Carter, W. Horace

W. Horace Carter (1921- ) of Tabor City, N.C., was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who was editor of the "Tabor City Tribune" and writer of books and articles on fresh-water fishing and deer and duck hunting.

W. Horace Carter of Tabor City, Columbus County, N.C., and Hawthorne, Alachua County, Fla., was born in 1921. He was the first male graduate of Endy High School and went on to receive an A.B. degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina in 1944. In 1946, Carter took some of his G.I. Bill money from World War II service and, in partnership with others, opened the Tabor City Tribune, a weekly newspaper. Around 1950, he helped form the Atlantic Publishing Company, which published five small newspapers in North and South Carolina.

Carter received many honors during his journalistic career, two of the most prestigious resulting from his courageous battle against the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1950s. In 1953, as a result of his hard-hitting anti-Klan editorials and gutsy front-page coverage of Klan activities, the Tabor City Tribune received the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to a weekly newspaper. In addition, also in 1953, Carter's anti-Klan campaign led to his being named by the Jaycees as one of the top ten young men in America.

In later years, Carter has written several books, among them: Land That I Love (1980); Wild and Wonderful Santee Cooper Country (1981); Buddy, Ernie Pyle, World War II's Most Beloved Typewriter Soldier (1982); Return to Cross Creek (1985); and Damn the Alligators (1989). He is also widely published as a free-lance writer specializing in works about fresh-water fishing and deer and duck hunting.