His son Chip Carter, 74, confirmed the former president had died in his Georgia home on Sunday around 3.40 pm ET.
The Democrat former peanut farmer served one term in the White House from 1977 to 1981 and dedicated the rest of his life to charity.
Following a string of hospital stays he decided against more medical treatment and entered hospice care in February 2023.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner lived out his final years in Plains, Georgia.
Carter’s wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, was by his side until her passing on November 19, 2023 aged 96.
At 100 years old, Carter was the longest-lived former president in America’s history.
His four years as president were blighted by an oil crisis that forced Americans to line up for gas and the Iran hostage crisis that stretched into the final minutes of his administration before Ronald Reagan took over.
But the Navy veteran’s dedication to philanthropy meant he quickly became one of the most beloved figures in American politics.
One of his final public appearances was to celebrate his 100th birthday on October 1, surrounded by family and friends at his Georgia home.
The Democrat was also able to cast his vote in the 2024 election.
Last year, he attended his wife’s funeral alongside former first ladies including Michelle Obama and Melania Trump.
Rosalynn was diagnosed with dementia and spent her remaining days with her husband at home with regular trips from beloved family members.
ATLANTA – OCTOBER 10: Former President Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalyn converse prior to the start of Game Three of the NLDS of the 2010 MLB Playoffs between the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants on October 10, 2010 at Turner Field in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
The Carter Center announced February 18 last year that the former president had made the decision to decline ‘additional medical intervention’ and move to his home for end-of-life care following a ‘series of short hospital stays.’
The statement did not elaborate on what conditions had prompted those hospital visits.
Carter lived for a year and two months after deciding to decline additional medical help.
With Carter’s death, there are now only five living presidents – Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, now President-elect Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
Carter battled a few health issues over the years, but for a man in his 90s was relatively spry, continuing his work building homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his later years.
In August 2015, he was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma and had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. It also spread to his brain.
The following year, about six months after the diagnosis, Carter announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.
Carter’s grandson Jason tweeted in February that he visited his grandparents, saying they ‘are at peace and — as always — their home is full of love.’
The Secret Service also sent a moving message to Carter in February, wishing him well after it was announced he was receiving hospice care.
‘Rest easy Mr. President,’ tweeted the Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi following the announcement of his condition.
The inauguration of Jimmy Carter as the 39th president of the United States was held on Thursday, January 20, 1977, at the East Portico of the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. Chief Justice Warren E. Burger administered the presidential oath of office to Carter. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
‘We will be forever by your side.’
Carter, a Navy veteran and Nobel Peace Prize winner, became the 39th U.S. president when he defeated Gerald R. Ford in 1976.
At the time, the country was still reeling from the Watergate scandal under President Richard Nixon.
He served a single term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Carter committed himself to philanthropy post-presidency, living a humble life with his wife, his four children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Despite receding from public view due to health issues in later life, he remained a quiet force in politics at home and, through The Carter Center, in public health and human rights advocacy around the world.
The Carters founded the Carter Center in 1982, two years after he lost his re-election bid to Reagan.
He remained neutral in the Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary, but fielded calls and visits from multiple candidates.
He and Rosalynn recorded audio addresses for the Democrats’ virtual national convention, urging the election of nominee Joe Biden, who was a young senator from Delaware when Carter won the presidency in 1976.
‘Joe Biden was my first and most effective supporter in the Senate,’ Carter told the convention in 2020. ‘For decades, he’s been my loyal and dedicated friend.’
Perhaps most notable among Carter’s 2020 election maneuvering was the Carter Center’s designating the United States as a ‘backsliding’ democracy.
The Center announced after the Democratic convention that it would devote resources to ensuring free and fair U.S. elections.
Siding with Biden over former President Donald Trump wasn’t a surprising step for a Democratic former president, but it did involve Carter ignoring one of his own recent observations about the presidency – age.
‘I hope there’s an age limit,’ Carter said jovially at his town hall when asked whether he’d run again.
Then he turned more serious: ‘If I were just 80 years old, if I was 15 years younger, I don’t believe I could undertake the duties I experienced when I was president.’
The announcement of Carter’s condition in February came just one day after a building at the US Naval Academy was renamed in his honor.
The building had previously been named after a leader in the Confederate Navy, but was renamed in honor of Carter, who graduated from the academy in 1946.
The decision to rename the engineering building in Annapolis was made after a commission mandated by Congress determined several military assets across all branches of the service had to be renamed because of Confederate ties.
The building that had been called Maury Hall was built and named in the early 1900s after Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer and scientist who joined the Confederates.
The Naval Academy superintendent’s house and a nearby road are named after Franklin Buchanan, the academy’s first superintendent who left to join the Confederate Navy at the start of the Civil War. The academy is also renaming the house and road, but has yet to announce those changes.
Carter did not attend the ceremony, though some of his relatives did.
‘It would be impossible to overstate what this Academy and the Navy has meant to my grandfather, and by extension to my family,’ said Josh Carter, Jimmy Carter’s grandson, in a news release from the Navy at the time of renaming.
Friends and admirers of the former president, who served from 1977-91, sent their best wishes to the beloved elder statesman in remembrance of his life and accomplishments.
Carter was born on October 1, 1924, with the rarely-used full name James Earl Carter, Jr. and was raised during the Great Depression.
The son of a Georgia peanut farmer, he said that farming, talk of politics, and devotion to the Baptist faith were pillars of his upbringing.
Carter graduated from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1946 and married Rosalynn Smith shortly afterward.
The couple had three sons – John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff) – and a daughter, Amy Lynn. They also had 11 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Their grandson Jeremy Davis Carter died of a heart attack at the age of 28 in 2015.
A statement from the Carter Center on her death noted: ‘She died peacefully, with family by her side.’
She was honored with a wreath-laying at her namesake medical center in Americus, Georgia, followed by her casket lying in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta.
The next day on November 28, 2023, U.S. leaders and politicians gathered with Jimmy Carter for her funeral at Glenn Memorial Church in Atlanta, Georgia.
In attendance were President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden and former President and first lady Bill and Hillary Clinton – as well as past first ladies Melania Trump, Michelle Obama and Laura Bush.
On November 29, the Carter family held a more personal funeral service for Rosalynn at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia where former President Carter attended in a wheelchair.
Jimmy Carter served seven years as a Naval Officer before returning to Georgia, where he entered state politics in 1962.
Eight years later, he was elected governor of Georgia.
He launched a bid for the White House in 1974 and built momentum over the next two years.
While president, he established two new cabinet-level departments: the Department of Energy and the Department of Education.
He installed solar panels on the roof of the White House – only for Reagan to take them down.
Both during and after his presidency, he became known as an international human rights champion.
Carter was at the forefront of brokering the Camp David Accords between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1978. He also saw the start of the Iran hostage crisis as well as the first efforts toward developing an energy independence policy.
His decision in 1980 to authorize a military rescue of the American hostages in Iran contributed to his reelection loss that year.
Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 after he created the Carter Center to promote human rights worldwide.
He also spent time post-presidency building Habitat for Humanity homes, and writing more than two dozen books.
Two years after a cancer diagnosis in 2015, Carter was hospitalized for dehydration while building homes in Canada.
He was back at the work site the next day.
Carter has also traveled the world for elections and worked with the Carter Center to eradicate diseases.
His Center began to work toward the eradication of Guinea worm disease in 1986, when 3.5 million people were afflicted. In 2022, only 54 were diagnosed, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
And in Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Guatemala, the Center established a river blindness eradication program, which helped eliminate the condition.
