Jimmy Carter has died at the age of 100, the Carter Center said, ending the life of the longest-lived president in US history and one of the most recognizable figures in modern American public service.
The former president died at his home in Plains, Georgia, after spending months in hospice care. He had lived longer than any other US president and had become, in his later years, a symbol of endurance as much as of political power. His wife, Rosalynn, died in 2023 after 77 years of marriage. He is survived by four children, 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Carter's presidency from 1977 to 1981 came during a time of inflation, energy shortages and the Iran hostage crisis, and he left office after a landslide loss to Ronald Reagan. Yet the public image that followed him out of Washington was not fixed by that defeat. Over time, the combination of his modest lifestyle, his work ethic and his post-presidential humanitarian efforts reshaped how many Americans saw him.
He helped broker the Camp David peace accord between Egypt and Israel, a diplomatic achievement that remains among the defining moments of his presidency. At the same time, he struggled to manage the economic and foreign policy crises of the period. That tension is central to his legacy: a president whose time in office was often judged harshly, but whose single term still produced one of the most enduring pieces of Middle East diplomacy in the 20th century.
After leaving the White House, Carter chose a life far removed from the normal former-president circuit. He returned full time to the modest home he had lived in before politics rather than chase a lucrative post-presidency. He worked with Habitat for Humanity, helped build and repair thousands of homes, and later joined Nelson Mandela to found The Elders, a group of global leaders focused on peace, democracy and human rights. In 2002 he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
That broader record prompted tributes from across the political spectrum. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden called him an extraordinary leader, statesman and humanitarian. Donald Trump said Americans owed him a debt of gratitude. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W Bush all praised Carter's decency and service. The reaction reflected a rare consensus: whatever the short-term verdict on his presidency, Carter's life after office changed the standard for what public service could look like.
Carter's death has closed a long public arc that stretched from Southern politics to the Oval Office and then far beyond it. What made his final decades unusual was not just the scale of his charity work but the discipline with which he chose it over the normal former-president path. He kept returning to Plains, kept working for causes that were larger than his own reputation, and ended up occupying a place in American life that few ex-presidents ever reach: remembered for failure in office, but admired for what came after it.
It is that long afterlife, not just the presidency itself, that turned Carter from a defeated incumbent into a figure many Americans now see as a model of service.
