Former President Jimmy Carter died “peacefully” at his home in Plains, Ga., surrounded by family on Sunday at the age of 100, the Carter Center announced.
He leaves behind a legacy as a lifelong humanitarian, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, and a one-term presidency that was mired in domestic challenges and a mixed foreign policy.
Carter’s term in office from 1977 to 1981 was defined by what he described in a 1979 speech as a “crisis of confidence” and what others termed “malaise”: high unemployment, double-digit inflation and slow economic growth.
In foreign policy, he presided over some of the most significant developments of the Cold War, and many of his decisions remain controversial. In 1977, Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty, which handed over control of the U.S. Panama Canal Zone to the Panamanians in 1979 and the canal itself to them in 1999. (On Dec. 21, President-elect Donald Trump accused Panama of violating that treaty, saying that if Panama did not change its behavior he would “demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full.”)
In 1978, Carter led the Camp David negotiations that made peace between Israel and Egypt—the first peace treaty establishing relations between the Jewish state and one of its Arab neighbors.
The Iranian revolution and the subsequent oil crisis and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—all in 1979—posed a sufficient threat to U.S. energy security to prompt Carter to announce that Washington would respond militarily to threats to its interests in the Persian Gulf under the eponymous “Carter Doctrine.” (That doctrine remains a basis for U.S. policy in the region.)
Carter formally severed relations with Iran in 1980, five months after the start of the Iran hostage crisis, in which student revolutionaries seized the U.S. embassy compound and took 66 American hostages, holding them for 444 days until the day Carter left office on Jan. 20, 1981.
Amid the domestic and foreign policy crises, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in a landslide in 1980, winning 44 states and carrying the popular vote by 10 points.
In his nearly 44 years post-presidency, he devoted himself to humanitarian projects through the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project.
The Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee awarded Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “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.”
Carter’s post-presidential forays into international politics proved more controversial. In 2006, he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which critics denounced as being biased against Israel and insufficiently condemnatory of terrorist groups.
“The book contains numerous distortions of history and interpretation and apparently, outright fabrications as well,” the Central Conference of American Rabbis, a Reform Judaism rabbinical organization, wrote in 2007. “Its use of the term ‘apartheid’ to describe conditions in the West Bank serves only to demonize and delegitimize Israel in the eyes of the world.”
Carter defended the book, saying that the title was not intended to accuse Israel of being an “apartheid” state.
“I’ve never alleged that the framework of apartheid existed within Israel at all and that what does exist in the West Bank is based on trying to take Palestinian land and not on racism,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in 2007.
U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden stated that “America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian.”
“With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless and always advocate for the least among us,” the president and first lady stated. “He saved, lifted and changed the lives of people all across the globe.”
Biden added that he was ordering that an official state funeral be held in Washington for the former president.
Trump stated that “those of us who have been fortunate to have served as president understand this is a very exclusive club, and only we can relate to the enormous responsibility of leading the greatest nation in history.”
“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. For that, we all owe him a debt of gratitude,” Trump stated. “Melania and I are thinking warmly of the Carter family and their loved ones during this difficult time. We urge everyone to keep them in their hearts and prayers.”
The American Jewish Committee recognized Carter’s mixed legacy in and out of office for many American Jews and supporters of Israel, including “strained” relations with American Jews after he published Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
“While AJC had some profound disagreements with President Carter about the Middle East, especially in the decades after he left the White House, his key role in creating the historic 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty will always be remembered with appreciation,” the AJC stated. “The first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country came about in large measure due to Carter’s personal intervention in the process, engaging Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin for nearly two weeks at Camp David in 1978.”
“Carter’s support for the freedom of Jews in the Soviet Union, signing of legislation in 1977 banning American corporations and individuals from complying with the Arab boycott of Israel and establishing in 1978 the President’s Commission on the Holocaust, which led to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1993, have had decisive, positive long-term impact,” the AJC stated. “Carter’s volunteer work since 1984 for Habitat for Humanity,” it added, “exemplified his lifelong concern for the dignity and well-being of the less fortunate.”
B’nai B’rith International stated, “We note the passing of former President Jimmy Carter, broker of the Camp David accords and later a harsh critic of Israel. Peace between Israel and Egypt presaged a broader Middle East peace that Israelis have formed with other Arab countries more recently.”
‘Deep, abiding faith’
James Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., in 1924 to James Earl Carter Sr., a local businessman and politician, and Bessie Lillian Carter, a nurse.
Carter graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1947 and served as a nuclear submarine officer until retiring from active duty in 1953 when he returned home to run the family peanut farm and packaging business. He married Rosalynn Smith in 1946 and the two celebrated their 77th anniversary in 2023, before Rosalynn’s death that year, aged 96.
The future president entered local politics in the early 1960s as a quiet, pro-civil rights southern Democrat at a time when the party dominated the state on a pro-segregation platform and served two terms in the state’s senate from 1963 to 1967.
After a failed gubernatorial bid in 1966 against the staunch segregationist Lester Maddox, Carter won the governor’s mansion in 1970 and declared in his inaugural address that “the time for racial discrimination is over.”
Four months after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency amid the Watergate scandal, Carter announced his intention to run for president in December 1974. Though not widely known nationally at the time, Carter won a crowded Democratic primary and narrowly defeated President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election.
In his 1977 inaugural address, Carter quoted from the prophet Micah, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” according to a Carter Center tribute site. “For many who knew and worked with him, those words aptly summarize his life of faith and service.”
Carter “was a deeply religious man, a Baptist lay leader, teaching Sunday school most of his adult life while at the same time adamantly adhering to the separation of church and state,” according to the center. “For three decades, he and Mrs. Carter spent one week a year helping build housing for the poor through Habitat for Humanity.” (Biden stated that Carter “was guided by a deep and abiding faith—in God, in America and in humanity.”)
“He was the author of 32 books” and “a skilled woodworker, accomplished painter and an active outdoorsman, enjoying fishing, hunting and birding throughout his life,” the center added.
Carter entered hospice care in 2023 following a cancer diagnosis. The former president is survived by four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren and was preceded in death by his wife, Rosalynn, and one grandchild.
Funeral observances for the former president will be held in Atlanta and Washington. The final arrangements, including public observances, are still pending.
