James Earl Carter Jr. is an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, and a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. At age 99, Carter is the oldest living former U.S. president and the longest-lived president in U.S. history.

James Earl Carter Jr. was born October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia, at the Wise Sanitarium, where his mother worked as a registered nurse. Carter thus became the first American president born in a hospital. He is the eldest child of Bessie Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter Sr., and a descendant of English immigrant Thomas Carter, who settled in the Colony of Virginia in 1635. In Georgia, numerous generations of Carters worked as cotton farmers. Plains was a boomtown of 600 people at the time of Carter's birth. His father was a successful local businessman who ran a general store and was an investor in farmland. Carter's father had previously served as a reserve second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps during World War I.