The hundred-year life-journey of Jimmy Carter ended on 29 December 2024 in the ‘city’ of Plains, 150 miles southwest of the metropolis of Atlanta, in the southern part of the Deep South state of Georgia, where it also began on 1 October 1924. On the day Carter died, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia issued an executive order for flags at all state buildings and grounds to be lowered to half-mast. A state funeral has since been scheduled for 9 January 2025, at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.
James Earl Carter, Jr, was the eldest of four children born to James Earl Carter, Sr, a farmer, deacon in the Southern Baptist Convention, and a segregationist, and his wife Lillian, a nurse and an integrationist. The family home lacked running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity for many years. Jimmy was to outlive his brother and two sisters, all of whom succumbed to pancreatic cancer (as did their father), by several decades. He married local girl Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister’s, in July 1946. Their 77-year marriage endured until Rosalynn’s death from dementia in November 2023.
Jimmy Carter attended Plains High School. He graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1946, and was assigned to the submarine force after studying nuclear physics and reactor technology at Union College in Schenectady, New York. His seven-year career in the US Navy ended when his father died in 1953, leading him to resign his commission and return to Plains to run the family’s peanut farm and Carter’s Warehouse, a seed and farm supply company. As the business flourished, Carter began to dabble in local politics, initially as a member of the Sumter County school education board. In due course, he became State Senator for the 14th District of Georgia from 1963 to 1967. After failing in his bid for the governorship in 1966, he embarked on a path of spiritual regeneration, becoming a “born-again” Christian in the process. Carter eventually became 76th Governor of Georgia in 1971, his mandatory single term due to end in 1975. In his inaugural speech as governor, he declared, unusually for a Southern Democrat of the time, “that the time for racial discrimination is over”
Carter entered the national political scene in 1974, when he announced his intention to run for the presidency of the United States. Securing the presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in July 1976, Carter went on to narrowly defeat the incumbent, Gerald Ford, in November. During his election campaign, he was interviewed for Playboy magazine for more than five hours, during which he stated he could not be too judgemental of adulterous men as he had “committed adultery in my heart many times.”
Carter had a promising start as president, with an initial approval rating of 75 per cent. On his first full day in office, he pardoned thousands of Vietnam draft dodgers. On the international stage, Carter had remarkable success with his stewardship of the Camp David Accords in September 1978, which led to full diplomatic and economic relations between Egypt and Israel. He also signed the Panama Canal Treaties in September 1977, much to be disliked in the future by Donald Trump, and the SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union in June 1979-the latter treaty was never ratified by the Senate and soon negated by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The US established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in January 1979, simultaneously breaking ties with Taiwan. On the home front, Carter established new Departments of Education and Energy. Patricia Harris, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, became the first Black woman to serve in a Presidential cabinet, while Andrew Young became ambassador to the United Nations. Carter also appointed 57 minority judges and 41 female judges to the federal judiciary.
In his early years as president, Carter faced some problems from the perceived undue influence of his “Georgia Mafia”, who had been drafted in to help out in the White House. The forced resignation of Bert Lance as director of the Office of Management and Budget in September 1977 was a particular embarrassment. The president also gained a reputation as a micromanager, which can stifle performance at the highest levels of political leadership.
Carter came unstuck during the latter years of his presidency. Inflation soared from 6 per cent in 1976 to over 12 per cent by 1980, while unemployment increased and interest rates stayed volatile. Shortages of imported oil precipitated an energy crisis, which saw long queues form at petrol stations. Although Carter was forward thinking in his support for renewable energy as an alternative to fossil fuels, his immediate response to the crisis in his so-called “Malaise Speech” of 15 July 1979 failed to inspire confidence, as he called upon citizens to pull themselves together and display restraint in the face of mounting shortages. The last nail in the coffin came when 52 American hostages were taken by a mob of Iranian students from the American Embassy in Tehran on 4 November 1979. A poorly executed rescue mission failed in April 1980, and the hostages were only released after 444 days, following Carter’s replacement by Ronald Reagan on 20 January 1981. Increasingly considered a “weak” President, with plunging approval levels, it was inevitable that Carter would be overtaken by Reagan in the latter’s landslide victory in November 1980, when Carter won just six states.
Carter came into his own after leaving the presidency. Rather than wallowing in self-pity, blaming others for his fate, and seeking retribution, he made a dignified exit and embarked upon a new life of diplomatic missions and humanitarian efforts. In 1982, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded the Carter Presidential Center, a non-partisan, non-profit organisation based in Atlanta, to “wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.” Carter’s diplomatic efforts led to an Agreed Framework to halt nuclear arsenal development in North Korea, enabled peaceful transfer of power in Haiti, and helped negotiate short-lived ceasefires in Bosnia and Sudan. The Carter Center also monitored at least 113 elections in Latin America, Africa, and Asia by 2020, declaring them to be either free or fraudulent. In 1986, the Carter Center joined the international effort against guinea worm disease, a crippling parasitic disease, which has since been successfully eradicated from West Africa.
The Carter Center also contributed to Habitat for Humanity, a Christian non-profit affordable housing organisation, helping build, renovate, or repair 4, 417 homes across America and in 14 other countries. The Carter Work Project started off at the Mascot Flat apartments building in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1984 and took the Carters to many building projects where they took on a very hands-on role.
The Carters were presented with Presidential Medals of Freedom in August 1999. Jimmy Carter received the ultimate accolade of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, the third US President to be thus honoured, for his “untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
In his last years, Carter faced numerous health problems, including metastatic melanoma, for which he was successfully treated. His considerable resilience saw him through to his hundredth birthday. In February 2024, it was announced that he would “spend his remaining time at home with his family”. Carter breathed his last around 3:40 PM local time at home, surrounded by his family.
Jimmy Carter was a thoroughly decent man, possessed of many endearing qualities sadly lacking in the populist politicians of today. He was humble, tolerant, endowed with a sense of fair-play, concerned for the poor and for disenfranchised minorities, a negotiator for peace, an advocate for human rights, and a defender of the environment. Although an evangelical Christian, who taught Sunday School at his local Maranatha Baptist Church, he disavowed Christian Nationalism and respected the Constitutional separation of Church and State. In retirement, he wrote as many as 32 books but kept away from lucrative speaking tours and other ways of boosting his personal wealth. The Carters chose to reside in an unassuming two-bedroom single-storey home in Plains, in stark contrast to their predecessors and successors. Their close partnership endured to the very end. With the passing of Jimmy Carter, we have lost the kind of politician we need more of in a world gone crazy.
Ashis Banerjee