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Jimmy Carter, the 39th U.S. president who later won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center said Sunday.
He died peacefully on Sunday at his home in Plains, Georgia, surrounded by his family, the human rights organization he founded said in a statement.
Fuhrmann was the longest-living president in US history and celebrated his 100th birthday on October 1st of this year.
His death came more than a year after the November 2023 death of his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn Carter, and more than a year and a half after the ailing former president entered hospice care in February 2023.
“My father 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 begins his second term in the White House. The Carter Center said in October that Carter, a lifelong Democrat, cast his absentee ballot for Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent.
US President Joe Biden joined a flood of tributes, saying Carter had “saved, improved and changed the lives of people around the world”.
Trump said on his Truth Social platform: “The challenges Jimmy faced as president came at a crucial time for our country and he did everything in his power to improve the lives of all Americans.” We are all for that We owe a great debt of gratitude.”
Carter’s presidency was marked by rising inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran. The Democrat lost re-election in a landslide to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
However, in the decades after he left office, Carter gained widespread recognition for his extensive humanitarian work at home and abroad. He founded the Carter Centerthe influential democracy and human rights organization, and became one of the most prominent volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, the affordable housing charity.
Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 “for conducting peace negotiations, his commitment to human rights and his commitment to social welfare.”
Carter disappeared from the public eye in the years before his death. He visited Washington in 2018 to attend George HW Bush’s state funeral and endorsed Biden for president in 2020 with an audio message played at the Democratic National Convention.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden visited the Carters at their home in 2021. The Bidens attended a memorial service for Rosalynn Carter at Emory University in Atlanta in November 2023 alongside the former president.
The Carter Center said in February 2023 that “after a series of brief hospitalizations,” the former president had decided to forego medical treatment and undergo hospice care at home. Carter had undergone cancer treatment and suffered several falls in recent years.
In May 2024, Jason Carter said his grandfather was “very physically limited” and “nearing the end.” He also nodded to the former president’s religious beliefs, saying, “There’s a part of this faith journey that you can’t live until the very end, and I think he was there in that area.”
After losing re-election in 1980, Carter returned to a modest two-bedroom ranch house in the small town of Plains, Georgia, home to about 800 people, and taught Sunday school at the local church well into his 90s.
Both the former president and his wife were born and raised in Plains.
Carter will be buried in a private ceremony in the small town – about 150 miles south of Atlanta – after a state funeral in Washington and a public event in Atlanta, the Carter Center said.
