Six days of funeral observances for former U.S. president Jimmy Carter begin Saturday in Georgia, where he died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
The first events reflect Carter’s climb up the political ladder, from the tiny town of Plains, Ga., to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.
Here is what to know about the initial ceremonies and what happens next:
Honouring Carter’s rural roots in Georgia
Proceedings are scheduled to begin at 10:15 a.m. ET Saturday with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, a small city about 17 kilometres east of Plains.
Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter will serve as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it exits the campus on its way to the town.
James Earl Carter Jr. lived more than 80 of his 100 years in and around Plains, which still has fewer than 700 people, not much more than when he was born on Oct. 1, 1924. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in rural settings, but Carter stands out for returning and remaining in his birthplace for his long post-presidency.
The motorcade will move through downtown Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing near the girlhood home of first lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at the age of 96, and near where the couple operated the family peanut warehouses. The route also includes the old train depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and the gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother Billy.
The motorcade will then pass by the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.
The Carters built the one-storey house, now surrounded by Secret Service fencing, before his first state Senate campaign in 1962 and lived out their lives there except for four years in the Governor’s Mansion and four more in the White House.
Blend of privilege, hard work
The military-run schedule calls for a 10:50 a.m. ET stop in front of Carter’s family farm and boyhood home in Archery, outside Plains, after passing the cemetery where the former president’s parents — father James Earl Carter Sr., who went by Earl, and mother Lillian Carter — are buried.
The farm now is part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times to honour the 39th president.
Carter was the first president born in a hospital. But the home had no electricity or running water when he was born, and he worked his father’s land during the Great Depression. Still, the Carters had relative privilege and status.
Earl Carter employed Black tenant farming families. The elder Carter also owned a store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and she delivered Rosalynn. The property still includes a tennis court Earl had built for the family.
It was Earl’s death in 1953 that set Jimmy on course toward the Oval Office. The younger Carter had left Plains after he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. But Jimmy abandoned a promising career as a submarine officer and early participant in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family’s peanut business after his father’s death. Within a decade, he was elected to Georgia’s state Senate.
Lying in repose in Atlanta
From Archery, the motorcade will journey about 250 kilometres north to Atlanta. It will stop at 3 p.m. ET at the Georgia Capitol, where he served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will lead a moment of silence. While former governors are honoured with state-run funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are memorialized with national rites run by the federal government.
The motorcade then is scheduled to arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4 p.m. The campus includes Carter’s presidential library and The Carter Center, established by the former president and first lady in 1982.
From 7 p.m. Saturday through 6 a.m. Monday, Carter will lie in repose for the public to pay respects around the clock.
The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Center’s global staff of 3,000, whose work concentrating on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in the developing world continues to set a standard for what former presidents can accomplish.
Jimmy Carter, who delivered its annual reports until 2019, won the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter now chairs the board.
A return to Washington
Next, Carter’s remains will travel to Washington, where he will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until his funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All the living presidents have been invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver a eulogy.
Finally, the Carter family will return to bury its patriarch in Plains after a private hometown funeral at 3:45 p.m. at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter, a devout evangelical, taught Sunday school for decades.
Carter will be buried afterward in a private graveside service, in a plot visible from the front porch of his home.
