Jimmy Carter’s flag-draped casket on its way to Atlanta as 39th president’s state funeral begins

By KATE PAYNE and BILL BARROW

PLAINS, Ga. — Jimmy Carter’s long public goodbye began Saturday in Georgia, with the 39th U.S. president’s flag-draped casket 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 Center, where current and former Secret...