Editorial: Crusader for justice

Thursday, October 01, 2009 9:12 AM  |  Printer friendly version | E-mail to a friend |

If there were a "Profiles in Courage" tome for journalists, W. Horace Carter of Tabor City would have to be included.

Carter, who died last week at 88, shocked the sensibilities of his Columbus County readers in July 1950 with a column under the headline: "An Editorial: No Excuse for the KKK."

The editorial was prompted by a Klan parade featuring carloads of armed and hooded men hoping to recruit new members. That kind of thing was expected in southeastern North Carolina in the 1950s. Carter's anti-Klan opinion was not.

"The Klan, despite its Americanism plea, is the personification of Fascism and Nazism," he wrote. "It is just such outside-the-law operations that lead to dictatorships through fear and insecurity."

Carter didn't stop with one editorial. Despite threats to himself and his family — and the isolation that came from disagreeing with the majority of his neighbors — the young editor went on a campaign against the Klan for the next three years, publishing more than 100 Klan-related stories and editorials.

A native of Albemarle, Carter had founded the Tabor City Tribune when he returned to the States after World War II. The weekly newspaper had been in existence only four years when Carter saw the wrongs of the Klan and spoke out against the group.

The Klan was touting pro-Christian, anti-Communist rhetoric, laced with white supremacy. The Tribune reported on Klan-related rallies, shootings, beatings and a series of floggings that prompted an FBI investigation. Before all was said and done, state and federal authorities prosecuted more than 100 Klansmen, including the Grand Dragon of the Association of Carolina Klans.

While Carter lost readers, advertisers and friends, he had a supporter nearby in Whiteville News Reporter editor Willard Cole, who joined in the editorial campaign. The two shared a Pulitzer Prize for public service — "For their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger."

Carter donated his Pulitzer gold medal to his alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, to inspire future journalists to fight for justice and high principles.

"Horace Carter has shown the power of journalistic courage," said Jean Folkerts, dean of the school. "In order to do the right thing, we sometimes must take a stand for an unpopular cause and go against mainstream thoughts in a particular time."

Today's journalists might forget that, caught in the digital revolution and a painful recession to boot. Technologies and platforms may change, business models may get turned upside down. But the need for truth and justice is never-ending.