Former United States President Jimmy Carter was honored with a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral, ending nearly a week of national mourning for the former politician and humanitarian leader.
President Joe Biden will deliver a 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 statement marking Carter’s death in late December.
All of Carter’s living presidential heirs attended Thursday’s funeral, including President-elect Donald Trump, who paid his respects in front of Carter’s casket a day earlier in the Capitol Rotunda.
Treats they poured in for Carter since he died Dec. 29 at age 100, with political leaders and others hailing his dedication to public service and decades of humanitarian work.
Although he served only one presidential term, 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 Peace Prize in 2002 for the work his organization, The Carter Center, has done to combat Guinea worm in Africa and to monitor elections around the world.
He was also heavily involved in building homes for low-income people through Habitat for Humanity, earning him admiration across the political spectrum.
Thursday will end six days of national observances that began in Plains, Georgia, where Carter was born in 1924, lived most of his life and died after 22 months in a hospital.
Ceremonies continued in Atlanta and Washington, DC, where Carter had been lying in state since Tuesday.
Reporting from outside the cathedral on Thursday morning, Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said Carter’s legacy – like the legacy of all US presidents – was not “black and white”.
“In 1977, he successfully negotiated the Camp David Accords, which normalized relations between Egypt and Israel… He also wanted to make the American government more compassionate and considerate of ordinary people,” Fisher said.
Fisher added that other observers will note that Carter, while president, did not condemn apartheid in South Africa or speak out against atrocities in El Salvador, among other foreign policy positions.
“That’s how it gets complicated. But people will point to the work he later did with The Carter Center, when he tried to advance democracy, when he negotiated settlements in some of the world’s hot spots,” Fisher said.
“He declared Israel an apartheid state. He also spoke to Nicolas Maduro; even though the US administration said his first election was a sham, [Carter said] that he won it in free and fair elections.
“He was always willing to speak out and that’s the legacy that will be burned here in the National Cathedral: a statesman, a man who did much more from the White House than he did in his four years in it.”
Politicians, diplomats and others from around the world will attend Thursday’s funeral, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Bernice King, the daughter of slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
“He set a very high bar for presidents, how you can use voice and leadership for a cause,” 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 couple “showed us what’s possible when your faith compels you to live and lead from a place centered on love.”
At the cathedral, Ted Mondale, son of Walter Mondale, Carter’s vice president, read the eulogy his father wrote for Carter before his own death in 2021.
Steve Ford, the grandson of President Gerald Ford, read a tribute to his grandfather, who died in 2006. Carter defeated Ford in 1976, but the pair and their first ladies became close friends, and Carter eulogized Ford at his funeral.
Mourners will also hear from Stu Eizenstat, who was Carter’s top White House staffer, and 92-year-old Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor, congressman and UN ambassador during the Carter administration.
After a 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.
