Former US President Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter, who died at the age of 100, came to power promising not to lie to the American people.

In the turbulent wake of the Watergate scandal, a former peanut farmer from Georgia pardoned draft dodgers in Vietnam, becoming the first American leader to take climate change seriously.

On the international scene, he helped broker a historic peace agreement between Egypt and Israel, but struggled to deal with the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

After one term in office, he was ousted by Ronald Reagan when he won only six states in the 1980 election.

After leaving the White House, Carter did much to restore his reputation: he became a tireless worker for peace, the environment, and human rights, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The longest-living president in US history, he celebrated his 100th birthday in October 2024. He was treated for cancer and has spent the past 19 months in hospice care.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born on October 1, 1924 in the small town of Plains, Georgia, the eldest of four children.

His segregationist father started the family peanut business, and his mother, Lillian, was a registered nurse.

Carter's experience with the Great Depression and strong Baptist faith strengthened his political philosophy.

He was a star basketball player in high school, spent seven years in the U.S. Navy — during which he married Rosalynn, a friend of his sister — and became an officer on a submarine. But after his father died in 1953, he returned to running the faltering family farm.

The first year's crop failed due to drought, but Carter turned the business around and made himself wealthy in the process.

He got into politics on the ground floor, getting elected to a series of local school and library boards, before running for the Georgia Senate.

American politics has been on fire in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to desegregate schools.

Given his background as a farmer from a Southern state, Carter might have been expected to oppose reform—but he had different views than his father.

While serving two terms in the state Senate, he avoided clashes with segregationists—including many members of the Democratic Party.

But when he became governor of Georgia in 1970, he became more vocal in his support of civil rights.

In his inaugural address, he declared: “I tell you frankly, the time of racial discrimination is over.”

He placed pictures of Martin Luther King on the walls of the Capitol, and the Ku Klux Klan demonstrated outside.

He made sure African Americans were appointed to public office.

However, he found it difficult to balance his strong Christian faith with his liberal instincts when it came to abortion law.

Although he supports women's rights to terminate pregnancies, he has refused to increase funding to make it possible.

When Carter launched his campaign for president in 1974, the nation was still reeling from the Watergate scandal.

He presented himself as a simple peanut farmer, untainted by the questionable ethics of career politicians on Capitol Hill.

His timing was perfect. The Americans wanted an outsider, and Carter fitted the bill.

The surprise was when he admitted (in an interview with Playboy magazine) that “he committed adultery in my heart several times.” But it was proven that there were no skeletons in his closet.

Initially, polls indicated that he had the support of only about 4% of Democrats.

However, just nine months later, he ousted incumbent President Gerald Ford, a Republican.

On his first full day in office, he pardoned hundreds of thousands of men who had evaded service in Vietnam – either by desertion or failing to register with the local draft board.

One Republican critic, Senator Barry Goldwater, called the decision “the most disgraceful thing any president has ever done.”

Carter admitted that this was the most difficult decision he made in his position.

He appointed women to key positions in his administration and encouraged Rosalynn to maintain her national status as First Lady.

He defended (unsuccessfully) the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution which would have promised legal protections against discrimination on the basis of sex.

Carter was one of the first international leaders to take climate change seriously, wearing jeans and sweaters to the White House and turning off the heating to conserve energy.

He installed solar panels on the roof—which President Ronald Reagan later removed—and passed laws to protect millions of acres of uncontaminated land in Alaska from development.

His “televised fireside chats” were deliberately cozy, but the approach seemed too casual as the problems escalated.

As the US economy slid into recession, Carter's popularity began to decline.

He tried to convince the country to accept tough measures to deal with the energy crisis – including rationing gasoline – but faced bitter opposition in Congress.

Plans to introduce a universal health care system have stalled in the legislature, while unemployment and interest rates have risen.

His Middle East policy began triumphantly, with Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin signing the Camp David Accords in 1978.

But success abroad did not last long.

The revolution in Iran, which led to the taking of American hostages, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan were a severe test.

Carter cut diplomatic relations with Tehran and implemented trade sanctions in a desperate attempt to free the Americans.

The attempt to rescue them by force was a disaster, resulting in the deaths of eight American soldiers.

This incident almost certainly put an end to any hope of re-election.

Carter faced a serious challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1980, receiving 41% of the popular vote in the subsequent election.

But that was not nearly enough to defeat his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan.

The former actor swept the White House by a landslide in the Electoral College.

On the last day of his presidency, Carter announced the successful completion of negotiations to release the hostages.

Iran had delayed their departure until after President Reagan was sworn in.

Upon leaving office, Carter had one of the lowest approval ratings of any American president. But in later years, he did much to restore his reputation.

On behalf of the United States government, he conducted a peace mission to North Korea that ultimately resulted in the Agreed Framework, an early effort to reach an agreement on dismantling its nuclear arsenal.

His library, the Carter Presidential Center, became an influential center for the exchange of ideas and programs aimed at solving international problems and crises.

In 2002, Carter became the third US president, after Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to win the Nobel Peace Prize – and the only president to receive it for post-presidential work.

In his Nobel Prize lecture, he said: “The most serious and most global problem is the ever-widening gap between the richest and poorest people on the face of the Earth.”

He founded with Nelson Mandela the Elders, a group of global leaders committed to working for peace and human rights.

After retirement, Carter chose a modest lifestyle.

He eschewed lucrative conversation appearances and seats on corporate boards for a simple life with Rosalynn in Plains, Georgia, where they were both born.

Carter did not want to make money from his time in the Oval Office.

“I don't see anything wrong with it, and I don't blame others for doing it,” he told The Washington Post. “It was never my ambition to be rich.”

He was the only modern president to return full-time to the one-story, two-bedroom house he lived in before entering politics.

According to the newspaper, the Carter family's home was worth $167,000, less than the Secret Service cars parked outside to protect them.

In 2015, he announced that he was being treated for cancer, the disease that claimed the lives of his parents and three sisters.

Just a few months after surgery for a broken hip, he returned to work as a construction volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.

The former president and his wife began working with the charity in 1984, and have helped repair more than 4,000 homes in the years since.

He continued to teach Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, occasionally welcoming Democratic presidential candidates into his class.

In November 2023, Rosalynn Carter died. In his tribute, the former president said that his wife, to whom he had been married for 77 years, was “my equal partner in everything I have ever accomplished.”

At his centennial celebration one year later, Carter demonstrated that he still had political sensibilities.

“I'm just trying to be able to vote for Kamala Harris” in the November election, he said.

He was able to cast a ballot for her, even though his home state of Georgia ultimately voted for Donald Trump.

Carter's political philosophy contained the sometimes conflicting elements of his small-town conservative upbringing and his natural liberal instincts.

But what really drove him throughout his life in public service were his deeply held religious beliefs.

“You cannot separate religious belief and public service,” he said.

“I have never detected any conflict between God's will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.”