This story was originally published by NPR.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States, died Sunday at age 100. The Carter Center announced he died in his hometown of Plains, Ga.
Carter was president from 1977 to 1981, but he was perhaps more famous for the life he led after leaving office. Carter was one of the biggest advocates for peace, democracy and international human rights.
James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr. was born in Plains, Ga., on Oct. 1, 1924, and spent his childhood on a farm just outside that tiny southwest Georgia community. His father was a peanut farmer; his mother, “Miss Lillian,” was a nurse. He was the first president of the United States to be born in a hospital.
“Other than Jimmy Carter, no person from the Deep South since the American Civil War had been elected president,” said Steven Hochman, a longtime assistant to the former president who works for the Carter Center.
Jimmy who?
Growing up on the farm, Carter learned the value of hard work and determination. He qualified for the U.S. Naval Academy and became an engineer, working on submarines. But Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father died.
Back in Plains, he was elected to the Georgia Senate and became the first Georgia governor to speak out against racial discrimination.
A lifelong Democrat like most Southerners at the time, Carter was a political unknown when he began a national campaign in 1974 and was first referred to as “Jimmy Who?“
But a grassroots effort changed that, Hochman said. “He would campaign on the street corners and go to radio stations. Nobody knew who he was except that he was running for president.”
Carter’s friends and family from Georgia, called the Peanut Brigade, traveled to New Hampshire, Iowa and all over the country talking to voters and campaigning for Carter, the dependable Southerner who wanted to be president.
During the campaign, Carter told audiences, “I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the trust of those who have confidence in me, and I will never avoid a controversial issue.”
Carter was elected when the mood of the country was bitter and cynical in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The man from Georgia struck out on a different course on his inauguration day: Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, stepped out of the bulletproof limousine and walked to the White House to demonstrate their connection with the American people.
“It was mainly an attempt to draw a distinction between what he saw as the people’s presidency and the more imperial presidency of Richard Nixon,” said historian Dan Carter (no relation to Jimmy Carter).
The Carter White House
Among Jimmy Carter’s accomplishments were the Camp David Accords, which brought together the prime minister of Israel and the president of Egypt in 1978. They signed peace agreements on the White House lawn, and Carter spoke about the dedication and determination of the leaders who had been enemies for so many years.
The accords led to a peace treaty, but the relationship between the two Mideast countries remained tenuous. While in office, Carter also worked on the SALT II nuclear weapons agreement and signed the Panama Canal treaties, giving control of the canal to Panama.
But Carter’s most difficult challenge was the Iran hostage crisis. Militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979 and took dozens of Americans hostage. People were glued to reports on the crisis for more than a year, as Carter continued to negotiate for the release of the hostages. In 1980, a failed rescue attempt led to the deaths of eight American servicemen.
The administration also battled domestic problems, including an energy crisis and double-digit inflation. Carter held a series of meetings among his Cabinet members that resulted in a blunt television address in 1979 that came to be known as the “malaise” speech.
“It’s clear that the true problems of our nation are much deeper — deeper than gasoline lines or energy shortages, deeper even than inflation or recession. And I realize more than ever that as president, I need your help,” Carter pleaded.
Carter established a federal energy policy. He created the departments of Energy and Education. Still, he lost his bid for reelection by a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan. And it wasn’t until moments after Reagan was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 1981, that the 52 remaining hostages were released. Carter was allowed to welcome them home.
“I had received word officially for the first time that the aircraft carrying the 52 American hostages had cleared Iranian airspace on the first leg of the journey home and that every one of the 52 hostages was alive, was well and free,” Carter said as his voice broke.
Life after Washington
After leaving office, Carter became dedicated to promoting democracy, monitoring elections, building homes with Habitat for Humanity and eradicating disease in some of the world’s poorest countries. In 1982, the president and his wife opened the Carter Center in Atlanta.
In an interview with NPR in 2007, Carter talked about his experiences. “And for the last 25 years, my life could not have been more expansive and unpredictable and adventurous and gratifying,” he said.
In 2002, Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor some said he had earned a quarter century earlier when he negotiated the Camp David Accords. He ended his acceptance speech with a plea for peace.
“War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said.
The former president continued international peace missions throughout his lifetime, meeting with the leaders of countries that some U.S. presidents refused to acknowledge, including North Korea, Nicaragua and Cuba. In 2008, he met with the exiled leader of the militant Islamist group Hamas, despite harsh criticism from the U.S. government.
Historian Dan Carter said that the former president did prove to be a kind of honest broker for peace in many cases and that as Jimmy Carter grew older, he was less afraid of speaking out.
“And his meeting with Hamas, sure it was a provocative thing, but he felt it was the right thing to do,” said Dan Carter.
Jimmy Carter wrote more than 20 books, the most controversial titled Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He was a religious man, attending a Baptist church and teaching Bible school for many years. And he was a statesman — hardworking and plain talking.
The Carter Center’s Hochman said the 39th president was one of the most remarkable leaders in U.S. history. “I think he’ll be remembered as a champion of human rights and peace, both as president and as a former president,” Hochman said.
Carter entered hospice care in February 2023. The longest-lived former president had suffered from a series of health challenges in recent years, including surviving cancer, a broken hip and other recent hospitalizations for a fractured pelvis and a urinary tract infection.
He and Rosalynn celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary in 2023, a few months before she died at the age of 96.
Carter’s wishes were to be buried next to Rosalynn in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
