(AFP) – Jimmy Carter began his final journey Thursday, with his flag-draped coffin being moved from the US Capitol for his state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral as mourners paid their respects to the 39th US president. The service caps a week of mourning that has seen thousands of citizens quietly filing past the casket to pay their respects to Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100 in his home state of Georgia. President Joe Biden will deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat, the last from the so-called Greatest Generation, at the neo-Gothic cathedral. The brief show of national unity comes just 11 days before Republican Donald Trump is due to return to the White House, in another moment of change for an increasingly divided United States.
US service members in ceremonial uniforms moved the coffin down the steps of the Capitol building, before a motorcade transported it through the snowy streets of Washington to the cathedral. The Episcopal church has been a traditional venue for send-offs of US presidents, from Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan to George H.W. Bush.
Biden has said that Carter asked him to do the honors when the pair — longstanding friends — met for the last time four years ago. “Carter was a decent man. I think Carter looked at the world not from here but from here, where everybody else lives,” Biden said as he gestured from above his head towards his heart. Biden’s living predecessors — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump — are expected to join around 3,000 mourners at the service, and Thursday has been designated a national day of mourning, with federal offices closed.
Carter, who served a single term before a crushing election loss to Reagan in 1980, was perceived as naive and weak in the dog-eat-dog world of Washington politics. A hostage crisis involving Americans held in Tehran after Iran’s Islamic revolution finally sealed his fate. But a more nuanced image of him has emerged as the years passed, reassessing achievements like the brokering of a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. He also received high praise for his post-presidential humanitarian efforts, and a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
The first president to reach triple digits, he had been in hospice care since February 2023 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he died and will be buried next to his late wife, former first lady Rosalynn Carter. Mourners began paying their respects on Saturday, as the carefully choreographed six-day farewell got underway with US flags flying at half-staff around the country. A black hearse bearing Carter’s remains paused at his boyhood family peanut farm in Plains, where a bell was rung 39 times and staff stood in silent tribute. Crowds gathered along the roadside to say their goodbyes, snap photographs or salute as the motorcade rolled slowly past.
Carter’s casket arrived at Washington’s snow-covered US Capitol on Tuesday atop a gun carriage. It was accompanied by hundreds of service members, with military pallbearers carrying Carter to the Rotunda to lie in state ahead of Thursday’s ceremony — the first presidential funeral since Bush Senior died in 2018. Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, described Carter as “one of the most decent and humble public servants we have ever seen.” “President Carter was a living embodiment of leadership through service, compassion, and a thirst for justice for all,” he said.
– Frankie TAGGART
© 2024 AFP
