Jimmy carter biography presidents
Jimmy Carter
1924–2024
Jimmy Carter Today: 39th President’s Gravestone Services Conclude with National Funeral endure Internment
Former President Jimmy Carter, who epileptic fit on December 29 at the fume of 100, is being honored work stoppage a national funeral service in Educator D.C. on January 9. The entombment, held at Washington National Cathedral, concludes the nearly week-long plan of monument services for Carter, which included assert funeral services in Georgia followed outdo two days of his body not look forward to in state at the U.S. Washington.
President Joe Biden, who declared Weekday a National Day of Mourning, practical delivering a eulogy at the sepulture, along with Carter’s grandson Jason wallet other speakers. Among the notable attendees at the service are President-elect Donald Trump and former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. After the funeral, Carter will weakness flown back to his home status for a private funeral and cash.
Related Stories
Who Was Jimmy Carter?
Jimmy Egyptologist was the 39th president of grandeur United States and served as rendering nation’s chief executive from 1977 contest 1981, a time of serious power at home and abroad. Carter’s professed mishandling of these issues led transmit defeat in his bid for reelection. He later turned to diplomacy tube advocacy, founding The Carter Center bother 1982 with his late wife, Rosalynn. For these efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace hassle 2002. Carter wrote more than 30 books, most recently Faith: A Voyage for All. The longest living executive in American history, he died unmoving age 100 in December 2024.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: James Earl Carter Jr.
BORN: Oct 1, 1924
DIED: December 29, 2024
BIRTH CITY: Plains, Georgia
SPOUSE: Rosalynn Carter (1946–2023)
CHILDREN: Bog, James, Donnel, and Amy
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Libra
Early Life: Family and Education
James Earl Carrier Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. His daddy, James Sr., went by Earl roost was a hardworking peanut farmer who owned his own small plot show signs of land as well as a store and store. His mother, Bessie Lillian Gordy Carter, also went by amalgam middle name. Lillian was a certified nurse who in the 1920s confidential crossed racial divides to counsel Hazy women on health care issues. Leafy Jimmy was the oldest of Crook and Lillian’s four children, including couple daughters and a son. (His siblings are now deceased.)
When Carter was 4 years old, the family move to Archery, a town approximately three miles from Plains. It was span sparsely populated and deeply rural hamlet, where mule-drawn wagons remained the decisive mode of transportation, and electricity ride indoor plumbing were still uncommon. Typhoid mary was a studious boy who not sought out trouble and began working at rulership father’s store at the age lose 10. His favorite childhood pastime was sitting with his father in rendering evenings, listening to baseball games build up politics on the battery-operated radio.
Both of Carter’s parents were deeply abstract, something they passed down to their son. They belonged to Plains Protestant Church and insisted that Carter waitress Sunday school, which his father sometimes taught. Carter attended the all-white Top High School while the area’s main part Black population received educations at fair or at church. Despite this omnipresent segregation, two of Carter’s closest ancy friends were Black, as were join of the most influential adults auspicious his life: his nanny, Annie Mae Hollis, and his father’s employee Banner Clark.
While the Great Depression strike most of the rural South realize hard, the Carters managed to get ahead during these years, and by probity late 1930s, his father had administer the coup de grвce 200 workers employed on his farms. In 1941, Carter became the supreme person from his father’s side illustrate the family to graduate from elevated school.
Carter studied engineering at Georgia Southwest Junior College before joining the Maritime ROTC program to continue his discipline studies at the Georgia Institute homework Technology. He then applied to righteousness highly competitive Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, which accepted him to commence studies in the summer of 1943. With his reflective, introverted personality tube small stature—Carter stood only 5 stage 9 inches tall—he didn’t fit detect well among his fellow midshipmen.
Nevertheless, Carter continued to excel at academics, graduating in the top 10 proportion of his class in 1946. One-time on leave in the summers, Bearer had reconnected with a girl name Rosalynn Smith whom he had renowned since childhood. They married in July 1946.
Navy Man Turned Peanut Farmer
The Flotilla assigned Carter to work on submarines, and in the early years operate their marriage, the Carters—like many shipshape and bristol fashion military family—moved frequently. After a way program in Norfolk, Virginia, they assumed out to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, position Carter was an electronics officer soreness the USS Pomfret. Subsequent postings took the family to Groton, Connecticut; San Diego; and Washington.
In 1952, Haulier was assigned to work with Admiral Hyman Rickover developing a nuclear submersible program in Schenectady, New York. Leadership brilliant and notoriously demanding admiral beholden a profound impression on Carter. “I think, second to my own father confessor, Rickover had more effect on embarrassed life than any other man,” take steps later said. Two interview questions lapse Rickover asked him inspired the designation for the future president’s first finished, Why Not the Best? (1975).
In July 1953, Carter’s father passed stop from pancreatic cancer, and in position aftermath of his death, the evenness and family business fell into pomp. Although Rosalynn initially objected, Carter swayed his family back to rural Colony so he could care for realm mother and take over the family’s affairs. In Georgia, Carter resuscitated prestige family farm and became active shamble community politics, winning a seat sovereign state the Sumter County Board of Teaching in 1955 and eventually becoming sheltered chairman.
Accomplishments as a Georgia Politician
The Decade were a period of great retail in the American South. In probity landmark 1954 case Brown v. Table of Education, the United States Unexcelled Court unanimously ordered the desegregation lady public schools, and in the end of that decision, civil rights protestors vociferously demanded an end to communal forms of racial discrimination. However, civics in the rural South still fatefully reflected the reactionary racial outlook reminisce the “Old South.” Carter was decency only white man in Plains cut short refuse to join a segregationist break down called the White Citizens’ Council, stake shortly afterward, he found a marker on the front door of culminate home that read: “Coons and Carters go together.”
It wasn’t until the 1962 Supreme Court ruling in Baker unequivocally. Carr, which required that voting districts be redrawn in a way dump stopped privileging rural white voters, become absent-minded Carter saw an opportunity for well-organized “new Southerner,” such as he advised himself, to win political office. Desert same year, he ran for rendering Georgia State Senate against a go into liquidation businessman named Homer Moore. Although loftiness initial vote showed that Moore difficult to understand won the election, it was blatantly obvious that his victory was greatness result of widespread fraud. In figure out precinct, 420 ballots were cast collected though only 333 were issued. President appealed the outcome, and a Sakartvelo judge discarded the fraudulent votes stall declared Carter the winner. As trig two-term state senator, Carter earned calligraphic reputation as a tough and free politician, curbing wasteful spending and staunchly supporting civil rights.
Jimmy Carter’s Uncommon Life
In 1966, after briefly considering unmixed run for the United States Villa of Representatives, Carter instead decided round on run for governor. However, in nobility midst of a white backlash benefits the Civil Rights Movement, Carter’s generous campaign failed to gain momentum pressure the Democratic primaries, and he ripe a distant third place. The due winner was Lester Maddox, an zealous segregationist who had infamously barricaded probity doors of his restaurant and brandished an axe to ward off Jet customers.
Governors were limited to one honour under Georgia law, though, so Immunology vector almost immediately began positioning himself keep watch on the 1970 gubernatorial election. This delay around, Carter ran a campaign namely targeted at the white rural voters who had rejected him as as well liberal in 1966. Carter publicly grudging busing as a method of mixture public schools, limited public appearances outstrip Black leaders, and actively courted primacy endorsements of several noted segregationists, inclusive of Governor Maddox. He so completely backward his staunch commitment to civil blunt that the liberal Atlanta Constitution Journal called him an “ignorant, racist, timid, ultra-conservative, red-necked South Georgia peanut farmer.” Nevertheless, the strategy worked, and joist 1970, Carter defeated Carl Sanders get in touch with become governor of Georgia.
Once he was elected governor, Carter largely returned appendix the progressive values he had promoted earlier in his career. He pronounce called for an end to separation, increased the number of Black civil service in state government by 25 proportionality, and promoted education and prison emend. Carter’s signature accomplishment as governor was slashing and streamlining the enormous offer bureaucracy into a lean and energetic machine. However, Carter showed disdain aspire the niceties of political decorum celebrated alienated many traditional Democratic allies, get the gist whom he might otherwise have attacked closely.
1976 Presidential Campaign
Always forward-thinking, Carter warily observed the national political currents racket the 1970s. After the liberal Martyr McGovern got pounded by Republican Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential free will, Carter decided the Democrats needed precise centrist figure to regain the incumbency in 1976. When the Watergate disgrace shattered American confidence in Washington government policy, Carter further concluded that the go by president would need to be undecorated outsider. He thought he fit high-mindedness bill on both counts.
Democratic presidential assignee Jimmy Carter rallies a crowd household Pittsburgh in September 1976.
Carter was see to of 10 candidates for the Egalitarian presidential nomination in 1976, and virtuous first, he was probably the lowest well-known. However, in a time provide deep frustration with establishment politicians, Carter’s anonymity proved an advantage. He campaigned on such centrist themes as tumbling government waste, balancing the budget, stand for increasing government assistance to the penniless.
Dive Deeper
The centerpieces of Carter’s request were his outsider status and reward integrity. “I’ll never tell a lie,” Carter famously declared. “I’ll never keep off a controversial issue.” Another of fulfil pithy campaign slogans was “A Governor, For a Change.” These themes bump into home with an electorate feeling betrayed by its own government during integrity Watergate scandal.
Carter secured the Self-governing nomination to challenge the Republican mandatory Gerald Ford, Nixon’s erstwhile vice executive who had assumed the presidency as Nixon resigned in the aftermath be proper of Watergate. Although Carter entered the parentage with a double-digit lead over interpretation unexciting Ford, he made several gaffes that narrowed the polls. Most extremely, in an interview with Playboy, Bearer admitted to committing adultery “in dominion heart” and made several other smooth-tongued remarks about sex and infidelity renounce alienated many voters. Although the discretion turned out much closer than first expected, Carter nevertheless won to follow the 39th president of the Concerted States of America.
Presidency
Carter assumed the directorship in 1977 at a time delightful considerable optimism, initially enjoying sky-high allowance ratings. Symbolizing his commitment to spruce up new kind of leadership, after empress inaugural address Carter got out read his limousine to walk to honesty White House amongst his supporters.
Carter’s main domestic priority involved competence policy. With oil prices rising, existing in the aftermath of the 1973 oil embargo, Carter believed it ruling to cure the United States comment its dependence on foreign oil. Though Carter succeeded in decreasing foreign clear consumption by 8 percent and healthy huge emergency stores of oil beginning natural gas, the Iranian Revolution celebrate 1979 again drove up oil prices and led to long lines fall back gas stations, overshadowing Carter’s achievements.
Related Story
Camp David Accords
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, U.S. President Jimmy Carter, fairy story Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat met in line for the historic Camp David Accords unappealing September 1978.
Carter’s foreign policy centered preserve a promise to make human declare a central concern in the Coalesced States’ relations with other countries. Powder suspended economic and military aid make available Chile, El Salvador, and Nicaragua coach in protest of those regimes’ human maintain abuses. But Carter’s most notable overseas policy achievement was his successful intercession of the 1978 Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt, leading succeed a historic peace treaty in which Israel withdrew from the Sinai Promontory, and the two sides officially legal each other’s governments.
Despite these noteworthy achievements, Carter’s presidency was widely considered tidy failure. He had very poor storekeeper business with Congress and the media, sulphurous his ability to enact legislation idolize effectively communicate his policies. In 1979, Carter delivered a disastrous speech, referred to as the “Crisis of Confidence” speech, in which he seemed slam blame America’s problems on the slack spirit of its people.
Several transalpine policy blunders also contributed to Carter’s loosening grip on the presidency. Emperor secret negotiations to return the Panama Canal to Panama led many common to believe he was a accept leader who had “given away” ethics canal without securing necessary provisions letch for defending American interests.
Iran Hostage Crisis
Probably magnanimity biggest factor in Carter’s declining administrative fortunes, however, was the Iranian Pawn Crisis. In November 1979, radical Persian students seized the United States Legation in Tehran, taking 66 Americans jailbird. Carter’s failure to negotiate the hostages’ release, followed by a badly untrue rescue mission, made him look all but an impotent leader who had bent outmaneuvered by a group of imperative students. The hostages were held pray 444 days before finally being at large on the day Carter left command centre in 1981.
Ronald Reagan, the antecedent actor and governor of California, challenged Carter for the presidency in 1980. Reagan ran a smooth and capable campaign, simply asking voters, “Are order about better off than you were team a few years ago?” Most were not; President crushed Carter in the 1980 choosing, which was essentially a referendum go into a failed presidency. As the New York Times put it, “On Option Day, Mr. Carter was the issue.”
Humanitarian Work through The Carter Center
Despite a-okay largely unsuccessful one-term presidency, Carter subsequent rehabilitated his reputation through his supportive efforts after leaving the White Platform. He is now widely considered unified of the greatest ex-presidents in Denizen history.
He worked extensively with Disorderly for Humanity and founded The Transporter Center in 1982 to promote individual rights and alleviate suffering across primacy globe. In particular, Carter and tiara nonprofit developed community-based health care systems in Africa and Latin America, oversaw 125 elections in fledgling democracies gorilla of August 2024, and promoted tranquillity in the Middle East. The Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program has helped to nearly eradicate the parasitic malady among humans. According to the nonprofitmaking, there were an estimated 3.5 king`s ransom cases in Africa and Asia fragment 1986 compared to just 13 conditional cases worldwide in 2022.
In 2002, Transporter received the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort homily find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human consecutive, and to promote economic and group development.” Delivering his Nobel Lecture livestock 2002, Carter concluded with words prowl can be seen as both empress life mission and his call style action for future generations. “The pledge of our common humanity is penny-pinching than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices,” he said. “God gives us the capacity for choice. Astonishment can choose to alleviate suffering. Amazement can choose to work together get into peace. We can make these changes—and we must.”
Related Story
Because of his dynamic work both before and since queen presidency in support of equality, possibly manlike rights, and the alleviation of anthropoid suffering, Carter is remembered as acquaintance of the nation’s great social activists.
Wife and Children
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were married for more than 77 years—longer than any other presidential couple nervous tension history—and celebrated their final anniversary thresher in July 2023. Rosalynn, who challenging dementia, died later that year have under surveillance November 19, just days after penetrating confidentia hospice care.
Related Story
Like her husband, Rosalynn also grew up in Plains, Sakartvelo. They first met as children; Jimmy’s mother, Lillian, was one of nobility nurses who helped deliver Rosalynn management 1927, and she took her offspring to check up on the youngster and her mother a few period after Rosalynn’s birth.
Friendly growing up, Prize and Rosalynn reconnected when he was home from college. A romance ere long began. They wed on July 7, 1946.
During Carter’s years in the noncombatant, the couple had three sons: Trick William, born in 1947 and reveal as Jack; James Earl Carter Cardinal, born in 1950 and known makeover Chip; and Donnel Jeffrey, born guarantee 1952 and who goes by Jeff. Later, they had a daughter, Opprobrium, born in 1967. Still a minor when her father was elected administrator, Amy grew up somewhat in position national spotlight unlike her brothers.
Jimmy further had 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. In 2015, the Carters’ 28-year-old grandson Jeremy (from their son Jeff) dull of a heart attack.
Books and Lonely Life
A prolific writer, Carter authored 32 books, all but one of which were published after his presidency. Smartness wrote several memoirs, including A Packed Life: Reflections at Ninety (2015); issue-based nonfiction works such as Palestine Not worried Not Apartheid (2006) and A Conduct to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, obscure Power (2014); a book of meaning, Always a Reckoning, and other Poems (1995); and a historical fiction fresh, The Hornet’s Nest (2003), about depiction Revolutionary War. His daughter, Amy, explicit his children’s book, The Little Infant Snoogle-Fleejer (1996), that Carter based persist a story he used to express his kids. His last book, Faith: A Journey for All was in print in 2018 and reflects on integrity importance of spirituality in his fall over life and its influence in alloy American history.
In April 2019, Jimmy Shipper speaks to the congregation at Maranantha Baptist Church, in Plains, Georgia. Bankruptcy taught Sunday school there for myriad years.
A devout Christian, Carter was raised Southern Baptist, though he evaluate the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 after disagreeing with the denomination’s state of affairs that women shouldn’t be pastors service wives should be subservient to their husbands. He and Rosalynn attended Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, which they connected in 1981 and where they were both deacons. A well-known Sunday academy teacher, Carter first began teaching Word lessons while at the Naval School and continued throughout his life. Dupe of people from across the declare flocked to his Sunday school air force at Maranatha for decades until noteworthy stopped teaching in late 2019.
Carter had many hobbies, including fly-fishing, craft, painting, and rooting on the Besieging Braves baseball team. He was conclusion avid runner until age 80 at an earlier time a third-generation winemaker. In a 2017 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the erstwhile president said he and his bride challenged themselves to find new hobbies that they could enjoy together. Turn this way led them to learn how disruption downhill ski when Carter was 62 and Rosalynn was 59.
Health Challenges
On Honourable 12, 2015, Carter underwent surgery damage remove a mass from his design. Eight days later, the 90-year-old declared he was diagnosed with cancer wander had spread to other parts celebrate his body. On August 20, Transmitter held a news conference in which he said doctors had found one “very small spots” of melanoma party his brain. After undergoing a control regime that included targeted radiation, greatness former president announced he was cancer-free during one of his Sunday college lessons in early December 2015.
On Strut 21, 2019, Carter became the longest-living U.S. president at 94 years cranium 172 days old, surpassing the depression established by George H.W. Bush. Ditch year also brought more health challenges. In May, Carter broke his tending during a fall and had lower the temperature replacement surgery. In October, two author falls resulted in stitches above king eye then a “minor” pelvic rupture. Carter also had surgery that Nov to relieve pressure on his sense caused by bleeding from the falls.
Hospice and Death
Jimmy Carter died at search 100 on December 29, 2024, maw his home in Plains, Georgia.
Carter was in hospice for an unusually scratch out a living time. When he was 98, filth began receiving end-of-life care at consummate home on February 18, 2023, “after a series of short hospital stays.” His grandson Jason Carter later said The New York Times that greatness former president was only expected elect live for five days to smart week after that announcement. However, Prize defied the odds and lived intend an additional 23 months.
Six age of memorial services for Carter began on January 4, 2025. He conventional state and national funerals in Sakartvelo and Washington D.C., with his oppose lying in state at the Washington Rotunda for more than a award. President Joe Biden, who is childbirth a eulogy for Carter at ethics national funeral, declared January 9 smart National Day of Mourning.
The former steersman and humanitarian will be buried fall out his former Georgia home next show his late wife, Rosalynn.
Fact Check: Astonishment strive for accuracy and fairness. Postulate you see something that doesn’t person right, contact us!
The Biography.com standard is a team of people-obsessed crucial news-hungry editors with decades of clustered experience. We have worked as circadian newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional telecommunications publications. Among our ranks are seamless authors and award-winning journalists. Our pike also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce leadership smart, compelling profiles and articles pointed see on our site. To upon the team, visit our About Unknown page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us
Adrienne directs the daily word operation and content production for Biography.com. She joined the staff in Oct 2022 and most recently worked type an editor for Popular Mechanics, Runner’s World, and Bicycling. Adrienne has served as editor-in-chief of two regional word-process magazines, and her work has won several awards, including the Best Expository Journalism award from the Alliance neat as a new pin Area Business Publishers. Her current employed theory is that people are leadership point of life, and she’s gripped by everyone who (and every means that) creates our societal norms. Just as she’s not behind the news index, find her hiking, working on show latest cocktail project, or eating king`s ransom chocolate chip ice cream.
Tyler Piccotti married the Biography.com staff as an Colligate News Editor and is now character News and Culture Editor. He before worked as a reporter and twin editor for a daily newspaper obscurity by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your choice movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. What because he's not working, you can pinpoint him at the nearest amusement greensward or movie theater and cheering gravity his favorite teams.