Photos show Jimmy Carter’s inspiring life, from humble beginnings to turning 100 years old

The New York Times reported that the Carters were also the only white family in town. Despite achieving status in a rural town with a population of only 200, the family grew up in relative poverty. 

Carter’s family didn’t have running water until he turned 11 and they didn’t get electricity until three years later.

“The greatest day in my life was not being inaugurated president, [and] it wasn’t even marrying Rosalynn — it was when they turned the electricity on,” Carter said.

Though they knew each other distantly as children, a mutual friend formally introduced them while Carter was attending the US Naval Academy.

They were married on July 7, 1946, shortly after he had graduated from the academy.

Carter and his wife Rosalynn held the record for the longest-married presidential couple. She died on November 19, 2023.

After the farm began to falter in the late 1940s, Earl Carter sold the family’s farmhouse and surrounding land in 1949. moving the family to nearby Plains. However, after Jimmy Carter returned home and bought back the farm, the business became widely successful under his leadership.

In addition to the peanut farm, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter operated Carter’s Warehouse, a general-purpose seed and farm supply company in Plains, Georgia. 

The Carters had four children: Jack, born in 1947; James, born in 1950; Donnel, born in 1952; and Amy, born in 1967. 

Carter served on multiple committees as governor and became the Democratic National Committee campaign chairman for the 1974 congressional and gubernatorial elections.

Given that Carter had never held a national office before announcing his candidacy for president, many American voters had never heard of the Georgia politician when he launched his campaign. 

The Miller Center reported that a Georgia newspaper even ran a front-page headline that read, “Jimmy Who Is Running For What!?” after Carter announced his candidacy. 

However, a grassroots campaign team hailing from Plains, nicknamed “The Peanut Brigade,” helped launch Carter as an outsider completely separated from the scandals of the previous Nixon administration. 

His campaign slogans focused on Carter’s image as an everyday American, choosing phrases like “America Needs Carter, A Man of the Soil” and “Jimmy Carter For All of Us.”

Carter chose Walter Mondale, a United States senator from Minnesota, as his vice presidential running mate.

“I pray that I won’t disappoint the American people,” President Carter told Walters in the December 1976 interview.

At the inauguration ceremony, Linda Ronstadt performed a cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” and Aretha Franklin performed “God Bless America.”

The national anthem was performed by Cantor Isaac Goodfriend of Atlanta, a Holocaust survivor.

During his presidency, Carter created the Department of Education and the Department of Energy. The White House reported that he also appointed record numbers of women, African Americans, and Hispanics to federal positions.

Carter claimed an increase of nearly 8 million jobs during his term and a decrease in the budget deficit. However, despite his gains, Carter’s leadership came under scrutiny as Americans continued to struggle with high inflation and unemployment rates, the White House reported. 

The Iran Hostage Crisis also marred his presidency. On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans captive. 

Thirteen of the captives were released on November 19 and 20, 1979, one was released on July 11, 1980, and the remaining 52 were released on January 20, 1981, over a year after they were initially captured, per the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library.

Eight American servicemen and one Iranian civilian were killed during a failed secret mission, spearheaded by Carter in April 1980, to rescue the hostages.

“As our team was withdrawing, after my order to do so, two of our American aircraft collided on the ground following a refueling operation in a remote desert location in Iran,” Carter said in a statement at the time.

“There was no fighting; there was no combat. But to my deep regret, eight of the crewmen of the two aircraft which collided were killed, and several other Americans were hurt in the accident,” Carter continued. “Our people were immediately airlifted from Iran. Those who were injured have gotten medical treatment, and all of them are expected to recover.”

All of the hostages were eventually returned safely home, but many criticized Carter’s lack of military retaliation after the incident, the failed 1980 mission, and the resulting loss of life. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the mission, resigned in protest after the incident. 

Carter founded the Carter Center, a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization in Atlanta, in 1982 with the goal of advancing human rights and alleviating suffering.

CNN reported that it has promoted conflict resolution, supervised democratic elections abroad, and worked to combat diseases worldwide, including the near eradication of a tropical disease called Guinea worm.

It is adjacent to The Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, which opened on October 1, 1986.

Through their joint work with Habitat for Humanity as part of the Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project, the former president and first lady worked alongside 104,000 volunteers and built, renovated, and repaired 4, 390 homes in 14 countries. 

“Habitat provides a simple but powerful avenue for people of different backgrounds to come together to achieve those most meaningful things in life. A decent home, yes, but also a genuine bond with our fellow human beings. A bond that comes with the building up of walls and the breaking down of barriers,” Carter said.

They were seated alongside then-President Donald Trump, as well as former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. 

“Rosalynn and I are deeply saddened by the death of former President George H.W. Bush,” Carter wrote in a statement following Bush’s death on November 30, 2018. “His administration was marked by grace, civility, and social conscience.”

In 2015, Carter was diagnosed with melanoma, which later spread to four different parts of his brain. He received experimental treatment and went into remission, becoming cancer-free just four months later.

At a church service in late 2019, the then-95-year-old said that when he learned he had cancer at 90 years old, he assumed he was “going to die very quickly.”

“I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death,” Carter said in 2019, CNN reported.