Amy Carter

Amy Lynn Carter, born on October 19, 1967, in Plains, Georgia, is the daughter of James Earl Carter Jr. (Jimmy Carter) and Rosalynn Carter. She is the only daughter and the fourth child of her family.

Her early childhood was spent in Plains, Georgia, where the family resided prior to her father's political career. According to her brother, her family considered the idea of having a daughter and decided to name her beforehand, selecting her name from Webster's Dictionary. In 1970, her family moved to Atlanta when her father was elected governor of Georgia, and they resided in the Georgia Governor's Mansion. In 1976, when Carter was nine years old, her father was elected President of the United States, leading the family to relocate to Washington, D.C., for four years.

During her time in the White House, Carter attended Stevens Elementary School and Rose Hardy Middle School. She lived in the White House from January 1977 to January 1981 and was among the few children to reside there during that period, a rarity since the early 1960s. She had a Siamese cat named Misty Malarky Ying Yang and owned an elephant gift from Sri Lanka that was later sent to the National Zoo. She was known to roller skate through the East Room and to have a treehouse on the South Lawn, which she used for social visits monitored by Secret Service agents.

Carter's nanny during her White House years was Mary Prince, who was involved in a prison release program in Georgia. President Jimmy Carter mentioned her in a 1980 debate with Ronald Reagan, noting that she identified the control of nuclear arms as an important election issue.

Following her father's presidency, Carter moved to Atlanta and completed her high school education at Woodward Academy in College Park, Georgia. She also served as a Senate page during the summer of 1982. She attended Brown University, where she was involved in activism against apartheid and CIA recruitment visits to the university. She was academically dismissed in 1987 for failing to keep up with her coursework.

Later, Carter earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Memphis College of Art. She continued her education at Tulane University in New Orleans, where she obtained a master's degree in art history in 1996.

In her public life, Carter participated in activism, including sit-ins and protests against South African apartheid policies and U.S. foreign policy in Central America during the 1980s and early 1990s. She was arrested during a demonstration at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1986, protesting CIA recruitment, and was subsequently acquitted in a high-profile trial.

Carter has also engaged in other work, including illustrating her father's children’s book, "The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer," published in 1995. She appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman" in 1982. She is a member of the board of counselors for the Carter Center, an organization founded by her father that promotes human rights and diplomacy.

Regarding her personal life, Carter was married to James Gregory Wentzel from 1996 to 2005; together they have a son named Hugo James Wentzel, who appeared on the second season of the reality TV show "Claim to Fame" in 2023. Since 2007, she has been married to John Joseph "Jay" Kelly, with whom she has another son.