas in 2009 and 2015. He reprimanded Israel for its operations against Hamas in 2014, saying there was “no justification in the world for what Israel is doing.”

President Jimmy Carter with his wife, Rosalynn Carter. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group, File)

James Earl Carter Jr. was born in 1924 in Plains, a farming town. Carter’s father was a farmer, a background that helped instill in him a love of the land – and the working and lower class people who tilled it – that would follow him throughout his personal and professional life.

But Carter initially sought a path outside the dirt of Plains and, after attending the U.S. Naval Academy, he served as a submariner in the post-World War II navy, eventually attaining the rank of lieutenant.

Carter married Rosalynn Smith, a fellow native of Plains, in 1946, the same year he graduated from the Academy.

After Carter’s father died in 1953, Carter resigned his naval commission and returned to his and Rosalynn’s roots in Plains. The young man took the lead at the family farm while Rosalynn operated a farm supply company in their small Georgia town.

It wasn’t long, however, before Carter again left the farm fields behind, this time beginning a career in politics that would land him the nation’s highest office in just 14 years.

Carter won election to the Georgia Senate in 1962 and, following a failed gubernatorial bid in 1966, he became the state’s governor in 1971.

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Carter grew into a national Democratic Party leader and won the 1976 presidential election against President Gerald Ford, riding a wave of popular discontent with former President Richard Nixon – and the pardon that Ford had extended to Nixon.

While in the White House, Carter established full diplomatic relations with China and led the negotiation of a nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. Domestically, he led several conservation efforts, showing the same love of nature as president as he did as a young farmer in Plains.

Then-Vice President Walter Mondale and then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill listen as President Jimmy Carter delivers his State of the Union Address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the Capitol on Jan. 23, 1980. (Arnie Sachs/CNP/Getty Images, File)

He has cited the Panama Canal treaties and the Camp David accords that brought peace between Egypt and Israel as among his greatest personal accomplishments.

“We focused on peace,” he told The Washington Post in 2014. “We never shot a bullet or dropped a bomb on anyone.”

But peace wasn’t always easily maintained, and a perceived lack of strength in dealing with bad actors likely contributed to his lopsided 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan.

The final 14 months of his presidency were dominated by the Iran hostage crisis. Following the country’s revolution, the new government took 52 American hostages. Carter was never able to retrieve the detained Americans or negotiate for their release. In an obvious snub, Iran finally released the 52 after they had been held for 444 days — on the same day Carter left office.

Jimmy Carter signs the Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act of 1977 on Nov. 9, 1977. (Hum Images/Universal Images Group, File)

And though Carter started the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, two government bureaucracies that have since become popular targets for Republicans, a nationwide energy crunch also served to hurt his tenure. Footage of gas lines and high gas prices is a seminal feature of nearly any late 1970s documentary or discussion.

The domestic and foreign issues led Sen. Ted Kennedy to take the rare step of challenging Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination. Though Carter survived that battle, though barely, he wasn’t as fortunate in November 1980, when Reagan won 44 states and the presidency.

From left to right: Former Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter. (HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images, File)

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Upon leaving the White House, Carter, who authored 28 books, was named a distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta and founded The Carter Center, which focuses on national and international public policy. Carter told The Associated Press that he had the “best times” of his life after establishing the organization in 1982.

“This beautiful place on Earth that has set moral and ethical standards that exemplify what a superpower like America ought to be,” Carter said of the center in October.

Recalling the manual labor of his youth in Plains, Carter was often seen volunteering and fundraising for Habitat for Humanity, helping to build homes for the needy.

Former president Jimmy Carter is pictured prior to the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sept. 30, 2018, in Atlanta. (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images, File)

Carter was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. Additionally, he served as a member of The Elders, a group of independent global leaders no longer in politics whose ranks also included South African President Nelson Mandela, Irish President Mary Robinson and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

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In his spare time, Carter, a deeply religious man who served as a deacon in the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains, enjoyed fishing, running and woodworking. 

Carter is survived by his four children, 11 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.