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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview B-0035, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Walter Horace Carter grew up in Stanley County, North Carolina, during the 1920s
and 1930s. He moved to Chapel Hill to earn a degree in journalism at the
University of North Carolina, the pursuit of which was interrupted by his
service in the Navy during World War II. In 1947, Carter became the secretary of
the Tabor City Merchant's Association and moved to Tabor City, North
Carolina, with his young family. Following a brief sojourn in Chapel Hill, where
he helped establish the Colonial Press (which printed the UNC newspaper The Daily Tar Heel), Carter officially settled in Tabor City,
becoming publisher and editor of the newly-created Tabor City
Tribune. Shortly after the weekly newspaper debuted, the Ku Klux Klan
began a virulent recruitment campaign in Columbus County, North Carolina, and in
surrounding areas along the North Carolina-South Carolina border. The interview
with Carter focuses almost exclusively on the actions of the Klan from 1950 to
1952—when members of the Klan were convicted for flogging numerous
people—and on Carter's journalistic campaign against their
efforts. Carter describes in detail how the Klan campaign began during the
summer of 1950 when they brought a motorcade through Tabor City with the
intention of recruiting new members and intimidating African American
neighborhoods. That summer, Grand Dragon Thomas L. Hamilton gave speeches around
the area to recruit members and to outline the goals of the Klan. Carter
stresses that the Klan during those years was not only outspoken in its
opposition to African Americans, but that they also opposed Jews and Catholics,
liberals such as Frank Porter Graham, and the newly formed United Nations.
Carter explains that many people found various aspects of the Klan's
message—including its anticommunist stance—appealing. In
response to the Klan's vigilante tactics, Carter publicly attacked the Klan in
weekly columns for the Tabor City Tribune and worked closely
with others fighting the Klan, including Columbus County Sheriff H. Hugh Nance,
fellow newspaper editor Willard Cole of the Whiteville, North Carolina, News Reporter, and agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) and the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI). Carter also
spends considerable time enumerating the nature of threats, both economic and
physical, he received from the Klan, his interactions with Klan leaders such as
Grand Dragon Hamilton and Early Brooks, and connections between the Klan and
local law enforcement, such as Horry County, South Carolina, Sheriff Ernest
Sasser. In 1953, Carter and Cole were both awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their
role in bringing to justice Klan members guilty of flogging. The interview
concludes with Carter offering his thoughts on various social issues confronting
the nation at the time of the interview in 1976, touching on such topics as
school integration and busing, economic problems, the Equal Rights Amendment,
and patriotism.
Journalist Walter Horace Carter received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his
journalistic campaign against the Ku Klux Klan in his newspaper, the Tabor City Tribune. The interview focuses almost exclusively
on the actions of the Klan from 1950 to 1952, including threats made against
Carter, connections between local law enforcement and the Klan, and
Carter's journalistic campaign against their vigilante tactics.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Mr. Carter is a journalist. He is the editor of the Tabor
City Tribune, the only weekly newspaper in the United States
ever to have won the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service. Mr.
Carter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for his vigorous campaign against
the Ku Klux Klan in his own county, Columbus County, North Carolina.
Mr. Carter, could you tell me something about your life: where you were born and some biographical information, please?
I was born in Albemarle, North Carolina, Stanley County, January 20, 1921. My parents are Mr. and Mrs. W.R. Carter, both deceased. I have one brother younger than I am and one sister younger than I am, and both of them still live in Stanley County.
Did you go to school in Stanley County when you were a young fellow?
I went to school practically in my own backyard, a little country school named Endy, E-n-d-y. I graduated from high school there in 1939; we had twelve people in the class, four boys and eight girls. I was the first boy from that school who ever went to college.
Did you go straight out of high school into the University of North Carolina?
Yes. I'd never even been to Chapel Hill, and nobody in my
family had ever been to college either. But I went to Chapel Hill in
1939. They took me up there and turned me loose. I had $112.
when I went up to Chapel Hill; I'd made that money working in
the cotton mill during the summer, and saved $112. And
I'll never forget that first day I was in Chapel Hill,
because I walked in Roy Armstrong's office. He was the head
of the pre-college guidance committee at that time; he later, you know,
became head of Morehead scholarships and all this. Anyhow, I went in and
I said, "Mr. Armstrong, I'm Horace Carter from
Stanley County. I've got $112.; do you think I can
get through school up here on $112.? And that
At the time, were you interested in journalism from the beginning?
Yes, although none of my people had ever been in the journalism business;
they were just hard-working people. My Daddy was a machinist; my mother
worked in a cotton mill. But from the time I was eighth and nineth grade
in high school I was interested in the newspaper business. I had an
English teacher who I think had a lot to do with this, and I had written
sports for the little newspaper in our county, the Stanley
News and Press, while I was in school. This got me interested
in it. And I knew that's what I was going to do when I went
to Chapel Hill. You might also be interested that while I was there
(well, he's dead now) Bob Madry, who was the director of the
University News Bureau, was good enough to give me a job in the News
Bureau when I was a freshman at Chapel Hill. I worked there the whole
four years, and I've often said that I believe I learned as
much from Bob Madry as I did going to school at Chapel Hill.
Well, did you start out as a journalism major? Did you have any other interests while you were there?
Well, I had a lot of other interests, but I worked, like, eight hours a
day, and so I thought I was very fortunate to be able to do anything
other than that—although I did make the freshman baseball
team at Chapel Hill. Jim Tatum was the coach. I didn't get to
play; I was a sub and I was a catcher, and I was way down the list.
There was about two or three ahead of me, all bigger than I
was—I was a little fellow then, about 125-130 pounds. But I
did make the squad and made all the trips; and as a freshman
that's about the only thing I did take part in, other than
working and going Tar Heel. First I was sports
editor and managing editor, but I was eventually
editor—elected over Jimmy Wallace, who's a
professor over at State College now, I believe. And I'm very
proud to this day that I was tapped as a member of the Golden Fleece and
the Order of the Grail—made them both.
Quite an honor.
I was very proud of both of those.
Well, did you come to Tabor City immediately after college?
Except for four years in the Navy. Right in the middle of my junior year at Chapel Hill the war broke out—that was December 7. But anyhow I went on there 'til the end of the term, and I went to Wilmington, North Carolina. Worked in the shipyard down there seven months, because I was a very draftable age, as you can imagine—like twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and not married. I worked down there seven months, and I decided that I'd rather be in the service than be building those ships down there. And I enlisted in the Navy in 1942, and I stayed there 'til 1946. I eventually, though, had some good breaks even in the Navy, because I was the Assistant Master-at-Arms at the hospital in Charleston, South Carolina. I had a recommendation from my commanding officer down there that they'd send me to midshipman's school. And I went back to Chapel Hill one term and to Notre Dame one term—and got a full year's college credit for those two terms, incidentally. I came out of there an Ensign, and I wound up in the war as an assistant navigator on the "U.S.S. Xenobia," and that was an AKA (armed cargo assault). We worked in the north Atlantic the latter part of the war.
I came in to Chapel Hill, though. I got out of the service, like, in
Was political science one of your favorite subjects?
No. Well, I liked political science, but I was strictly a journalism major. I only took political science because it happened to be one of the things that I hadn't had much of, and I needed that to graduate. It was the final course I took to get my degree. I don't really think I got the degree 'til (I don't even really know), like, '49 or '47 or something, and Ed Lanier brought it to me. I didn't get around to going to any graduation exercises, and Ed finally brought me the degree. He said, "Well, you finally got it." So that's the way it was.
So you came to Tabor City in 1947? Is that right?
Came there in '46: July 26 of '46 was the day we
got the first issue of the Tabor City Tribune out.
And so you were hired, really, to start the paper, to get it going?
Not hired, but they ran advertising in the daily papers in North
Carolina. When I say "they," the Tabor City
Merchants' Association advertised. They had two classified
ads, as a matter of fact: one for somebody to come to Tabor City and be
the executive secretary of the newly-formed Tabor City
Merchants' Association; and they had ads in the same paper
advertising for somebody to come to Tabor City and start them a
newspaper—in that they had no newspaper at the time. They had
had the old Tabor City Times, and years before that
the Tabor City News, but both of them had gone broke
and had closed down. There was no paper there then. So I applied for
both of the jobs: I applied for the Chamber of Commerce job and to start
That must have been quite a task: to start a newspaper from nothing.
Started it from nothing in the town and virtually no money, and a wife and a six weeks' old baby—so you know things weren't too good. I had gotten married to Lucille Miller from Richfield, North Carolina, whom I had known in my home county. I had married her a year or two before I got out of the service. And we came down here with an old '39 Pontiac with snow tires on it, and Chase said he could hear me coming a mile before we got to the city limits because the tires were making so much noise. And it was a chore. The only money we had was I had saved about four thousand dollars, and I had them in U.S. Bonds, while I was in the Navy. That's the only money we had, and we just didn't know that you couldn't come down here and start a newspaper with such a little amount of money.
Well, Mr. Carter, when did you first become aware, if you can remember, of the Ku Klux Klan in this part of the country as being an organized group?
That time when I first started the paper I was running a little column
every week on the front page known as "Carter's
Column"—which I've run all these
thirty-one years, but now run it inside. An individual I
don't care to name came in one day and said, "You
ought to get involved with this Ku Klux Klan activity that's
going on around here." You have to realize
Do you remember where this particular meeting was?
Not that first one, because I wasn't at that first meeting. I went to many, many meetings over the years, but that particular one, all I had time to say…. Because then I only had just a girl in the office that wrote some society and answered the telephone, and a one-eyed printer and myself did all the rest of it—I mean, we put out the paper as well as selling the advertising, the subscription list and writing all the news. So all I had time to do was write a few paragraphs in that column saying that we understood there was some effort to revive the Ku Klux Klan in Columbus and Horry County, but in our way of thinking this organization was obsolete and there was no need for it in a free society like we had at that time. This is long about '48 or '49; you've probably seen that column. But that was how I first got involved with it, with just that simple statement that we didn't need any such thing. Well, this aroused the people who had already, you know, bought the hoods and the sheets and had already signed up. And I found out just a few days later that there was a considerable quantity of them. The best estimates were that there were somewhere between fifteen and eighteen hundred in Horry County.
That's about 1950, before.
Yes, like '49; it was about fifteen-sixteen hundred. I don't think anybody knows how many in Columbus County, but I think we can safely say something like seven or eight hundred.
That's to start with, in '49 and '50?
Right.
Well, from reading your paper it seems that the Ku Klux Klan first came to Tabor City in the summer of 1950, or first had a motorcade (I think it was called) in 1950. And this really seemed to antagonize you, and your crusade began with that.
Yes. You see, up to then everything had been under cover, but when they come up with a motorcade, then you know that all these things you've been hearing are real. You realize that they are organizing and that they are gathering strength. And this did antagonize us, because at that time the way those motorcades worked they had these lighted crosses on the front car; they had the dome lights burning in all the other cars, with people in them with the masks on and the robes, disguised obviously. And what they did then is, they came up and down our main streets, but primarily they went up and down through all of the black section of town—then that was known as "The Bottom." That's what they called the Negro section, and they went up and down through these sections and tried to, more or less, intimidate these people. And, you know, I just felt it was wrong, that's all.
Well, at the time had there been rumors of isolated floggings or beatings? Did you know of any at the time?
Not at that time. When the first motorcades took place, these were
recruiting exercises. They would follow these motorcades with open
meetings in which the general public was invited. And then Thomas L.
Hamilton, who was the Grand Dragon at that time from Leesville, South
Carolina, he and some of the hierarchy in the Klan would make these very
passionate addresses in which they criticized almost everything. I
remember very well some of the
Well, perhaps the main target of the Klansmen's addresses seemed to me to be Communism, or the fear of international Communism that was widespread in the early fifties. From your articles it seemed that you shared this same fear, and that a majority of the people in the community also were afraid of Communism and saw it as a real threat.
I saw it as a threat then and now. I think that one of the reasons that
the Klan got some momentum and did get some membership is because many
of the things that they said almost any of us would agree with. I mean,
you couldn't oppose everything that they said. I
couldn't oppose it now. They were against Communism, and they
were for Americanism; and this was, you know, long about (at least
shortly before) the time of Joe McCarthy, Senator McCarthy, who made a
great deal over the fact that Communism was infiltrating into America.
And if that's the only thing that they had been complaining
about, I don't know whether we had any right to …
you know, crusade against them or not. But we were going on the
assumption that what they were trying to do was set themselves up as the
judge and jury, as they did following the Civil War, and then set their
kind of justice. And we opposed them constantly on the grounds that no
individual outside of appointed
So it would really be safe to say that your opposition was more based on the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan and their actions rather than their general ideas at the time?
Except we had to attack this idea of opposing people simply because they were black, Jewish or Catholic. I mean, we couldn't go along with that kind of thinking, because we felt that these were Americans too. But when it got to where they were going to be the courts, and knowing the kind of people that the Klan had within its membership, you just couldn't approve of an organization like this deciding who was doing wrong and who wasn't, and performing their kind of justice upon them.
Well, did you attend the big Klan rally (I know with Mr. Hamilton in particular it would be the most spectacular rally in the United States in twenty-five years) between Tabor City and Whiteville?
I went to that one and many others. The biggest rally I ever went to was
down around the Red Bluff area of Horry County. And it was a kind of a
risky business (and I'm not trying to paint our organization
as any degree of bravado or something—we weren't
particularly brave). But you had to go to these if you were going to run
a newspaper. And we always went, and we didn't let everybody
there know that we were representing the Tabor City
Tribune either. And usually I carried some of my linetype operators
or somebody with me, because I didn't want to particularly be
out there by myself. I did go to these meetings and took
notes—but in the shadows of the people. And one of the things
that Hamilton and the various other speakers said very often was, at the
meetings, "You better be careful
At the time were you threatened directly by the Klansmen?
Just about every way that you can be threatened—and again, I don't want to be threatened as any great hero in the deal. But it was almost a daily occurrence that we had the threats: in the mail, put under the door of the print shop, under the windshield wiper of my car, as well as the telephone messages to my home. These were daily for several years.
Well, what type of threats were they? Please don't be modest; it's interesting to see the Klan making direct threats to someone like this.
Well, the threats were first, "You better get off our backs. You
don't know what you're talking about. The
Klan's down here to do a good job in Columbus and Overy
counties, and if you don't get off our backs your house is
going to burn, or you're going to find that you
don't have any print shop one of these mornings."
And then the more subtle kind of threats were those having to do with
economics. They'd say, "You've got X
number of advertisers in Tabor City now, but you're not going
to have any if you keep this thing up against the Klan." And I
know that they brought great pressure upon what few advertisers we had.
Our situations then, as I often told me wife, was, "We came
down here with nothing, and we don't have anything now. And
so we can't be any worse off then we were
Were the children and the rest of your family threatened by the Klansmen?
Well, at that moment I only had my one daughter who was very small, and so she was too young to realize any of the consequences. My wife was, with reason, nervous and upset over the entire time. I think she would have been very happy to have left Tabor City and never come back. The threats were general threats as to burning my home and print shop, or I was going to get it myself one of these nights (one of these floggings) if I didn't watch what we were saying. And the Grand Dragon himself came to see me; I think you might have read something about that.
Well, Mr. Carter, did these threats have an impact? Did your advertising go down?
We lost some advertising; we didn't have much, but we lost some of what we did have. But I'd have to say that generally my advertisers stuck with us reasonably well. Even some of my best advertisers, though, came to me and indicated that they'd like for me take it easy on the Klan, because they were being pressured not to advertise with us. I still appreciate the fact that enough of them hung with us that we managed to survive.
Well, was your circulation affected? I don't guess that's quite so important, but it would seem to be an indicator of Klan strength, perhaps, anyway.
We were so young at the time that our circualtion was minor
anyway—our newspaper itself was so young at the time. But we
lost some,
Well, Mr. Carter, I know this is a hard thing to get at, to get into really: I was curious if you could make some estimate as to perhaps what the Klan strength was in the community. Were a majority of the people, if not members, sympathetic to the Klan, you thought, or were the majority opposed?
The majority didn't want to be on either side. The majority
wanted to be just quiet about it; they didn't want the Klan
after them, and they didn't want the people who were
anti-Klan to know just where they stood either. So I'd say
that the overwhelming majority were neutral, at least openly were
neutral. But there was a lot of sentiment for the Klan. I continue to
say, though, that the bulk of the people who were in the Klan itself
were in there because of the adventure involved; not because of the
moral aspects of it, but because they saw in this a chance to exert some
power. And I think they were adventurous types, and I think that was the
bulk of the people. Generally, though, the man on the street
wasn't for the Klan nor was he anti-Klan; he just
didn't care much. He just wanted to stay out of it, because
they had some fear. I think the man on the street had
One of the most frightening aspects of the Klan crusade was the fact that you never knew who was a Klansman. And I say this in spite of the fact that we worked very closely with the FBI during this period, and were acquainted with much of the investigation. But we still never were aware of who was and who wasn't a member. And I think one of the most shocking aspects to it all was when I found that one of the members of our own three-man town council was a member of the Klan. He was convicted of his Klan activities; he died with a heart attack before he could serve his sentence.
Well, it seemed that several police officers in the county were Klansmen also.
Hamilton and all the other speakers for Klan recruiting made this very clear at every meeting, that their ranks were filled with the law enforcement officers in the area—not just in this county but in many other counties. And that was definitely true in some instances, because as you probably have heard in one of the articles we wrote about this, a Conway town city policeman was killed wearing a Klan robe and mask at a Myrtle Beach café. The Klansmen shot up this café, and this black man who was running the café shot back and killed one of the Klansmen; and when they carried him to the funeral home and they identified him (his name was Johnson—I've forgotten his first name), he was a Klansman wearing his uniform under his robe.
Frank Johnson, I believe.
Yes.
It's interesting. Sheriff Sasser later in an investigation
reported
Sasser was the sheriff in Horry County at this time, and he had been the sheriff down there for years and years. And it's certainly safe to say that while he may have talked against the Klan, he was not anti-Klan under any circumstances or any stretch of the imagination. Nor was John Henry, the sheriff who followed him; I would say that they both had the support of the Klan. Although in the latter years of Sasser's term he openly made a great many claims as to how much he had fought the Klan; but I think that was because there was a falling out among the Klan membership as to who they were going to support in the sheriff's race: John Henry or Ernest Sasser. But I think that both of them at one time or another had the support of the Klan in the county.
Well, didn't Sasser fail to be re-electred in 1952? And he was charged as being very anti-Klan at the time by Klansmen.
Yes. I was in the printing business in Conway as well as here at that
time, and John Henry made a lot of waves by saying that he was opposing
the Klan every way he could be. And he even had us print him up a bunch
of circulars that he was to circulate throughout the county saying how
anti-Klan he was. We printed the circulars; he paid us for the
circulars, but he never distributed them. I think he was just trying to
influence the newspaper that he was anti-Klan. There was no question,
though, he was supported by the Klan. I think that Sasser at this moment
may have lost his Klan support. But there isn't any doubt in
my mind but what in prior years Sasser had been supported by the Klan as
well. Both of them had that kind
Well, did you find the case to be the same in Columbus County, North Carolina insofar as law enforcement was concerned? Was the sheriff's department here actively working against the Klan?
I think there was a great deal more effort in Columbus County to find out who they were and what they were doing and to convict them than they were in Overy County, because I think that that's been true down through the years as far as lawlessness is concerned. But I will say (and Hugh Nance is a friend of mine who was the sheriff at that time in Columbus County, and did have some part in the arrests and the convictions), I'll say now and would tell him that I don't believe the cases would have ever been broken had we just had the local people trying to break the cases. And I don't believe they would have ever come up with the evidence to have convicted them, and I think that they would have looked around and seen so many people that were voting for them that they would have been a little reluctant to have done that much about it anyway. I doubt that local sheriff's departments and police forces would have ever broken the Klan's back.
Well, one of the Klan leaders himself, I think, would confirm what you
just said. Mr. Brooks, in his book that he wrote in 1958, really
criticized sheriff Nance—almost charged him with cowardice in
a lot of cases, and called him the "little cowboy
sheriff." That seems to be a general agreement, that the FBI
was really the most active force in finally
The original seventeen or eighteen arrests were federal arrests. But then, you know, following right on the heels of that were the SBI (the State Bureau of Investigation) arrests, and these were worked in conjunction with the sheriff's department. But I don't believe the FBI would have let all the debuties and the sheriffs and the various local law enforcement officers even know much about what was going on until they were ready to crack down on this. There's too many chances of a leak here which would spoil the thing. Incidentally, since we've mentioned the sheriff and Hugh Nance at that time, the nearest I came to shooting somebody in my life was in this period. And it was about two o'clock in the morning; and of course I didn't know who it was, but I was kind of on edge during this period anyway because they kept telling me how they were going to take me out of the house and beat me up. And at about two o'clock in the morning somebody knocked on my door. There were no houses right close to where I was living at the time (several hundred yards), and so I said, "Well, they finally came after me." And I had my gun, and in another minute or two I probably would have shot him. But just about the time I was started to the door he said, "This is Hugh Nance, the sheriff." Now, it could have been somebody else and just used this as a ruse to get me out, but in actuality it was him, and he was telling me about some more Klan information that he got. That's the nearest I came to shooting somebody; it was a wonder I didn't shoot.
Did you have your gun along very often at all?
Not in the streets, just at home. But I tried not to be by myself at
night around the county, because that was just asking for trouble.
Cole in Whiteville, did he receive the same sort of treatment?
He did, as far as I know. Willard's dead now, you know; but in
the early part of this campaign it had been centered down in this area
and in Horry County, and the News Reporter
wasn't as directly involved 'til long
about—what?—'51 or '52,
somewhere in through there. But once he got involved with it, I think
Willard did a magnificent job campaigning against the Klan. And he
deserved any recognition he ever got for it; he worked hard at it. And I
think he had just as many threats as we did; and in some respects I
think you have to respect his position even more, because he was there
at the county seat, and the law enforcement officers and the
investigation centered there more than it was down here. We were way
down here in the country eighteen miles from the county seat, and I
think he may have been closer to the later stages of investigation than
I was.
I think, too, perhaps he had one advantage in that his paper came out twice a week; it was a substantially bigger paper.
With more circulation, and just more pages and more space to say it; more people there to be involved, right.
Mr. Brooks was delighted to say that of all the enemies, of you and the sheriff and Mr. Cole, that he guessed they hated Mr. Cole worse. And I think it was because he reached more people, in a way.
Sure he did. Our circulation was something less than two thousand; and I
expect at that time the News Reporter was probably in
the
Well, didn't Mr. Hamilton charge you with being insane or crazy one time, and you challenged him to be examined by a psychiatrist?
Yes. He came to see me after I wrote one of those
Did you know Mr. Hamilton or Grand Dragon Hamilton before he became active in the Klan in the Tabor City area?
I'd never seen him, nor had anybody else in this area ever
seen him. He was strictly an outsider. Hamilton got involved, in my
opinion, because it was a money game. Now he got involved also because
he wasn't local, and he could show his face in a motorcade
and still nobody would know him.
Well, Mr. Carter, along about this same time I believe you supported black attendance at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School. And this seemed to be a rare position indeed to take in this part of the country. Do you think this hurt you in any way in terms of advertising or circulation, or your creditability with the people in your area?
Well, I think that, again, we had the same type people who were Klansmen
who felt that the blacks weren't entitled to any privileges
that they didn't already have. And they felt that this was
their lot in life, and they weren't supposed to ever get any
better, just to stay in the same rut. I don't know that we
lost any advertisers; I know that we had people who thought we were too
liberal. But coming from Chapel Hill, they said they could expect that;
so this is the kind of people I had. I know we were the first, insofar
as newspapers in this area are concerned, newspaper (be it ever so
humble, because we were a mighty small operation then— and
now, for that matter) to carry news stories and pictures of the blacks
in the community for the ordinary deeds that they did. Now, people
carried the names of the blacks and the stories on the blacks if they
were indicted Wilmington Star News, which was the biggest daily
paper in the area, wouldn't even run a group picture with a
black in it. I've seen pictures in their paper in which they
routed out the faces of the blacks, just to keep from showing them in
the paper. And the first ones that we ran on the front page, I got some
criticism from. Some of those people that were critics of that are not
even living now, but I've had some of them say,
"Well, you sure never should have run that black
fellow's picture on the paper. You never should have had him in the paper." And that was during the
period when little weekly papers had just an inside column somewhere
that was called "Negro News," and then
they'd just put everything into that one column that had to
do with the blacks. We had such a column for some time, but then we did
away with this and started just handling them like we would anybody
else, any other news. And I still feel that we were right; I feel
that's the way it should have been handled.
Well, now we're here only three or four miles, I guess, if that far from the South Carolina line. And I was wondering if you felt that newspapers in Horry County (although it's a small town county much like Columbus County, and much like Columbus county in a lot of ways) failed to write against the Klan or editorialize against the Klan because they agreed with the Klan, or perhaps because they were afraid of the Klan; or for what reason did they take a position that was certainly not the same as yours?
Well, I think the two Conway papers early in this period were run by
people who thought just like the Klan did. Now, in the latter stages of
this, like the paper in Myrtle Beach: Myrtle Beach Sun and
the Myrtle Beach News, I don't believe they
agreed with what the Klan was doing, nor do I believe that they would
have under any circumstances ever been Klansmen. But I think that they
knew that the average man on the street in Overy County was more
pro-Klan than they were in Columbus County. And I think it was a matter
of survival that they took the easy way there and just decided not to be
anti-Klan or pro-Klan; they just weren't either. They
reported a few basic facts on news happenings regarding the Klan, but I
don't think the Horry County newspapers ever took any stand
against the Klan activities.
At this time, Mr. Carter, did you know the identity of a large number of Klansmen in this area, and did you continue to have cordial relations with these people?
I had knowledge of a few dozens; not in the hundreds, but I had knowledge
of maybe twenty-five or thirty-five that I knew were members or I had
good reason to believe were members. And, of course these are difficult
things to prove. You had to go here on what somebody else had told you
who had been to a meeting and who thought he had recognized some. But we
had a few. We tried to plant some people in the Klan ourselves (I mean,
the newspaper tried to plant some people). We had some applications
filed by various people that we hoped to plant in the Klan.
So the FBI did plant people in the Klan? This seems to sound like recent years.
Yes
Well, Mr. Carter, how were your relationships with people you knew to be Klansmen during this period? Were they cordial, or was there any hostility when you met them on the street, if you can remember?
Well, I think that generally the Klansmen then didn't know
whether I knew he was one or not, and to show his hostility kind of
uncovered him from what he was hiding. So I don't think we
had any hostility in that respect. But I think one of the blessings from
the Klan activities is the fact that some of those who were convicted of
floggings, or who were definite leaders in the Klan's
movement, who were members during the entire episode and who served
terms and who came back home, I still rate three or four of them today
as my friends. Now, I know them and they know me, and we have
Well, Mr. Carter, now do you know the Klansmen in the county now? Do you think there's an active Klan in this county?
I don't think there's any Klansmen in the county
that have any …. Let me put it this way: I don't
think there's any card-carrying Klansmen to speak
of—there might be a handful. But I don't think
there are any card-carrying Klansmen to think of. But I think we still
have some people who think like the Klan thought; I think we still have
some that would sympathize with the very things that the Klan was
promoting at that time. Now, this may not be the time to say it, but
somewhere we need to point out this basic fact about the Klan: we have
never (then or now) tried to say anything good about the character of
the people that they flogged. And I think that's one reason
the Klan had some following then and some sympathizers then, because
these beatings that they administered and their form of justice on these
people, generally speaking the people that they punished had a lot
lacking in their character and they deserved some kind of punishment.
But our crusade was that this group of vigilantes were not the one to do
the punishing. Of course, their rebuttal to this was, "Nobody
else is doing anything about it." So they had some argument;
and this made some people pro-Klan, because they'd say,
"Well, I hear of these few people that are leading these
immoral lives, and they've been doing it for ten years and
the children out there are suffering, and nothing's being
done about it." So the Klan did something about it: they put
the whip to them. We posed it anyway as we would now. But I did want to
point out the fact that some people were
Well, did you personally know or were you acquainted with any of the Klan victims?
Only to a nodding acquaintance kind of way. I mean, some of these people in this area who were beaten up (some blacks and some whites), I would know the name if I saw them on the street but I had no real close association.
In your estimation, Mr. Carter, were there a lot of floggings that were never reported or never came to light?
I think there were a lot more that weren't reported than were reported. And I thank God for the ones that were reported, because if they hadn't been reported the FBI and the SBI would have had nothing to go on, and we would have been in a bad position. But the fact that some of these people had the courage to report them, I think that is a major point in the whole episode, because had they not gone to the sheriff or somebody and told their stories they would have broken the case.
Well, perhaps some of that can be attributed to newspaper report they received.
I believe that if the newspapers hadn't said anything,
hadn't even offered any crusade against this activity at all,
I doubt seriously that it would ever have been broken. In the first
place, I doubt if anybody would have talked; second, I doubt that the
FBI would have ever gotten involved with it. I think it's one
of the purposes that perhaps we served, to get enough attention focused
on it that it did get the FBI interested. And if we hadn't, I
don't believe the local law enforcement would have ever
broken Raleigh News and Observer,
because I think as long as Willard and I were talking about it down here
in the county and nobody else was saying much about it, that perhaps we
would have had a hard time….
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
… in this campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, because they were a big newspaper with a big circulation. And they sent Jay Jenkins down here, who was working with the state editor at that time, and Jay did a lot of talking to Willard Cole and myself and came to some of the public meetings. And they publicized the Klan activities and the floggings with some big banner headlines on the front page, and I think this helped to get the FBI interested in it. They saw it as more than just any little small town/rural county problem, but that it could grow into a state and national problem.
Well, Mr. Carter, you mentioned that the Wilmington paper was the closest daily paper. Did the people in Wilmington at the newspaper seem to take an interest in Columbus County Klan problems?
I didn't consider the Wilmington paper very much of an
aggressive newspaper in that period. It's much more so today;
I think it's a right good newspaper today. The Star News in that period was not what I would call a crusading
newspaper; it more or less accepted the church socials and that kind of
thing, and it didn't do much crusading one way or the other.
It certainly did not put out the effort that the Raleigh
News and Observer did. And I think too that its management in
that period perhaps reflected some of the pro-Klan thinking; as I told
you, they didn't run pictures of the blacks and that kind of
thing, even though segregation was on the verge of being outlawed. The
newspaper in Wilmington at that time didn't take much of an
I see. In looking at the Klan at the time, did you perceive the Klan to be a real political threat in the county? Was there ever any fear or any talk about the Klan actually having enough influence to elect public officials in Columbus County?
That what they said: that's what the
Klansmen said and that's what the Klan leaders said every
time they made any statement at all, that "You better be aware
of us, because we soon will be able to control all the activities in
your county. We're going to put the people in office;
we're going to be the ones who elect your county
commissioners and your sheriff departments." Now I never did
believe that they could get a majority of the people in Columbus County
if they knew that they were voting for Klansmen. I never did believe
they had the majority of the people on their side, although they had
sizeable followings. But insofar as the Klan itself is concerned, this
was their threat; this is what they said, that
"We're going to control it all."
Well, do you think they had a much bigger following in Overy County, a following that would have enabled them perhaps to elect some of their own people to local offices?
I think they did elect some people to office in Overy County. Now, there
were some people who were fairly close to the Klan in that time who made
estimates of up to forty-five hundred membership in the Klan in Horry
County. Now, I don't suppose anybody will ever really know; I
always guess something less than two thousand. But there were people who
thought that they had as many as forty-five hundred actual dues-paying
members. And, you know, you can take forty-five hundred dues-paying
members in a
I see.
Well, Mr. Carter, you won the Pulitzer Prize, and your paper is still the only weekly in the United States to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service. When were you notified of the award, and what was your reaction when you received the award?
Well, I was sitting in that little old thirty by seventy building down on
Live Oak Street, the first building we ever occupied, and I still just
had a girl and me and a printer or two in the back. And the call came
from the Raleigh News and Observer; I don't
know whether it was Jonathan Daniels or somebody else—it
might have been the state editor. Anyhow he called me, and I happened to
be in at the moment. And he said, "I want you to know that it
just came over the wire that you won the Pulitzer Prize." And I
said, "For what?" And he said, "For
Meritorious Public Service. This is the biggest of the Pulitzer
Prizes." And you know, they've got them in various
phases—literature and all. And I said, "Well now, I
never expected anything like this down here in the country."
And so it was a startling kind of thing; I mean, if you come from a
little old country community like I did, and go to a school like Chapel
Hill (that you felt like you were the smallest frog in the pond up
there), and then you come down here in another rural area, and to win
the Pulitzer Prize (which is, to me, the biggest of all the journalism
awards), is almost unheard of. I was shocked and really
didn't know how to handle it. But we did run a headline
Well, Mr. Carter, perhaps this is a difficult question, but I was curious as to why you think they gave you the Pulitzer Prize? What did you do? What was the most important thing in your reporting or your writing that won for you the Pulitzer Prize?
I think we've got to give Jonathan Daniels some credit for
that, as the editor of the News and Observer in that
time. I think he spotted a trend in the country toward anti-segregation
and anti-Klan activities, and I think he saw the possibility that the
time was ripe, so to speak, for some weekly newspaper to win something
for something that it did in the country. In pointing out the merits of
this little crusade down here to Columbia University and the people who
make the decision as to who wins the Pulitzer Prize, I think that they
saw in what Mr. Daniels said some merit: that maybe it was time to
recognize some of the smaller media in the country, and here was
something that did have national attention. It had made the New York Times and Time magazine and the
various big publications in the country (the Klan activity had), and I
think the time was right for a weekly newspaper to win an award. And we
have to again go back and give Jonathan Daniels and the Raleigh News and Observer some credit for having won it.
Don't you think that perhaps they were impressed, probably, up in New York with what they perceived as really nothing less than courageous action, primarily because you were threatened? And they had a real fear of the Klan themselves, I suppose.
I think that they did see this as country journalism that's taking much more of a chance than we would in New York City or Washington or Baltimore or Chicago. We kept referring to it as "fighting an evil that was on our own doorstep;" and it was on our own doorstep. And I think that some of the big papers kept harping on this, that you can sit up here in a big airconditioned office with a hundred people in a newsroom and say some things, and not be pressured nearly as much as if you're sitting down there by yourself in a little building on a remote street, where the people you're talking about are right outside the door.
I see. Well, editor Cole in Whiteville was also acknowledged for the Pulitzer Prize. And I was curious: did you and he work together? Did you cooperate, get together to plan your crusade, or was it just each of you individually doing the same thing?
It was individually done. Willard was in Tabor City before he went to the
News Reporter in Whiteville. He came here as my
replacement after I resigned as secretary to the Chamber of Commerce (of
the Merchants' Association). He came here from Panama, and he
lived here a number of years. And he served as executive secretary of
the Merchants' Association. He had been in the newspaper
business before in North Wilkesboro and some other places, but he had
been out of the newspaper business for a number of years. Then he had a
chance to go to Whiteville to be the editor of the News
Reporter (Mr. Leslie Thompson is the one who hired him at the
time), and he went over and filled that job. And we never got together,
like prior to a publication date, and said, "Let's
have another editorial about the Ku Klux Klan." But in his own
routine of running a newspaper and in my routine of running a newspaper,
enough things came to our attention in meetings and threats
Well, did you have access to the law enforcement people? Did you talk to the sheriff people, or was this a real problem for you? Did you have to get up out of bed late at night and run over to the sheriff's office?
Oh, I talked with them on numerous occasions, because they were in our office occasionally. And I suppose I was in their office occasionally, although I was so busy trying to make a living I didn't have too much time to run around hunting deputy sheriffs and go over to the sheriff's department. But I say again, in spite of the fact that they perhaps were very sincere in their efforts, I don't really think the sheriff's department had anything to tell you. I don't think really they knew much that they could tell you that was a good news lead, or anything that you didn't already know. And, of course the FBI, they would tell you a considerable amount about what was going on (not everything, but some of the things that were going on), but you obviously had sense enough not to divulge it, either, because we were trying every way we could to cooperate with the FBI and the SBI.
Well, Mr. Carter, what were some of the other awards you won at this time? Don't be modest; I'd be interested to know.
I won eleven, I believe, Jerry. But the two that I value so much
(although I value them all): I value the Pulitzer Prize, which we
already discussed, for Meritorious Public Service, and then I got the
award from the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce for one of the
ten most outstanding young men in America. I believe that was 1954 that
I got the award in Seattle, Washington, and I value that right along
with the Pulitzer Prize. I mean, to have been one of the ten men under
thirty-five years old in the country recognized is an honor that you
can't just shrug off. I still think a great deal of that, and
I still have the clasped hands that are in bronze on my mantlepiece in
my house that they gave me at that time. I'm very proud of
that. The other awards, though: the first award of significance was the
First Annual B'nai B'rith Award from the
Anti-Defamation League for the Southeastern United States. I got that
award in Durham, North Carolina, although it was made by a gentleman
from Tuscaloosa, Alabama; and it was a Jewish award. But I'm
very proud of that award, because it was the first. But in addition to
that I have the North Carolina Man of the Year in 1952; have the
Distinguished Service Award by the JC's right here in this
community, the first one that they ever gave (and I believe that was in
'51). And I'm proud of that because it was local,
the fact that I got this local award. And then we had the National
Editorial Association's President's Award in 1954,
that I got in Baltimore, Maryland; I appreciated the fact that
nationally the press recognized the effort and gave me this award. I
know we had records of commendations and certificates and awards from
the Eastern North Carolina Press Association and from the North Carolina
Press Association itself. There were others: the Civitans, for instance,
in North Carolina gave me their annual award for Meritorious Public
Service, and I got this award somewhere up in
Well, Mr. Carter, did you continue to stay in Tabor City after winning the award? Did you have job offers outside of Tabor City
Had some good offers from other newspapers. I never seriously considered
these; I knew I wanted to stay in Tabor City and raise my family. And
I'm very happy that I did. And my own son now not only runs
the Tabor City Tribune, but our wholesale paper
business, our printing business, our die-cutting business. And
we've grown from a little outfit: the first year we were here
we did fifteen thousand dollars worth of business, and this year we did
almost two and a half million dollars worth of business in a little town
of three thousand people. We're very proud of that. And
I'm very proud that my son likes it here and lives
here—and my two daughters. One of them lives in Lumberton,
the other one's still in college; but they all seemed to have
liked Tabor City. It was certainly the right move when I came to Tabor
City—almost like it was fate.
All of your children have gone to Chapel Hill to school?
That's another thing. Like I told you when we began this
conversation, no member of my family on either my mother's or
father's side had ever been to college. I was the first; I
was lucky to get through, and I finally did make it with Cs and Bs. But
then I set as a lifetime ambition that my children would all have
college degrees. And the Lord willing, if my daughter gets through this
term at Chapel Hill she'll have a journalism
Well, you never worked for another newspaper after coming from Chapel Hill?
Not full-time. No, I came directly from Chapel Hill here. Now, I had
worked summers and vacations for the News and Press in
Albemarle, and I had been a free-lancer with the Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel and the Charlotte News while I was in school and in the summertime.
During that period American Legion baseball was a big thing in my time
(I believe you played that too); and in Albemarle we won the national
championship one of those years when I was in school. The Little World
Series was played in San Diego, California; and I was the sports editor
of that little weekly paper, and as such I did a lot of work with the
other daily paper. But I never held any job full-time after Chapel Hill
except this; I came here and took this job.
You may be interested, perhaps, to know that in 1948, I guess it was,
after I had been down here and started this weekly paper, the Tabor City Tribune, an old friend and schoolmate,
Orville Campbell in Chapel Hill, asked me to come with him to start the
Colonial Press in Chapel Hill that would print the Daily
Tar Heel. At that time it was being printed by the Orange Print
Shop. And I went back there, moved my wife and daughter, and we went
back to Chapel Hill. And I stayed up there about fourteen months, I
believe, and we did start Colonial Press—bought equipment,
moved it in, hired printers, and began printing the Daily
Tar Heel and doing commercial printing throughout the
community. And I think we were making a reasonably good success of that.
Well, Mr. Carter, what were your politics at this time? Were you a Democrat or a Republican, conservative or liberal? Or could you qualify yourself?
I had a strange history in politics. I was originally a registered
independent, and I really think that's what I am now. I
registered originally as an independent, and then (like thirty years
ago) I was registered for a year or two as a Republican. But during the
thirty-one years that I've been in Tabor City I've
been registered as a Democrat. Now, this may be for a very selfish kind
of a reason, because the primary elections in North Carolina (and
particularly eastern North Carolina) are such that if you're
not a registered Democrat you just might as well not vote, because
that's where the people are chosen. And so I've
been a registered Democrat all these years since I've been in
Tabor City. But I'm not one of those that would follow the
party (that's tied to a news tail, as somebody said); I vote
for the individual, then and now. I think I have voted for every
Republican presidential candidate, beginning with FDR going out of
office. I believe I've voted for all Republican presidential
candidates since then, and probably will again. So I really guess
I'm more of an independent than anything else; I usually
split
Did your paper support Mr. Wallace in 1968, or at any time?
No, we didn't. We supported Nixon in 1968. And I've created a lot of animosity among fellow people in the news media over the Nixon thing, because I never gave up on Nixon. And today I say that he probably did more for the foreign policy of this country than any president during my lifetime, and I stay with that. I know he's made some mistakes, but, you know, I have too; and I don't feel that the mistakes he made, even though they shroud these with claims like "Abuse of Power" and "Cover-up" (which I never heard tell of 'til this came up)…. They've shrouded these charges in such terms that you don't really know what they mean. And I've never felt that the activities that he was involved with were sufficient to run him out of office.
Well, do you think integration has worked in some ways, or has it
I almost hate to comment on this, because it will make me more of a
reactionary than some people think I am already, perhaps. But I
don't think there is any doubt (and I have to speak in terms
of local situations here, because I'm not aware of
what's going on in South Boston other than what we get in the
newspapers) whatsoever in my mind, or many other people's
minds, that the quality of the schools, the public schools in our
community, has been reduced significantly since segregation ended. Now
hopefully somewhere along the line it has helped some of the blacks, but
it has hurt the whites insofar as the quality of education is concerned.
This has gotten to be a political phrase, "quality of
education." There is no quality education in Columbus County at
the moment; it is much, much worse education than it
was ten years ago. And I hate this is true; I wish it were the other way
around. And I don't say that putting the blacks in the
schools is the sole reason it happened, although I'm not
qualified to say why it happened. But I can look at the high school
graduates now, or I can talk with one, or I can have one fill out an
employment application and compare it with applications of a decade ago,
and you can tell from the phrasology, the spelling and everything else
that there's something lacking that we had some time ago.
Well, Mr. Carter, could you speculate on perhaps what would be a better plan for integration? Or should we go back to segregation? Do you have any ideas of your own that might be helpful?
We should never go back to the segregation again, although I'm
one of those anti-bussing people. I think this is the wrong thing. I
don't know that I have any solution to it, but I know that
that's just not
Well, Mr. Carter, what do you see now as the main problems facing the United States? What are the problems that will be the toughest to deal with, do you think?
Well, it gets back to economics. I think that the prime problem in this
country is that we have grown a generation of people, both black and
white, who feel that the country owes them a living. And as long as
people aren't producing something they are of very little
value to the country, regardless of color or age or sex. In the long
run, it has to be what this country makes and does and produces that
determines how successful it is. And we have such a large segment of the
people that have got this idea that "I don't have to
do anything, that I'm going to get a living anyway."
And I think this is a big problem, because this group is electing a lot
of the officials in the country; and it's got to where the
politicians who represent us are afraid to do anything to reduce this
"gimme a living for nothing." And therefore these
people are expecting it, and I think it's become such a
problem that it's going to spend us into obscurity;
it's going to spend us into bankruptcy—as New York
City already is. And actually, if you had an audit in this country,
we're bankrupt too (the national government is). As long as
we can print the money and issue the money we'll keep on
plugging along, but I think the handwriting is on the wall. Now,
somebody's going to
Mr. Carter, has your paper taken a stand on the equal rights amendment? Do you have strong feelings about that?
Are you speaking about the sex one?
Yes, for women.
You know, equal rights a few years ago had to do with the blacks and the
whites. So now we've come down to the women's lib
conversation. We haven't editorialized on this. We have
referred to it a time or two in some columns we've written,
and I don't really know where we stand. I thought they were
equal all along. I mean, I do know though
Oh, and finally, Mr. Carter, we're going into a bicentennial year: the country is two hundred years old now, and it's sort of a big year in American history. I was curious if you had any ideas about what would be a fitting celebration, or what does the country need to direct its priorities toward? As Americans now, what do you think we should do? You have personally some influence in the community here, and I was curious as to how you think Americans could be most affected positively by some sort of program in 1976.
Well, I don't know that I have any concrete proposals to offer
here. I just know that some way we need to teach all the younger
generation what this country has done for downtrodden people that came
over here in the last two or three hundred years. And unfortunately we
find that not enough appreciate what we've got. And if
there's any way to help them to appreciate, and to grow in
loyalty and patriotism (and this might have to be, again, through the
school system and the churches, and perhaps the homes have the greatest
influence of all)…. But we seem to have lost some of the
appreciation of what we have. And, of course this is almost incidental,
but I went to a Chamber of Commerce meeting here in town last week, and
at each already had, and therefore I
don't see this need for change. I think we need to wake up
that even without the change (and I don't say that everything
in the country's right) we're more right than
anybody else is: that we have greater morality than most of the other
countries have. We certainly have more possessions than anybody else
has. We eat the best, we have the best homes and the best
clothing—more cars than all the rest of them put together, I
guess. (You go to Russia and they've got one for every three
thousand people, and over here every family's got two!) And
the things that we have are so much better than anybody else has, and
more of it, that I think we've just got a great country and a
great heritage. And I think we should make change only after a lot of
thought. I don't think we ought to revolutionize how our
country has been running. I think we've got a lot to offer
just like
I think the fact that a little country boy with very little opportunity can come to a country town like Tabor City (which depends entirely on tobacco and soybeans and strawberries and a few things like that to keep its economy going), the fact that he could come to a little town, start a newspaper and win the Pulitzer Prize and many of the other outstanding national awards and state awards that've been won is an indication of how great America really is. And I think that that alone speaks for our country, and the possibilities of anybody reaching some kind of a pedestal if he works at it and believes in it—as I believe in America.
Thank you very much, Mr. Carter. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
END OF INTERVIEW