Former President Jimmy Carter celebrates his 96th birthday today. Carter is the oldest and longest-living of all 44 presidents of the United States.
The former president is joined by his wife of 74 years, Rosalynn, 93, for a celebration in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
Carter held office as the 39th president from the years of 1977 until 1981 for the Democratic Party. He was also a Senator in Georgia from 1963 to 1967 and a governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975.
Former President Endorsements
Since the pandemic, Carter has pulled back from the public eye due to underlying health conditions. In 2019 he suffered from numerous falls, infections, and brain surgery, and in 2015 he survived a brain cancer diagnosis. However, the former president has still been a strong political force from home on topics like public health and human rights advocacy.
He has endorsed fellow Decomcratic candidates Rev. Raphael Warnock for Georgia’s Senate spot and former Vice President Joe Biden for the presidency.
Biden and Carter are long-time friends from when Carter was president in 1976. At the time, Biden was a young senator from Delaware.
“Joe Biden was my first and most effective supporter in the Senate,” Carter said at the DNC. “For decades, he’s been my loyal and dedicated friend.”
Legacy
In addition, Carter saw attention after the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. He was the only president since 1850 not to make a Supreme Court nomination. However, he reshaped the lower courts with a record number of women and non-white jurists’ nominations, Ginsburg being the most noteworthy.
“He looked around at the federal judiciary, and he said, ‘You all look like me, but that’s not how the great United States looks,'” Ginsburg said at Fordham University Law School in 2016.
Carter is the winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, several Grammy Awards for his audiobooks, and a Nobel Peace Prize. He also enjoys teaching at a Sunday school in Georgia. However, he says his first priority is working with his nonprofit, the Carter Center, to build houses with Habitat for Humanity.
Happy birthday, former-president Jimmy Carter!
[H/T ABC News]
