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Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and later winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center announced Sunday.
He died peacefully Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family, the human rights organization he founded said in a statement.
Carter is the longest-lived president in U.S. history, celebrating his 100th birthday on October 1st of this year.
His death comes more than a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, passed away in November 2023, and more than a year and a half after the former president entered hospice care from his hospital bed. Visited in February.
“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 Sunday.
The announcement comes just weeks before Donald Trump begins his second term in the White House. The Carter Center announced in October that Carter, a lifelong Democrat, had cast a mail-in ballot for Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris.
US President Joe Biden joined the outpouring of tributes, saying Carter “saved, uplifted and changed the lives of people around the world.”
“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,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude. ”
Mr. Carter’s presidency was marred by rising inflation and the Iran hostage crisis. In the 1980 election, the Democratic Party lost reelection to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide.
But in the decades since leaving office, Mr. Carter has won widespread praise for his extensive humanitarian work at home and abroad. He founded the Carter Center, an influential democracy promotion and human rights organization, and became one of the most prominent volunteers for the affordable housing charity Habitat for Humanity.
Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his “work in peace negotiations, the human rights movement, and his work in social welfare.”
Carter disappeared from public view for several years before his death. He traveled to Washington in 2018 to attend George H.W. Bush’s state funeral and endorsed Biden as the 2020 presidential candidate in an audio message played at the Democratic National Convention.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in 2021. In November 2023, the Bidens attended a memorial service for former President Rosalynn Carter at Emory University in Atlanta.
The Carter Center announced in February 2023 that “after a series of brief hospitalizations,” the former president had decided to abandon treatment and enter hospice care at home. Carter was undergoing cancer treatment and had suffered several falls in recent years.
In May 2024, Jason Carter said his grandfather was “very physically limited” and “near the end.” He also gave a nod to the former president’s religious beliefs, saying, “There’s a part of your faith journey that you only live out at the very end. I think he was in that realm.”
After losing reelection in 1980, Carter returned to his modest two-bedroom ranch house in Plains, Georgia, a small town of about 800 people, and taught Sunday school at a local church. In his 90s.
Both the former president and his wife were born and raised in the Plains.
The Carter Center announced Sunday that Jimmy Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in a small town about 150 miles south of Atlanta, after a state funeral in Washington and a public event in Atlanta.
