Jimmy Carter’s coffin travels to Atlanta as 39th US president’s funeral begins

NPS employees salute the hearse. Picture: Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP

Jimmy Carter ‘s long public goodbye began on Saturday in Georgia, with the 39th US president’s flag-draped coffin rolling through his tiny hometown and past his boyhood farmhouse on its way to Atlanta, where he climbed the political ladder and based his decades of humanitarian work after leaving the White House.

The former president’s six-day state funeral started in Americus at the Phoebe Sumter Medical Centre, where current and former Secret Service agents who protected the late president loaded the coffin into a black hearse and walked alongside as it rolled off the campus toward Plains.