The six-day funeral of former US President Jimmy Carter begins on Saturday in Georgia, where he died on December 29 at the age of 100.
The first events trace Carter’s rise up the political ladder, from the small town of Plains, Ga., to decades on the global stage as a humanitarian and advocate for democracy.
Here’s what you need to know about the commencement ceremonies and what will happen next:
Honoring Carter’s rural Georgia roots
The procedure is scheduled to begin Saturday at 10:15 a.m. ET with the Carter family arriving at Phoebe Sumter Medical Center in Americus, a small town about 10 miles east of Plains.
Former Secret Service agents who protected Carter will serve as pallbearers, walking alongside the hearse as it leaves campus on its way into town.
James Earl Carter Jr. he has 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 October 1, 1924. Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton also grew up in a rural environment, but Carter is notable for returning to and remaining in his hometown for a long period after his presidency.
The motorcade will travel through the center of the Plains, which spans just a few blocks, passing the childhood home of First Lady Rosalynn Smith Carter, who died in November 2023 at age 96, and near where the couple operated the family’s peanut warehouse. The route also includes an old railroad depot that served as Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign headquarters and a gas station once run by Carter’s younger brother Billy.
The procession will then pass by the Methodist church where the Carters were married in 1946 and the house where they lived and died. The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn.
The Carters built the one-story house, now surrounded by a Secret Service fence, before his first campaign for the state Senate in 1962 and lived there for the rest of his life except for four years in the Governor’s Mansion and another four in the White House.
A combination of privilege and hard work
The military schedule calls for a stop at 10:50 a.m. ET outside Carter’s family farm and childhood home in Archery, outside the 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. are.
The farm is now part of the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park. The National Park Service will ring the old farm bell 39 times in honor of 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 farmed his father’s land during the Great Depression. Still, the Carters had relative privilege and status.
Earl Carter employed black farming families. The elder Carter also owned a general store in Plains and was a local civic and political leader. Lillian was a nurse and gave birth to Rosalynn. The property still includes a tennis court that Earl built for the family.
Earl’s death in 1953 set Jimmy on the path to the Oval Office. The younger Carter left the Plains after graduating from the US Naval Academy. But Jimmy abandoned a promising career as a submarine officer and an early participant in the Pentagon’s nuclear program to take over the family peanut business after his father’s death. Within a decade, he was elected to the Georgia State Senate.
He is resting in Atlanta
From Archery, the procession will travel about 250 kilometers north to Atlanta. It will conclude at 3:00 PM ET at the Georgia Capitol, where he served as a state senator from 1963 to 1967 and governor from 1971 to 1975. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens will observe a moment of silence. While former governors are honored with state funerals, presidents — even if they served as governors — are commemorated with national ceremonies led by the federal government.
The motorcade is then scheduled to arrive at the Carter Presidential Center at 3:45 p.m., with a private service at 4:00 p.m. The campus includes the Carter Presidential Library and the Carter Center, which were established by the former president and first lady in 1982.
From Saturday 7pm until Monday 6am, Carter will lie in repose for the public to pay their respects 24 hours a day.
The ceremony is expected to include some of The Carter Center’s global staff of 3,000, whose work focused on international diplomacy and mediation, election monitoring and fighting disease in developing countries continues to set the standard for what former presidents can achieve.
Jimmy Carter, who filed annual reports through 2019, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 in part for this post-presidential work. His grandson Jason Carter now chairs the board.
Return to Washington
Carter’s remains will then travel to Washington, where they will lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda until the funeral at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral. All living presidents are invited, and Joe Biden, a Carter ally, will deliver the eulogy.
Finally, the Carter family will return to bury their patriarch in the 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.
