Jimmy Carter died Sunday at the age of 100, his foundation announced. The Georgia peanut farmer gained wide respect in the decades after he left office for his humanitarian work.
Jimmy Carter served as president from 1977 to 1981. Image: Bettmann Archive
Key Facts
Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, while surrounded by his family and is survived by his four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, the Carter Center announced.
Carter rose from relative obscurity—he served just one term as Georgia governor and four years in the Georgia state Senate—to capture the Democratic presidential nomination in 1976, two years after President Richard Nixon resigned in scandal, before narrowly defeating President Gerald Ford to win the White House.
Carter’s presidency is remembered for double-digit inflation, the 1979 energy crisis and the Iran hostage crisis, and he lost in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
While critics recall the economic strife under Carter, he scored foreign policy successes during his four years in office, including the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt and the normalization of relations with China.
Carter’s White House tenure was bookended by two seismic events: on his second day in office, Carter pardoned all Vietnam War draft dodgers, and during the final hours of his presidency, he helped negotiate the release of American hostages in Iran.
The Georgia Democrat also dealt with the fallout from the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and finalized the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, which gave control of the Panama Canal back to Panama.
Deeply unpopular when he left office, his final approval rating was around 35%—his average low approval rating (45.5%) is better than only Trump and Truman—Carter went on to win acclaim as one of America’s most impactful ex-presidents for his years of work championing human rights issues across the globe through the Carter Center and helping to build thousands of homes for Habitat For Humanity.
Crucial Quote
In 1976, Carter ran as an outsider who campaigned on Americans’ frustrations with Nixon and his corruption.
“There are a lot of things I would not do to be president,” Carter said during the presidential campaign in 1976. “I will never make a misleading statement. I will never lie to you.”
Ranked around 12th in early polling, Carter leapfrogged former Alabama Governor George Wallace and former nominee Hubert Humphrey to win the 1976 Democratic primary.
Surprising Fact
Carter is the only president in history to serve a full term in office and not appoint a Supreme Court justice, and the only president to have lived in subsidized housing before he took office.
Tangent
In 2019, Carter suggested then-President Donald Trump was an illegitimate president “because the Russians interfered on his behalf.” Trump, responding to the former president’s comments, said Carter was a “nice man, terrible president.”
Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, did not attend President Joe Biden’s inauguration ceremony after spending most of their time at home during the pandemic. In October this year, Carter told his family he would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential election, suggesting he was trying to make it to his 100th birthday to cast his ballot. Carter, who remained at his home in hospice care, cast his vote by mail.
Big Number
4,390. That’s how many homes Carter built for Habitat For Humanity during his lifetime, according to the organization.
Key Background
Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, in 1924. His father, James Earl Carter Sr., was a farmer who was heavily involved in local politics, while his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, was a nurse. Carter graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1946, before marrying Rosalynn Smith.
After graduating from the Naval Academy, Carter served on submarines, and was later commissioned to work on an upstart nuclear submarine program. Following his father’s death in 1953, Carter received a release from active duty to return to Plains to run the family peanut farm. Carter then got involved in local politics, serving on the Sumter County school board, and was elected to the Georgia state Senate in 1963. He ran for Georgia governor in 1966 and lost, before he ran successfully in 1970.
Carter’s mixed record on race has drawn scrutiny since leaving office. During the 1960s, Carter remained mostly on the sidelines of civil rights issues as seismic events took place in his home state. During his 1970 run for governor, Carter employed controversial dog whistle campaign tactics to win the support of conservative rural voters, an issue he was uncomfortable talking about even at the end of his life.
In his inaugural speech as governor in 1970, Carter famously told the crowd, “The time for racial discrimination is over,” prompting several supporters to walk out in protest. The speech helped elevate Carter to national attention—he appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1971—which he used as a springboard to run for president in 1976.
As president, Carter changed the makeup of the federal judiciary by tripling the number of minority judges and signed legislation to restrict racist mortgage lending practices. He created two Cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. In 2002, Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “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.”
In February 2023, the Carter Center announced Carter, then 98 years old, had decided to “spend his remaining time at home with his family” and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention. The former president previously suffered from other health issues, including melanoma that spread to his liver and brain in 2015, though doctors announced later that year he was cancer-free. He underwent surgery in 2019 to alleviate pressure on his brain before suffering a minor pelvic fracture and injuring his forehead—requiring 14 stitches—in a series of falls that year.
