Jimmy Carter's extended public farewell has begun in Georgia, with the 39th US president’s flag-draped casket tracing his long arc from the Depression-era South and family farming business to the pinnacle of American political power and decades as a global humanitarian.

Those chapters shone throughout the opening stanza of a six-day state funeral intended to blend personalsed memorials with the ceremonial pomp afforded to former presidents.

The longest-lived US executive, Carter died on December 29 at the age of 100.

Former president Jimmy Carter in 2010. – AP file

“He was an amazing man. He was held up and propped up and soothed by an amazing woman,” son James Earl “Chip” Carter III, told mourners at The Carter Center, referring to his father and former first lady Rosalynn Carter, who died in 2023.

“The two of them together changed the world. And it was an amazing thing to watch so close.”

Grandson Jason Carter, who now chairs the centre's governing board, said, “It's amazing what you can cram into a hundred years.”

Carter’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren accompanied their patriarch as his hearse rode first through his hometown of Plains, which at about 700 residents is not much bigger than when Carter was born there October 1, 1924.

The procession stopped at the farm where the future president toiled alongside the Black sharecroppers who worked for his father.

The motorcade continued to Atlanta, stopping in front of the Georgia Capitol where Carter served as a state senator and reformist governor.

The hearse transporting the body of former President Jimmy Carter stops at Georgia's State Capitol for a moment of silence. – AP

Finally, he arrived for his last visit to the Carter Presidential Center, which houses his presidential library and The Carter Center where he based his post-White House advocacy for public health, democracy and human rights, setting a new standard for what former presidents can accomplish after they yield power.

“His spirit fills this place,” Jason Carter told the assembly that included some of the centre's 3000 employees worldwide.

“You continue the vibrant living legacy of what is my grandfather’s life work,” he added.

Pallbearers came from the Secret Service that protected the Carters for almost a half-century and a military honour guard that included Navy servicemembers for the only US Naval Academy graduate to reach the Oval Office.

A military band played Hail to the Chief and the hymn Be Thou My Vision for the commander in chief who also was a devout Baptist.

Jimmy Carter's state funeral held at Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. – AP

His longtime personal pastor, the Reverend Tony Lowden, remembered not a president but the frail man who spent the last 22 months in hospice care, “wrapped in a blanket” that included the words of Psalm 23.

Chip Carter recalled “the boss” he had to make an appointment to see in the Oval Office, but also the father who spent an entire Christmas break learning Latin and teaching his 8th-grade son who had failed a test.

When he took that test again, the younger Carter said, he aced it.

“I owed it to my father, who spent that kind of time with me.”

Jimmy Carter will lie in repose at the Carter Presidential Center from 7pm on Saturday through 6am on Tuesday, with the public able to pay respects around the clock.

Scott Lyle, an engineer who grew up in Georgia but now lives in New York, was among the first mourners to pay his respects.

Lyle said he joined Carter to build homes with Habitat for Humanity for the first time in LaGrange, Georgia, in 2003. Since then, he has travelled around the world to build houses with the group.

“I got to see, what some people don’t get to see, close,” said Lyle, who was wearing Carter-themed Habitat gear.

"He was an amazing man, and he cared about others. He walked the walk."

“And I can’t think of anyone else that I would want to stand in line to pay my respects for.”

National rites will continue in Washington and conclude on Thursday with a funeral at Washington National Cathedral, followed by a return to Plains.

There, the former president will be buried next to his wife of 77 years near the home they built before his first state Senate campaign in 1962.

James "Chip" Carter speaks during a service at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta. – AP

The Carters lived nearly all their lives in Plains, with the exception of his Naval service, four years in the Governor's Mansion and four years in the White House.

As his hearse rolled through the town, mourners lined the main street, some holding bouquets of flowers and wearing pins bearing images of the former president and his signature smile.

“We want to pay our respects,” said 12-year-old Will Porter Shelbrock, who was born more than three decades after Carter left the White House in 1981. 

“He was ahead of his time on what he tried to do and tried to accomplish.”

Porter Shelbrock came from Gainesville, Florida, with his grandmother, Susan Cone, 66. 

He said he admires Carter for his humanitarian work building houses and waging peace.

Willie Browner, 75, described Carter as hailing from a bygone era of American politics.

“This man, he thought of more than just himself,” said Browner, who grew up in the town of Parrott, about 15 miles (24km) from Plains, before moving to Miami.

Browner said it meant “a great deal” to have a president come from a small Southern town like his – something he worries isn’t likely to happen again.

A young boy salutes as the hearse carrying the flag-draped casket of former president Jimmy Carter moves through downtown Plains. — AP

Indeed, Carter helped plan his own funeral to emphasise that his remarkable rise to the world stage was because of – not despite – his deep rural roots.

Over the course of a few blocks in Plains, the motorcade passed near where Carter and his late wife Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, ran the family peanut warehouse, and the small home where his mother, a nurse, had delivered the future first lady in 1927.

The hearse passed the old train depot that served as Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign – a barebones effort that depended on public financing, dwarfed by the billion-dollar US presidential campaigns of the 21st century.

At the Carter farm, a few dozen National Park Service rangers stood in formation in front of the home, which did not have running water or electricity when Carter was a boy.

The old farm bell rang 39 times to honour Carter's place as the 39th president.

NPS employees salute the hearse as the motorcade stops in front of the Boyhood Farm, where President Carter grew up. – AP

Beside the house, there remained the tennis court that Carter's father, James Earl Carter Senior, built for the family – a nod to the blend of privilege and hard rural life that defined the future president's upbringing.

Carter worked the land throughout the Great Depression, but it was owned by the elder Carter, who employed the surrounding Black tenant farmers during the era of Jim Crow segregation.

Carter wrote and spoke extensively on those formative years and how the abject poverty and institutional racism he saw influenced his future policies in government and his human rights work once he left the White House.

Calvin Smyre, a former Georgia legislator, remembered that legacy at the state Capitol.

Smyre, who is Black, said Carter’s repudiation of racial segregation allowed Black people to wield power in Georgia.

“We stand on the shoulder of courageous people like Jimmy Carter,” Smyre said.

“What he did shocked and shook the political ground here in the state of Georgia. And we live better because of that.”