Former President Jimmy Carter, a Georgia peanut farmer who vowed to restore morality and truth to politics after an era of White House scandal and who redefined post-presidential service, died Sunday at the age of 100.
The Carter Center said the 39th president died in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family.
Carter had been in home hospice care since February 2023 after a series of short hospital stays.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States and a former peanut farmer whose vision of a “competent and compassionate” government propelled him into the White House, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center confirmed. He was 100.
The news was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, shortly before the Carter Center, the late president’s nonprofit organization, made an announcement on X. “Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” the organization’s post read.
His specific cause of death was unclear. Carter’s death followed the passing of his wife Rosalynn on Nov. 19, 2023. She died at the age of 96 with her family by her side at the Carter home in Plains, just days after she had been admitted to hospice care.
The late former president himself had entered hospice care in February 2023. Carter survived for years after he had a “small mass” removed from his liver in early August 2015 and later that month announced he had liver cancer that had spread throughout his body.
The Carter family had a history of cancer and the former president lost his father, brother, and two sisters to pancreatic cancer. His mother had breast cancer, which later spread to her pancreas.
Jason Carter, Carter’s grandson, had announced in May that he believed the former president was “coming to the end” of his life’s journey. But the former president hung on much longer.
Funeral details were still being planned, but the Carter Center announced he would be buried in Plains following public observances in Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. The family encouraged donations to the Carter Center in lieu of flowers.
The soft-spoken leader with a signature Georgia drawl saw his single term in the Oval Office clouded by an economic downturn at home and a hostage crisis abroad.
His post-presidency life was marked by a very visible dedication to service, but also a series of sometimes controversial moves as he continued to wade into foreign affairs, particularly as it related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Carter met with the leadership of terrorist group and Palestinian representative Hamas in 2009 and 2015. He reprimanded Israel for its operations against Hamas in 2014, saying there was “no justification in the world for what Israel is doing.”
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