Already the longest-lived of the 45 males to function U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to succeed in the century mark.
The thirty ninth president, who stays underneath residence hospice care, will flip 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrating in the identical south Georgia city the place he was born in 1924.
Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his lengthy life.
Booms most all over the place — however not Plains
Carter has seen the U.S. inhabitants almost triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there have been about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. The world inhabitants has greater than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to greater than 8.1 billion. It already had greater than doubled to 4.36 billion by the point he turned president.
That increase has not reached Plains, the place Carter has lived greater than 80 of his 100 years. His spouse Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, additionally was born in Plains.
Their city comprised fewer than 500 folks within the Twenties and has about 700 at this time; a lot of the native economic system revolves round its most well-known residents.
When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It’s now 75.
TV, radio and presidential maps
NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map within the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC’s John Chancellor made Carter’s states crimson and Ford’s blue. Some different early variations of coloration electoral maps used yellow and blue as a result of crimson was related to Soviet and Chinese communism.
It wasn’t till the Nineteen Nineties that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and crimson for GOP-won states. “Red state” and “blue state” didn’t grow to be a everlasting a part of the American political lexicon till after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the primary presidential tv look. Warren Harding turned the primary radio president two years earlier than Carter’s delivery.
Attention customers
There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, however you can order a build-it-yourself home from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom mannequin went for $2,025, which was barely lower than the typical employee’s annual earnings.
Walmart didn’t exist, however native common shops served the identical goal. Ballpark costs: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of fuel, 11 cents.
Inflation helped drive Carter from workplace, because it has dogged President Joe Biden. The common gallon in 1980, Carter’s final full 12 months in workplace, was about $3.25 when adjusted for inflation. That’s simply 3 cents greater than AAA’s present nationwide common.
From suffragettes to Kamala Harris
The nineteenth Amendment that prolonged voting rights to girls — virtually solely white girls on the time — was ratified in 1920, 4 years earlier than Carter’s delivery. The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans handed in 1965 as Carter was making ready his first bid for Georgia governor.
Now, Carter is poised to solid a mail poll for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would grow to be the primary girl, first Black girl and first particular person of South Asian descent to succeed in the Oval Office. Grandson Jason Carter stated the previous president is holding on partly as a result of he’s excited concerning the likelihood to see Harris make historical past.
Immigration, isolationism and ‘America First’
For all of the shifts in U.S. politics, some issues keep the identical. Or at the least come again round.
Carter was born in an period of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism — all components of the proper within the ongoing Donald Trump period. In 2024, Trump is promising the biggest deportation effort in U.S. historical past, whereas tightening authorized immigration. He has stated immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our nation.”
Five months earlier than Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The regulation created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission largely to migrants from western Europe. Asians had been banned totally. Congress described its goal plainly: “protect the best of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan adopted in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington selling white supremacy.
Trump additionally has known as for sweeping tariffs on international imports, a part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs supposed to assist U.S. producers. After inventory market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to assist American farmers. The Great Depression adopted anyway. In the Nineteen Thirties, as Carter turned politically conscious, the political proper that countered FDR was pushed partly by a motion that opposed worldwide engagement. Those conservatives’ slogan: “America First.”
America’s and Carter’s pastime
Carter is the Atlanta Braves’ most well-known fan. Jason Carter says the previous president nonetheless enjoys watching his favourite baseball staff.
In the Nineteen Nineties, when the Braves had been annual options within the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter had been typically noticed within the proprietor’s field with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then Turner’s spouse. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter’s failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory 4 years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting within the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th residence run to interrupt Babe Ruth’s profession document.
When Carter was born, the Braves had been nonetheless in Boston, their unique metropolis. Ruth had simply accomplished his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 residence runs to that time (nonetheless 430 in need of his profession whole) and the unique Yankee Stadium — “The House that Ruth Built” — had been open lower than 18 months.
Booze, Billy and Billy Beer
Prohibition had been in impact for 4 years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted till he was 9. The Carters had been by no means prodigious drinkers. They served solely wine at state dinners and different White House features, although it is a frequent false impression that they did so due to their Baptist mores. It was extra as a result of Carter has all the time been frugal: He did not need taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn’s private cash) to cowl costlier arduous liquor.
Carter’s youthful brother Billy, who owned a Plains fuel station and died in 1988, had completely different tastes. He marketed his personal model, Billy Beer, as soon as Carter turned president. News sources reported that Billy Carter snagged a $50,000 annual licensing charge from one brewer. That’s about $215,000 at this time. The president’s annual wage on the time was $200,000 — it is now $400,000.
The debt: More Carter frugality
The Times Square debt clock didn’t debut till Carter was in his early 60s and out of the White House. But for anybody counting the $35 trillion debt, Carter doesn’t benefit a lot point out. The man who would wash Ziploc luggage to reuse them added lower than $300 billion to the nationwide debt, which stood beneath $1 trillion when he left workplace.
Other presidents
Carter has lived via 40% of U.S. historical past for the reason that Declaration of Independence in 1776 and greater than a 3rd of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took workplace in 1789 — 9 earlier than Carter was president, his personal and 7 since.
When Carter took workplace, simply two presidents, John Adams and Herbert Hoover, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush all reached at the least 93.