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Walter Horace Carter grew up in Stanley County, North Carolina, during the 1920s and 1930s. He moved to Chapel Hill to earn a journalism degree 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 Columbia 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 Ku Klux 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 KKK campaign began during the summer of 1950 when they brought a motorcade through Tabor City with the intention of recruiting new members and intimidating the 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 KKK. Carter stresses that the KKK 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 vigilante tactics the Klan employed in targeting its victims, Carter publicly attacked the Klan in weekly columns for the Tabor City Tribune and worked closely with other opponents, 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 Earnest 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.

This interview is part of the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), a collection of over 4,000 interviews housed at the Southern Historical Collection.

Finding aid to the Southern Oral History Program Collection

Database of all Southern Oral History Program Collection interviews