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Jimmy Carter, the 39th US president who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center said Sunday.
He died peacefully at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, surrounded by his family, the human rights organization he founded said in a statement.
Carter was the longest-serving president in US history, celebrating his 100th birthday on October 1 this year.
His death came more than a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalyn Carter, died in November 2023, and more than a year and a half after the ailing former president entered hospice care in February 2023.
“My father was a hero, not just to me, but to everyone who believed in peace, human rights and selfless love,” Chip Carter, the former president’s son, said Sunday.
The announcement comes just weeks before Donald Trump begins his second term in the White House. The Carter Center said in October that Carter, a lifelong Democrat, had cast his mail-in ballot for Trump opponent Kamala Harris.
carterIran’s own presidential power has been eroded by inflation and the hostage crisis. The Democrat lost re-election in a landslide in 1980 to Republican Ronald Reagan.
Decades after he left office, however, Carter won widespread acclaim at home and abroad for his extensive humanitarian work. He established Carter CenterInfluential pro-democracy and human rights organization, and became the most prominent volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, the affordable housing charity.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for work in peace negotiations, human rights advocacy and social welfare”.
Carter faded from public view in the years following his death. He visited Washington in 2018 to attend the state funeral of George HW Bush and endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 in an audio message played at the Democratic National Convention.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in 2021. Biden attended a memorial service for the former president as well as Rosalyn Carter at Emory University in Atlanta in November 2023.
News of the former president’s death comes more than a year and a half after the Carter Center said in February 2023 that “after a brief hospital stay,” the former president decided to forgo treatment and enter hospice care at home. Carter underwent cancer treatment and suffered several falls in recent years.
In May 2024, Jason Carter said that his grandfather was “really limited physically” and “coming to an end”. He also gave a nod to the former president’s religious beliefs, saying: “There’s a part of that faith journey that you can only live to the very end, and I think he was in that place.”
After losing his re-election bid in 1980, Carter returned to a modest, two-bedroom ranch house in the small town of Plains, Georgia, with a local population of about 800, and taught Sunday school at the local church. In his 90s.
Both the former president and his wife were born and raised in Plains.
Jimmy Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in the small town – about 150 miles south of Atlanta – after a state funeral in Washington and a public event in Atlanta, the Carter Center said Sunday.
