Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and a former peanut farmer whose vision of a “competent and benevolent” government propelled him to the White House, died Sunday., According to local media. He was 100 years old.
The news was announced by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday. Carter's death follows that of his wife, Rosalyn, who passed away at the age of 96 on November 19, 2023, at the Carter home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by her family, days after she was admitted to hospice care.
The late Mr. Carter himself entered hospice care in February 2023. Carter survived for several years after having a “small mass” removed from his liver in early August 2015, and announced later that month that he had liver cancer that had spread throughout his body.
The Carter family has a history of cancer, with the former president losing his father, brother and two sisters to pancreatic cancer. His mother had breast cancer, which later spread to her pancreas.
Former President Jimmy Carter will spend 'the rest of his time' at home receiving hospice care
Jimmy Carter served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. (Diana Walker/Getty Images)
Carter's grandson, Jason Carter, announced in May that he believed the former president was “nearing the end” of his life's journey. But the former president endured much longer.
Georgia's typically loquacious, soft-spoken leader's single term in the Oval Office has been clouded by the country's economic downturn and hostage crisis abroad.
His post-presidential life was marked by a highly visible dedication to service, but also a series of sometimes controversial moves as he continued to dip his toe into foreign affairs, particularly related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It also showed movement. Mr. Carter met with Hamas, the terrorist organization's leader and representative for Palestine, in 2009 and 2015, and rebuked Israel's operations against Hamas in 2014, saying, “What Israel is doing cannot be justified to the world.''
James Earl Carter Jr. was born in 1924 in Plains, Georgia. Plains was a farming town, and Carter's father was also a farmer. That background helped instill in him a love for the land and the workers and lower class people who cultivate it. This will continue throughout his personal and professional life.
But Carter initially sought a path outside the Plains, attending the U.S. Naval Academy before serving as a submariner in the post-World War II Navy, eventually reaching the rank of lieutenant. .
President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn Carter (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group)
Carter married fellow Plains native Rosalyn Smith in 1946, the same year he graduated from the academy.
After Carter's father died in 1953, he resigned as Navy Commissioner and returned to his and Rosalyn's Plains roots. Carter took the lead. family farm Meanwhile, Rosalyn runs a produce supply company in a small town in Georgia.
But it didn't take long for Mr. Carter to leave the field again, this time to begin a career in politics that would take him to the nation's highest office after just 14 years.
Carter was elected to the Georgia State Senate in 1962 and became governor in 1971 after an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1966.
Jimmy Carter celebrates 98th birthday with family, friends and baseball
Carter rose to become a national Democratic leader, riding a wave of public dissatisfaction with former President Richard Nixon to defeat President Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential election and securing the pardon that Ford had granted to Nixon.
While in the White House, Carter established full diplomatic relations with China and led negotiations for a nuclear limitation treaty with the Soviet Union. Domestically, he demonstrated his love for nature as president, leading several conservation initiatives, just as he had as a young Plains farmer.
Then-Vice President Walter Mondale and Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill listen as President Jimmy Carter delivers the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on January 23, 1980, at the Capitol. (Ernie Sachs/CNP/Getty Images)
He cites the Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Accords, which brought peace between Egypt and Israel, as his greatest personal accomplishments.
“We focused on peace. We never fired a bullet or dropped a bomb at anyone,” he told The Washington Post in 2014.
But peace was not always easily maintained, and a perceived lack of strength in dealing with bad actors may have contributed to the lopsided defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980. is high.
The final 14 months of his presidency were marked by the Iran hostage crisis. After the country's revolution, the new government took 52 Americans hostage. Carter was unable to retrieve the captured Americans or negotiate their release. In apparent disdain, Iran finally released 52 people 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 November 9, 1977. (Ham Images/Universal Images Group)
And while Mr. Carter launched two government bureaucracies, the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, and has since become a popular target of Republicans, the national energy shortage also hurt his tenure. Footage of gas pipes and high gas prices is a seminal feature of nearly every documentary and discussion of the late 1970s.
Citing internal and external issues, Sen. Ted Kennedy took the unusual step of challenging Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination. Carter narrowly survived the battle, but he was not as lucky as he was in November 1980, when Reagan won 44 states and won the presidency.
From left to right: Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, and former President Jimmy Carter. (HUM Images/Universal Images Group, Getty Images)
Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn celebrate 75th wedding anniversary
After leaving the White House, Carter, the author of 28 books, was appointed a distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta and founded the Carter Center, a nonprofit focused on domestic and international public policy. Carter told The Associated Press that he has had the “best time” of his life since founding the organization in 1982.
“This beautiful place has set the moral and ethical standards of what a superpower like America should be,” Carter said of the center in October.
Recalling the manual labor of his youth on the Plains, Carter was often seen volunteering and fundraising for Habitat for Humanity, helping build homes for the poor.
Former President Jimmy Carter is pictured before the game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Cincinnati Bengals at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta on September 30, 2018. (Scott Cunningham/Getty Images)
Mr. Carter also served as a member of the Elders, a group of independent world leaders no longer in politics that previously included South African President Nelson Mandela, Irish President Mary Robinson and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. .
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Carter, who served as a deacon at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, enjoyed fishing, running, and woodworking in his spare time.
Carter is survived by four children, 12 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
