10 January 2025

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Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center announced Sunday.

The center said in a statement on the X website: “Our founder, former US President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia.”

Carter was the longest-living president in the history of the United States, as he celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1.

His death came more than a year after his wife, Rosalynn Carter, died at the age of 77, in November 2023, and more than a year and a half after the ailing former president entered a nursing home, in February 2023.

The former president's death came just weeks before Donald Trump began his second term in the White House. The Carter Center said in October that Carter, who remained a Democrat, cast his vote by mail for Kamala Harris, Trump's rival.

CarterIran's presidency was marred by rising inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The Democrat lost reelection to Republican Ronald Reagan by a landslide in 1980.

But in the decades since he left office, Carter has won widespread admiration for his extensive humanitarian work at home and abroad. Founded Carter Centeran influential pro-democracy and human rights organizer, became one of the most prominent volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, an affordable housing charity.

Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for his peace negotiations, human rights campaigns, and welfare work.”

Jimmy Carter, right, after a press conference announcing the lifting of the travel ban on Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Cambodia in March 1977.
Jimmy Carter, right, after a press conference announcing the lifting of the travel ban on Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea and Cambodia in March 1977. © AP

Carter faded from public view in the years before his death. He visited Washington in 2018 to attend the state funeral of George H.W. Bush and endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 with an audio message played at the Democratic National Convention.

President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited the Carter family at their home in 2021. Biden attended a memorial service for Rosalynn Carter, alongside the former president, at Emory University in Atlanta in November 2023.

News of the former president's death came more than a year and a half after the Carter Center announced in February 2023 that “after a series of short hospital stays,” the former president decided to forego medical treatment and enter hospice treatment at home. Carter underwent cancer treatment and fell several times in recent years.

In May 2024, Jason Carter said his grandfather was “really physically limited” and “getting near the end.” He also nodded to the former president's religious beliefs, saying: “There's a part of that journey of faith that you can only live at the end, and I think he was there in that space.”

After losing his re-election bid in 1980, Carter returned to a modest two-bedroom farmhouse in the small town of Plains, Georgia, with a local population of about 800 people, and taught Sunday school at the local church for a long time. He's in his nineties.

Both the former president and his wife were born and raised on the plains.

Jimmy Carter is expected to be buried in the small town, about 150 miles south of Atlanta, after a state funeral in Washington.

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