PLAINS, Georgia, Dec. 29, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, rights activist, professor and Sunday School teacher, has died. He was 100.
His death was confirmed in a brief statement from the Carter Center, which said he died this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.
Carter had been in hospice care at his home in Plains, Ga., since February. His wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter, died Nov. 19 at age 96. The frail former president attended her memorial services in a wheelchair.
Jimmy Carter, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, was a member of a Georgia farming family and served as a state senator and governor before defeating incumbent Gerald Ford in a close 1976 presidential election. He served one term, from January 1977 to January 1981.
Before going to Washington and while heading his family’s peanut-growing business, Carter became a staunch opponent of racial segregation and an outspoken civil rights advocate.
Running for president as an outsider, he prepared to usher in an era of truth and political transparency after the Watergate scandal that forced President Richard Nixon to resign. Carter won the popular vote by 50.1% to 48% and the Electoral College by 297 votes to 240.
Running for re-election in 1980, he lost in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan, gaining just 49 electoral votes to Reagan’s 489.
Carter’s presidency has largely been regarded historically as a disappointment, although facilitating the 1978 signing of the Camp David Accords by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat was considered a success as a framework for peace in the Middle East.
After long negotiations, Carter also signed the SALT II treaty, reducing the number of nuclear missiles, with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev in 1979.
The 1979 capture of 52 Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by supporters of the Iranian Revolution led to the decline of U.S. global prestige and factored into Carter’s loss of the 1980 election. The hostages were held for 444 days and were released on the day Carter left the White House. The situation included a failed rescue mission by U.S. troops in 1980 in which eight U.S. military personnel died.
Because of Soviet military involvement in Afghanistan, Carter ordered a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow; the Soviet Union did not leave Afghanistan until 1989.
The Carter administration also was faced with an economic crisis of low growth and rising inflation, as well as the first public manifestations of an energy crisis that included rising gasoline prices and a national awareness of the value of energy conservation.
After his presidency, Carter returned to Georgia and in 1982 founded The Carter Center, an Atlanta-based nongovernmental organization dedicated to peace and human rights. It has monitored elections across the world, intervened on human rights issues, and its efforts have led to the near-eradication of Guinea worm disease. Carter’s work, through the Carter Center, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
He wrote 23 books since leaving the White House, and maintained a high profile largely through involvement in charitable work that included Habitat for Humanity, a global homebuilding initiative. Carter often was seen wielding a hammer as the organization built houses for the poor. A devout Christian, he also regularly conducted Sunday school classes at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga.
“When I teach Sunday school, people come from all over the world to hear my Sunday school lesson,” Carter told the Tennessean in October 2019. “And they came from not only every country in the world, but they also come from every faith. So we’ve got Buddhists and Muslims and Jews, as well as Christians, Protestants and Catholics. So I think everybody needs to treat each other as equals, and therefore honor the principles of human rights.”
Carter also served as a distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta, where he finally received tenure at age 94 — 37 years after he began teaching there.
Health issues started to impact his heavy schedule in 2015. On Aug. 3 of that year, Carter underwent surgery for liver cancer, and nine days later announced that the cancer had spread to other parts of his body. On Aug. 20, he revealed that melanoma had been found on his liver and in his brain, and he underwent immunotherapy and radiation therapy.
“I just thought I had a few weeks left, but I was surprisingly at ease,” Carter said at a news conference after he started treatment. “I’ve had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence.”
On Dec. 6 that year, Carter said in a statement to the media that body scans showed cancer no longer was present.
Carter continued his philanthropic efforts, often helping to build Habitat for Humanity homes, as well as taking political stands that included recent calls for immigration reform. His health remained stable until May 2019, when he broke his hip in Plains while leaving his house to go turkey hunting.
He required hip replacement surgery, though the Carter Center quipped that his “main concern is that turkey season ends this week, and he has not reached his limit.”
Carter fell again at home Oct. 6, 2019 and required 14 stitches above his left eye. Nevertheless, he went to a Habitat for Humanity Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project later that week, wearing bandages on his face and sporting a black eye.
He fell again at home two weeks later, suffering a minor pelvic fracture.
Carter then was admitted to Emory University Hospital on Nov. 10, 2019 for a procedure to relieve pressure on the brain caused by a subdural hematoma — a collection of blood outside the brain caused by the falls. He was released two days later, with a spokesman saying there were no complications from surgery.
Carter was admitted to Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, Ga., the next month to treat a urinary tract infection.
Carter became the nation’s longest-lived president on March 22, 2019, surpassing George H.W. Bush‘s lifespan. Bush died in November 2018, having lived 94 years and 171 days. Carter celebrated his 99th birthday on Oct. 1.
Over the last several years, Carter remained generally quiet about U.S. politics. But in 2019, he suggested that Donald Trump was an illegitimate president and likely would not have been elected without Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
In his 2016 book, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, Carter wrote, “Our government should be known to be opposed to war, dedicated to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means. … We should be seen as the unswerving champion of human rights, both among our own citizens and within the global community.
“America should be the focal point around which other nations can rally against threats to the quality of our common environment. We should be willing to lead by example in sharing our great wealth with those in need. Our society should provide equal opportunity for all citizens and assure that they are provided with the basic necessities of life.”
Carter outlived his two sisters and one brother, and is survived by three sons — Jack, Chip, Jeff — a daughter, Amy, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. A grandson died in 2015.
