The Latest: Former President Jimmy Carter is Dead at age 100

Former President Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100. The 39th president of the United States was a Georgia peanut farmer who sought to restore trust in government when he assumed the presidency in 1977 and then built a reputation for tireless work as a humanitarian. He earned a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

He died Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care, at his home in Plains, Georgia.

At age 52, Carter was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, 1977, after defeating President Gerald R. Ford in the 1976 general election. Carter left office on Jan. 20, 1981, following his 1980 general election loss to Ronald Reagan.

Here’s the latest:

A somber announcement

The longest-lived American president died Sunday, more than a year after entering hospice care, at his home in the small town of Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died at 96 in November 2023, spent most of their lives.

“Our founder, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, passed away this afternoon in Plains, Georgia,” The Carter Center said in posting about his death on the social media platform X. It added in a statement that he died peacefully, surrounded by his family.

A Southerner and a man of faith

In his 1975 book “Why Not The Best,” Carter said of himself: “I am a Southerner and an American, I am a farmer, an engineer, a father and husband, a Christian, a politician and former governor, a planner, a businessman, a nuclear physicist, a naval officer, a canoeist, and among other things a lover of Bob Dylan’s songs and Dylan Thomas’s poetry.”

A moderate Democrat, Carter entered the 1976 presidential race as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad smile, outspoken Baptist mores and technocratic plans reflecting his education as an engineer.

After he left office and returned home to his tiny hometown of Plains in southwest Georgia, Carter regularly taught Sunday School lessons at Maranatha Baptist Church until his mobility declined. Those sessions drew visitors from around the world.