PLAINS, Ga. — One of the most extraordinary men to ever hold the highest office in the land, President Jimmy Carter, passed away Sunday at the age of 100.
James Earl Carter, Jr. was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. Carter was the oldest son of James Earl Carter, Sr., and Lillian Gordy Carter. Jimmy’s father was a successful businessman in the community of Plains, while his mother was a nurse.
EDUCATION
Carter grew up and attended public schools in Plains before attending the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He was admitted to the Naval Academy in 1943 and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class in 1946, just after the end of World War II.
It was during his time at the Naval Academy that Jimmy met the woman who would change his life. While on leave, he met Rosalynn Smith. The two began dating, but Rosalynn turned down Jimmy’s first proposal of marriage. She later accepted, and the two were married in July 1946.
Jimmy continued his service in the Navy, where he was selected for the submarine service, considered at the time the Navy’s most hazardous duty.
Carter had several jobs in the Navy, eventually being chosen to take part in the nuclear-powered submarine program. Carter was promoted to lieutenant and was part of a team that helped design and develop nuclear propulsion for naval ships.
The future president served in the Navy until October 1953, just a few months after his father passed away. He was honorably discharged from the Navy and returned to Plains to help with the family business.
Back home, the first year working to save his family’s peanut farming business ended poorly with a drought ravaging the area. Carter and his family, which now included three sons, continued to work and eventually turned the farm into a thriving business, and Carter ascended in community leadership.
Carter’s business interests and his political aspirations ran into the segregation of the South in the 1950s and 1960s. At one point, he was pressured to join a White Citizens Council but refused and dealt with a temporary boycott of his businesses.
ENTERS POLITICS
By 1962, Carter had won his first election to the Georgia Senate. He would go on to launch his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966, but lost the election.
By 1970, Carter won the statewide election and became Georgia’s 76th governor on January 12, 1971. His success in state politics helped him become the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 Congressional mid-term elections.
Carter helped burnish his name nationally with a strong performance from Democrats in 1974, the first election after Watergate. It laid the foundation for his run for the White House in 1976.
Carter declared his candidacy for president on December 12, 1974, running a campaign as an outsider who could work to change the issues with Washington.
With the nation’s electorate still stinging from both Watergate and Vietnam, Carter’s message of an outsider resonated, and he dispatched ten other Democratic presidential candidates to win his party’s nomination on the first ballot in 1976.
In the 1976 presidential election, Carter was matched up with Republican President Gerald Ford of Michigan. Carter’s appeal as an outsider and Ford’s connections to Richard Nixon and Watergate became albatrosses President Ford couldn’t shake.
Carter won the presidency in November 1976 and was sworn in on January 20, 1977.
DOMESTIC POLICY
As president, Carter often ran afoul of both Congress and the Washington political machine that he had campaigned against. The constant back and forth between the two sides eventually hurt Carter domestically.
Carter did have some success with the energy industry. He created the Department of Energy and was able to reduce the high dependence on foreign oil that had helped cause many of the problems with gas shortages and spikes in prices in 1979.
Still, voters saw prices and taxes rising related to the energy industry. Carter addressed the nation at one point in what became known as the “malaise speech.”
“It is a crisis of confidence,” President Carter told the nation in July 1979. “It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul, and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purposes for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.”
FOREIGN POLICY
But Carter’s biggest success on the international stage during his presidency was the Camp David Accords. In 1978, Carter invited Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to work toward peace.
After nearly two weeks of negotiations, Carter had hammered out an agreement that saw Israel withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt recognizing Israel’s government and signing a peace treaty with the country and Israel pledging to negotiate with the Palestinians for peace.
Carter formally recognized the communist Chinese government in 1979 and clashed with the Soviet Union over their invasion of Afghanistan. But it was arguably Iran that ended Carter’s presidency.
HOSTAGE CRISIS
The U.S. backed a deeply unpopular government led by the Shah for years. But by 1979, a conservative Muslim movement led by Ayatollah Khomeini sent the Shah into exile.
In November 1979, Muslim fundamentalists loyal to Khomeini overran the American embassy in Tehran and took sixty-six Americans hostage.
Carter eventually approved a secret military mission to try to free the hostages. But the mission was a failure as one helicopter crashed and others had mechanical problems.
The failed mission led to Carter’s approval rating plummeting at home. Carter did eventually secure a deal with the Iranian government to free the hostages, who were later released in 1981.
But Carter’s missteps in Iran and the problems with the economy proved too much for the American public. He lost his re-election campaign to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
While that would be the end for some, for Jimmy Carter, his post-presidency work has far exceeded everything he did as president.
POST-PRESIDENTIAL LIFE
He would start the Carter Center at Emory University to help address national and international issues. He helped lead mediation efforts in North Korea, Haiti, Bosnia, Sudan, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Columbia between 1989 and 2008.
The Carter Center has also been deeply involved in voting rights and has sent election observers to countries around the world. The Center has also led the effort to eradicate Guinea worm disease, which is close to becoming the second human disease ever wiped out on Earth.
President Carter has written 32 books dealing with everything from foreign policy to his faith. But in 2002, he received an award very few have ever had the honor of claiming.
NOBEL PRIZE
Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for his decades of work trying “to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts…”
In the closing of his acceptance speech, Carter spelled out his view of the world and what was needed.
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children,” Carter said.
He continued, “The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.”
In addition to his decades of humanitarian work abroad, Carter has spent decades helping Habitat for Humanity as they help the needy in the United States and other countries renovate or build homes.
He volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, along with Rosalynn, well into his 90’s. He finally had to stop in recent years as he became too frail to even hold Sunday service in his church.
In 2019, Carter became the longest-living U.S. president in history when he was 94 years and 172 days old. Carter would go on to live until the age of 97, a mark no other president may come near.
LEGACY
While some viewed his presidency as a failure, he set the stage for many future successes in Washington and around the globe. His post-White House work has given him the greatest post-presidency in modern history.
At a time when the nation is so deeply divided politically, Carter’s works and his words can inspire a nation that wants to move forward. He put it thusly when looking back at his life:
“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something... My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”
He made a difference for billions of people, and history is forever in his debt for what he did to try to bring peace and well-being to so many people.
Georgia U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock spoke for the nation when Carter's move to hospice was released, saying in a tweet, "Across life's seasons, President Jimmy Carter, a man of great faith, has walked with God. In this tender time of transitioning, God is surely walking with him. May he, Rosalynn, and the entire Carter family be comforted with that peace and surrounded by our love and prayers."
President James Earl Carter, Jr.'s wife, Rosalynn, preceded him in death on November 19, 2023. He is survived by his four children and a combined 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Sources:
- Jimmy Carter Library
- The White House
- The Miller Center at the University of Virginia
- American Rhetoric Top 100 Speeches
- U.S. Naval Academy
- Nobel Prize committee
