Carter, Hodding

Hodding Carter III was born in New Orleans, La., on 7 April 1935 to journalist and publisher Hodding Carter II and Betty Werlein. He grew up in Greenville, Miss., and graduated from Princeton University in 1957. Carter served in the United States Marine Corps after college and then began working at the Delta Democrat-Times as a reporter, then managing editor, and finally associate publisher. Carter was co-chair of the delegation that ousted Mississippi's white regular Democratic Party delegation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. He worked in Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign in Washington in 1964 and Jimmy Carter’s campaign in Atlanta in 1976. He served as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and State Department spokesman during the Jimmy Carter administration.

In l980, Carter began working in television. He served as host, anchor, panelist, correspondent, and reporter for public affairs television shows on PBS, ABC, CBS, BBC, and CNN. From 1981 to 1994, he was a regular panelist on This Week with David Brinkley . He also was an op-ed columnist for the Wall Street Journal and a frequent contributor to magazines and newspapers across the country.

From 1995 to 1997, Carter held the post of Knight Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 1998, he was named president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In January 2006, Carter became University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Carter married Patricia M. Derian in 1978. Derian was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights under President Jimmy Carter. Carter and Derian's family includes seven children and twelve grandchildren.

From the guide to the Hodding Carter Papers, 1950s-2000s, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)