Kamala Harris eulogized former President Jimmy Carter as a ‘gifted’ man of grace

Dignitaries, including Supreme Court justices and members of Congress, take part in lying-in-state ceremony at Capitol Rotunda

Jimmy Carter, former US president, dies aged 100

Vice President Kamala Harris eulogized former President Jimmy Carter on Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC, where Carter lay in state, remembering him as a leader who was "ahead of his time" and deeply empathetic to the needs of the people he represented.

Carter, the 39th President of the United States, died on December 29, at the age of 100.

Harris praised Carter for leaving the world "better than he found it," and praised him for his progressive actions, including appointing more Black Americans to the federal bench than all of his predecessors combined. He also appointed five times as many women, Harris noted.

The vice president also praised Carter's commitment to diplomacy, noting the success of the Camp David Accords in 1978.

She did not just praise his time as president; Harris said Carter "established a new model for what it means to be a former president and leave an extraordinary post-presidential legacy."

Harris praised his Carter Center, his public health workers, and his "tireless advocacy for peace and democracy" around the world.

The vice president called Carter a "rare example" of a "gifted man who also walks with humility, modesty, and grace," and said it was clear that he "loved our country."

"He lived his faith, he served the people, and he left the world a better place than he found it," she said.

Key Points

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• PHOTOS: Carter motorcade heads to Dobbins Air Reserve Base for departure to Washington D.C.

[8 January 2025 10:00 · Thalia Beaty]

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter left behind enduring nonprofits as part of their legacy of giving back

President Jimmy Carter ‘s legacy of giving back endures in several nonprofits he and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, supported for the almost 50 years after they left the White House.

In Los Angeles on Monday, members of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles signed wooden two-by-fours that will be used in a new house as a tribute to the former president, who died at age 100 on Dec. 29. In Houston, they are planning to let members of the community sign a door and wall in a new house to remember the thousands of homes the Carters helped build. They will do the same in Tallahassee, Florida, and numerous other communities, in preparation for Carter’s state funeral on Jan. 9.

The tributes to his dedication to providing affordable housing show how the Carters’ work will continue.

[8 January 2025 11:00 · Paul Newberry]

Sunday school class with Jimmy Carter: What it was like

It never got old.

No matter how many times one crammed into the modest sanctuary at Maranatha Baptist Church, there was always some wisdom to be gleaned from the measured, Bible-inspired words of Jimmy Carter.

This was another side of the 39th president, a down-to-earth man of steadfast faith who somehow found time to teach Sunday school classes when he wasn’t building homes for the needy, or advocating for fair elections, or helping eradicate awful diseases.

For young and old, straight and gay, believers and nonbelievers, Black and white and brown, Maranatha was a far-off-the-beaten path destination in southwest Georgia where Carter, well into his 90s, stayed connected with his fellow citizens of the world.

[8 January 2025 12:00 · Katie Hawkinson]

‘We give money, we don’t take it’: Where might former president Jimmy Carter’s savings go after he dies?

Jimmy Carter, former president of the United States, was not an extravagant man.

He lived on a property in Plains, Georgia — where he died on December 29 at age 100 — that was worth a fraction of the average U.S. house price, he shopped at budget stores, and he did not fly privately.

The least expensive former president for the U.S. government, Carter and his wife Rosalynn — who died in 2023 — lived a surprisingly average life after his term ended in 1981.

While the Carters lived a public life, they were nothing if not generous with their money.

[8 January 2025 13:00 · Gustaf Kilander, Amelia Neath]

Who are Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s children?

When Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter entered the White House in 1977, they became the first couple since John F Kennedy to raise their children in the executive mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Over the years, their family continued to grow in size, with nearly two dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren added to the Carter clan.

“We have a big family now. We have 22 grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 38 of us in all,” Carter told CNN in 2015.

“So, we try to hold our family together and just enjoy the family life.”

[8 January 2025 14:00 · Eddie Pells]

Carter reflected on 1980 Olympic boycott: ‘A bad decision’

It was a decision that robbed hundreds of athletes of their once-in-a-lifetime chance at Olympic glory, and for more than four decades, it weighed heavily on the man who made it — Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s passing Sunday has unearthed memories from his 1977-1981 presidency. Somewhere between his greatest foreign-policy success (the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt) and his greatest failure (the Iran hostage crisis) sits the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.

It was Carter who called for that boycott — a Cold War power play intended to express America’s disdain for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In his 1980 State of the Union Address, Carter said the invasion “could pose the most serious threat to world peace since the second World War.”