Former President Jimmy Carter Dies at 100

The couple had four children — three boys, John William “Jack,” James Earl “Chip” III, Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff”; and a daughter, Amy Lynn.

Success as Georgia’s governor 

In 1966, after four years as a state senator, Carter, a Democrat, ran for governor of Georgia, losing to Lester Maddox. His second bid was successful, and he became the state’s 76th governor in 1971, drawing attention in the Deep South for emphasizing protection of cultural and natural resources, introducing a new efficiency in government, and attempting to establish racial equality in his political appointments and the hiring of state employees. 

When he ordered portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. and other influential black Georgians to be hung in the Georgia State Capitol, the Ku Klux Klan picketed the unveiling. 

Human rights were also much on his mind when he ran for president. 

“I had seen the millstone of racial discrimination weighting down my people, both the black people and the white people. And I had seen the enormous progress that we were able to make after we removed the legal restraints of a two-class society,” he later said. “So I was very convinced ... that ... equality of opportunity, [and] the end of abuse by governments of their people was a basic principle on which the United States should be an acknowledged champion.”

Decades later, in an interview with AARP, Carter acknowledged that the U.S. still is falling short of that promise. “The recent publicity about mistreatment of black people in the judicial and police realm has been a reminder that the dreams of the civil rights movement have not been realized,” he said. “Many Americans still have racist tendencies or feelings of superiority to people of color.”

His penchant for frank and honest speech caused a ripple just weeks before the 1976 election, when he admitted to Playboy magazine in a discussion on religion that “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.”

The statement made news as an example of the disappearing lines in a politician’s private life. 

President Jimmy Carter takes the oath of office from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Warren Burger at the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 1977.

Nik Wheeler/Corbis via Getty Images

Challenges, accomplishments as president

Carter faced myriad difficulties that hobbled his presidency, chief among them an energy crisis, ballooning inflation and high unemployment. Domestically, however, he made strides in creation of the Department of Education, civil service reform, government deregulation, expansion of the National Park System and Social Security reform. 

His most lauded international achievements came with the Panama Canal treaties, diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, the SALT II nuclear treaty with the Soviet Union, and, most famously, the Camp David Accords of 1978, in which Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin agreed to sign a peace treaty. Carter later admitted that the Camp David Accords almost collapsed. 

“I got the word that Sadat was leaving Camp David and going back to Egypt and he was through with the negotiations.” Carter said. “I had on blue jeans, and ... I put on slightly more formal clothes, and I went off in a corner and I said a silent prayer that when I went to Sadat’s cabin I might induce him to stay on for further peace talks. And of course, when I got to his cabin, I was ultimately successful.” 

Arne Knudsen/Getty Images

Jimmy Carter Timeline

• Oct. 1, 1924. Carter is born in Plains, Georgia.
• June 5, 1946. He receives bachelor of science degree from the U.S. Naval Academy.
• July 7, 1946. He marries Rosalynn Smith.
• Jan. 12, 1971. He is inaugurated as Georgia’s 76th governor.
• Jan. 20, 1977. He is inaugurated as 39th president of the United States.
• Sept. 17, 1978. Israeli prime minister, Egyptian president sign Camp David Accords.
• June 18, 1979. Carter signs second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) with the Soviet Union.
• Nov. 4, 1979. 52 Americans taken hostage in Tehran.
• April 17, 1980. Carter announces the economy is in recession.
• Nov. 4, 1980. Ronald Reagan wins the 1980 election.
• Dec. 10, 2002. Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Aug. 20, 2015. He announces that a tumor removed from his liver was melanoma and the disease had spread to his brain.
• Dec. 6, 2015. He tells his Maranatha Baptist Church Sunday school class that his cancer is gone.
• Feb. 18, 2023. The Carter Center announces the former president is receiving home hospice care.
• Nov. 19, 2023: Rosalynn Carter passes away at age 96.
• Dec. 29, 2024: Carter dies at home in Plains, Georgia, at age 100.

— Source: AARP research

Sadat’s assassination in 1981 was “one of the saddest days of my life, almost equivalent to the death of my own father or my own brothers and sisters,” Carter said. He was “the leader I most admire.”

Carter lost his 1980 campaign for re-election to Ronald Reagan, primarily because he failed to negotiate a timely release of hostages seized at the U.S. embassy in Iran. The hostage crisis dominated more than a year of his presidency.

New career after White House

Perhaps his most lasting achievements came after he left the White House when he helped with elections in Africa, won three Grammy awards for best spoken word, taught at Emory University and wrote more than two dozen books. Together, he and Rosalynn Carter established The Carter Center in 1982 to fight disease and social inequality around the world.

And starting in 1984, they brought a high profile to Habitat for Humanity, the global nonprofit housing organization.  

The high points of his life were not his years as president, but “teaching, writing and helping The Carter Center evolve,” he wrote in a memoir.

In 2002, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the committee called his decades of “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts...”

“He’s really tried to take advantage of the prestige of the former presidency and put it to good use. And I think that’s extraordinary,” said Chris Matthews, cable news network host and a former Carter speechwriter. “He may be the only one who has ever done it.” 

To the end, the man who did away with the presidential “Hail to the Chief” anthem — something he said he regretted — called events as he saw them, criticizing President Donald Trump’s border wall, challenging the legitimacy of his election, and saying he believed “Jesus would approve gay marriage.”

He also kept his priorities straight. When he fell at age 94 and broke a hip as he was preparing to go turkey hunting in May 2019, he had his office issue a statement: “President Carter said his main concern is that turkey season ends this week, and he has not reached his limit. 

“He hopes,” the statement continued, employing a bit of Carter’s sly humor, “the State of Georgia will allow him to roll over the unused limit to next year.”