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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 on Sunday.
He died peacefully Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family, the human rights organization he founded said in a statement.
Carter is the longest-lived president in US history, having celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1 this year.
His death came less than a year after his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, died in November 2023, and more than a year and a half after the ailing former president entered hospice care in February 2023.
“Dad was a hero, not just to me but to everyone who believes in peace, human rights, and selfless love,” Chip Carter, the former president's son, said Sunday.
The announcement came just weeks before Donald Trump began his second term in the White House. The Carter Center said in October that Carter, a lifelong Democrat, cast his mail-in vote for Kamala Harris, a Trump opponent.
US President Joe Biden joined the flood of criticism, saying Carter “saved, uplifted and changed lives around the world”.
Trump said in his Social Truth forum that “Jimmy's challenges as President came at an important time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans. For that, we should all thank him.”
CarterThe president has been damaged by inflation and the crisis in Iran. The Democrat lost re-election to Republican Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980.
Decades after he left office, however, Carter won widespread acclaim for his extensive humanitarian work at home and abroad. He founded the The Carter Centeran influential pro-democracy and human rights organization, and became one of the most prominent volunteers at Habitat for Humanity, an affordable housing charity.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for peace negotiations, human rights campaigning and social work”.
Carter faded from public view in the years leading up to his death. He visited Washington in 2018 to attend the funeral of George HW Bush and endorsed 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. The Bidens attended Rosalynn Carter's memorial service, alongside the former president, at Emory University in Atlanta in November 2023.
The Carter Center said that in February 2023 “after a brief hospital stay,” the former president decided to stop medical treatment and enter hospice care at home. Carter has undergone cancer treatment and collapsed several times in recent years.
In May 2024, Jason Carter said his grandfather was “physically disabled” and “going to the end”. He also nodded to the former president's religious beliefs, saying: “There's a part of that religious journey that you can live in the end and I think he was there in that space.”
After losing his bid for re-election in 1980, Carter returned to a two-bedroom ranch in the small town of Plains, Georgia, with a population of about 800, and taught Sunday school at the local church until. in the 90s.
Both the former president and his wife were born and raised in the Plains.
Jimmy Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in a small town – about 150 kilometers south of Atlanta – after a state funeral in Washington and a public ceremony in Atlanta, the Carter Center said on Sunday.