Former United States President Jimmy Carter is being honoured with a state funeral at the Washington National Cathedral, capping nearly a week of national mourning for the former politician and humanitarian leader.
President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy in Washington, DC, on Thursday morning, less than two weeks before he leaves office.
“He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism,” Biden said of his fellow Democrat in a statement marking Carter’s death in late December.
All of Carter’s living presidential successors were in attendance for Thursday’s funeral, including President-elect Donald Trump, who paid his respects before Carter’s coffin a day earlier in the Capitol Rotunda.
Tributes have poured in for Carter since he died on December 29 at the age of 100, with political leaders and others hailing his dedication to public service and decades of humanitarian work.
While he only served one term as president, from 1977 to 1981, the former peanut farmer from the US state of Georgia left a lasting legacy during his post-presidential career.
He won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002 for the work his organisation, The Carter Center, did to fight the Guinea worm disease in Africa and to monitor elections across the world.
He was also heavily involved in building homes through Habitat for Humanity, earning him admiration across the political spectrum.
Thursday will conclude six days of national rites that began in Plains, Georgia, where Carter was born in 1924, lived most of his life and died after 22 months in hospice care.
Ceremonies have continued in Atlanta and Washington, DC, where Carter has lain in state since Tuesday.
Reporting from outside the cathedral on Thursday morning, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Carter’s legacy – like that of all US presidents – is not “black and white”.
“In 1977, he successfully negotiated the Camp David agreement, which normalised relations between Egypt and Israel … He also wanted to make American government more compassionate and more considerate of ordinary people,” Fisher said.
Fisher added that other observers will note that Carter, while serving as president, did not condemn Apartheid South Africa or speak out against atrocities in El Salvador, among other foreign policy stances.
“So it becomes complicated. But people will point to the work that he did afterwards with The Carter Center, when he tried to advance democracy, when he negotiated settlements in some of the world’s hottest hotspots,” Fisher said.
“He declared Israel to be an apartheid state. He also talked about Nicolas Maduro; even though the American administration was saying that his first election was fraudulent, [Carter said] that he won it in free and fair elections.
“He was always willing to speak out and it’s that legacy that will be burnished here at the National Cathedral: the statesman, the man who did much more out of the White House than he did in his four years in it.”
Politicians, diplomats and other figures from all over the world will be in attendance at Thursday’s funeral, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Bernice King, daughter of slain US civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“He set a very high bar for presidents, how you can use voice and leadership for causes,” Gates said of Carter in an interview with The Associated Press this week.
Bernice King also compared the former president to her father, saying the pair “showed us what is possible when your faith compels you to live and lead from a love-centred place”.
At the cathedral, Ted Mondale, son of Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president, read a eulogy his father wrote for Carter before his own death in 2021.
Steve Ford, the grandson of President Gerald Ford, read a tribute from his grandfather, who died in 2006. Carter defeated Ford in 1976 but the pair, and their first ladies, became close friends, and Carter eulogised Ford at his funeral.
Mourners also will hear from Stu Eizenstat, who was a top White House staffer for Carter, and 92-year-old Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor, congressman and UN ambassador during the Carter administration.
After the morning service in Washington, DC, Carter’s remains, his four children and extended family will return to his home state of Georgia for an afternoon funeral.
He will be buried on family land in a plot next to Rosalynn, to whom Carter was married for more than 77 years.
