Carolina journalism alumnus and friend Horace Carter died Sept. 16

Carolina journalism alumnus and friend Horace Carter died Wednesday, Sept. 16, in Tabor City, N.C.

Carter’s storied career as a journalist included a campaign in the 1950s against the Ku Klux Klan resulting in more than 100 convictions of Klansmen. Carter and his Tabor City Tribune won the Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service in 1953 for the campaign waged in the face of violence and repeated threats. It was the first weekly newspaper to win a Pulitzer.

While at Carolina, Horace Carter was the editor of The Tar Heel student newspaper, which later became The Daily Tar Heel. After leaving Carolina in 1943, Carter founded The Tribune in 1946.

Carter still owned The Tribune, which is published by the company he founded, Atlantic Publishing. He continued to write columns for the paper, published more than 2,000 magazine articles, and wrote more than 20 books.

Carter donated his Pulitzer gold medal to the Hussman School of Journalism and Media in 1991 to inspire future journalists to fight for justice and high principles. He was inducted into the N.C. Journalism Hall of Fame in 1983; received an honorary degree from Carolina in 2000; and was awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state’s highest civilian honor, in 2007.

Carter’s children established the W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professorship in his honor at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media to help extend the impact of their father’s legacy.

The family has requested memorial gifts be made to the professorship.

“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.”

Carter was featured in the “Consecrated to the Common Good” exhibit  at the N.C. Collection Gallery in Wilson Library. The exhibit documented 100 years of journalism education at Carolina. Carter also funded the publication of the history of UNC journalism education, "Making News: One Hundred Years of Journalism and Mass Communication at Carolina."