39th president James Earl Carter, Jr. died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Dec. 29, 2024. The only chief executive to reach the centenary mark, he was preceded in death by his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who passed on Nov. 19, 2023, at 96.
“To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others.” —1977 inaugural address by Jimmy Carter
The son of a peanut farmer, Carter earned a commission from the United States Naval Academy and helped Admiral Hyman Rickover establish the nuclear submarine program. One career highlight occurred when he led a team in shutting down a meltdown at a Canadian reactor in 1952. Carter was actually lowered into the core to disable the reactor, exposing himself to the lethal radioactivity.
Averting a nuclear disaster, he and his men were closely monitored for contamination afterwards.“For about six months after that, I had radioactivity in my urine,” he remembered. This incident informed his handling of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Pennsylvania, and his faithful decision to terminate the development of the neutron bomb as President.
The death of his father in 1953 led to his resignation from the Navy to settle the estate and run the family farm. Segueing into politics in the 1960s, he became a state senator and the Governor of Georgia in 1971. Initially aligned to the segregationist policies of George Wallace, he pathed the way for an increase in Black state employees, earning the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan.
Carter’s ascension to the presidency was met with skepticism due to his relative obscurity, as critics dismissed and referred to him as “Jimmy Who?” His reputation as an outsider became an asset in the fallout from the Watergate Scandal and support of Black voters eased his entry into the Oval Office in 1976. His successes included the Camp David Accords, a peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. He lured the Soviet Union into an ill-fated military intervention into Afghanistan, a trap leading to the collapse of the Soviet empire and the end of the Cold War. Domestically he added eight million jobs to the labor force, deregulated the entire airline industry, and established the Department of Education and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Carter’s indifference to the D.C. culture and a spotty relationship with Congress hampered his administration. His failure to fulfill a campaign promise to stem the rise of inflation was exploited by his Republican opponents. The 1979-81 Iran hostage crisis and the interconnected Iran-Contra affair involving back room scandals further eroded his reputation. This led to the emergence of the New Right, and a landslide victory for Ronald Reagan. Carter’s United Nations ambassador Andrew Young later claimed the gains generated during his presidency benefited his successor, Reagan. Reduced to a one-term presidency, Carter threw himself into humanitarian pursuits via international diplomacy, and the formation of the Carter Center, a nonprofit organization devoted to reducing the suffering of mankind.
Its triumphs include the eradication of the Guinea worm disease, a crippling parasitic infection, earning Carter the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.With 3.5 million recorded cases in Africa and Asia in 1986, Guinea worm disease infections were reduced to just 13 in 2023.
