Editing Hodding Carter

{{short description|American writer}}
{{about|Hodding Carter II, the journalist|his son, the Jimmy Carter White House aide|Hodding Carter III}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2013}}
{{Infobox person
| name               = Hodding Carter
| image              = Hodding-Carter-1962.jpg
| image_size         = 
| caption            = Hodding Carter in 1962
| birth_name         = William Hodding Carter II
| birth_date         = {{birth date|1907|2|3|mf=y}}
| birth_place        = [[Hammond, Louisiana]], U.S.
| death_date         = {{death date and age|1972|4|4|1907|2|3|mf=y}}
| death_place        = [[Greenville, Mississippi]], U.S.
| education          = [[Bowdoin College]]<br>[[Columbia University]]
| occupation         = Journalist; writer
| party              = [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]]
| networth           = 
| spouse             = Betty Werlein
| website            = 
| footnotes          = 
| children           = [[Hodding Carter III|William Hodding Carter III]]<br/>Philip Dutartre Carter<br/>Thomas Hennen Carter
}}
'''William Hodding Carter II''' (February 3, 1907 – April 4, 1972) was an American [[Political progressivism|progressive]] journalist and author. Among other distinctions in his career, Carter was a [[Nieman Fellow]] and [[Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing|Pulitzer Prize]] winner. He died in [[Greenville, Mississippi]], of a heart attack at the age of sixty-five. He is interred in the Greenville Cemetery.

==Biography==

===Early life and education===
Carter was born in [[Hammond, Louisiana|Hammond]], Louisiana, the largest community in [[Tangipahoa Parish]], in southeastern [[Louisiana]]. His parents were farmer [[William Hodding Carter, Sr.]] and Irma, née Dutartre.<ref>Something About The Author, vol. 2, Gale Research, 1972, p. </ref> He was valedictorian of the [[Hammond High School (Louisiana)|Hammond High School]] class of 1923. Carter attended [[Bowdoin College]] in [[Brunswick, Maine]] (1927), and the Graduate School of Journalism, [[Columbia University]] (1928).

He returned to Louisiana upon graduating. According to [[Ann Waldron]], the young Carter was an outspoken [[white supremacy|white supremacist]], yet he began to alter his thinking when he returned to the [[United States Southern States|South]] to live.<ref>[http://www.annwaldron.com/work7.htm Waldron, Ann.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060508230523/http://www.annwaldron.com/work7.htm |date=May 8, 2006 }} ''Hodding Carter: The Reconstruction of a Racist'', Algonquin Books, 1993.</ref>

===Career background===
After a year as a [[teacher|teaching]] [[fellow]] at [[Tulane University]] in [[New Orleans]] (1928–1929), Carter worked as [[news reporter|reporter]] for the ''[[New Orleans Item-Tribune]]'' (1929), [[United Press International|United Press]] in New Orleans (1930), and the [[Associated Press]] in [[Jackson, Mississippi]], (1931–32).

With his wife, [[Betty Werlein Carter|Betty Werlein ]] of New Orleans, Carter founded the ''Hammond Daily Courier,'' in 1932. The paper was known for its opposition to popular Louisiana governor [[Huey Long|Huey Pierce Long Jr.]], but its support for the national [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]].

He won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing]] in 1946 for his editorials on intolerance, as exemplified by "[[s:Go for Broke|Go for Broke]]", lambasting the ill treatment of [[Japanese American]] (''[[Nisei]]'') soldiers returning from [[World War II]]. He was a professor for a single semester at Tulane.

===Fighting intolerance===
He also wrote editorials in the ''Greenville Delta Democrat-Times'' regarding social and economic intolerance in the [[American South|Deep South]] that won him widespread acclaim and the moniker "Spokesman of the [[New South]]".

Carter wrote a caustic article for ''[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]'' magazine which detailed the menacing spread of a chapter of the [[Citizens' Councils|White Citizens' Council]]. The article was attacked on the floor of the [[Mississippi House of Representatives]] as a "Willful lie by a nigger-loving editor". Carter responded in a front-page editorial:<blockquote>By vote of 89 to 19, the [[Mississippi House of Representatives]] has resolved the editor of this newspaper into a liar because of an article I wrote. If this charge were true, it would make me well qualified to serve in that body. It is not true. So to even things up, I hereby resolve by a vote of one to nothing that there are eighty-nine liars in the state legislature.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20010818144158/http://www.asne.org/kiosk/archive/convention/2001/leadership/civilrights.html Roberts, Eugene L.] American Society of Newspaper Editors, July 31, 2004. Last accessed: 1/13/07.</ref></blockquote>

===Personal life===
He had a son [[Hodding Carter III]], born in 1935, who became State Department spokesman during the Carter administration and achieved a degree of notoriety by often appearing on television news.<ref name = McFadden>{{cite news|url = https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/us/hodding-carter-dead.html|title = Hodding Carter III, Crusading Editor and Jimmy Carter Aide, Dies at 88|last = McFadden|first = Robert D.|date = May 12, 2023|accessdate = May 15, 2023|newspaper = [[The New York Times]]|url-access = limited|archive-date = May 12, 2023|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230512180309/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/12/us/hodding-carter-dead.html|url-status = live}}</ref>

Carter was strongly opposed to the [[Munich Conference]], which ceded [[Sudetenland|the Sudetenland]] to [[Adolf Hitler]]. Carter rushed into [[World War II]] service. While stationed at [[Camp Blanding]] in Florida, he lost the sight in his right eye during a training exercise. He thereafter served in the Intelligence Division and continued his journalistic activities by editing the Middle East division of ''[[Yank, the Army Weekly|Yank]]'' and ''[[Stars and Stripes (newspaper)|Stars and Stripes]]'' in [[Cairo]], [[Egypt]], and writing three books.<ref>[http://www.wcs-ddm.org/about_quote.asp?QuoteId=6 Women's Crisis Support] web site. Last accessed: 1/13/07.</ref>

===Politics and the Kennedys===
Carter was an unabashed supporter of the Kennedys and their quest for the American Presidency.

He had dinner with [[Robert F. Kennedy|Bobby Kennedy]] and his family the night before Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. Carter had also been working for him "campaigning, making talks, and writing ghost speeches".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://web1.millercenter.org/poh/transcripts/carter_hodding_1968_1108.pdf |title=General Services Statement |website=web1.millercenter.org |access-date=2019-10-17}}</ref> 
On a flight home, Carter learned of Kennedy's death and was devastated. A passenger on the plane said, "Well, we got that son-of-a-bitch, didn't we?" Carter responded, "Who are you talking about?" The passenger said, "You know damn well who I'm talking about", to which Carter responded by saying "You're just a son-of-a-bitch", and then punching the passenger in the mouth.<ref>[[Lyndon Baines Johnson]] [[Oral History]], interview, ''ibid.''</ref>

==Criticism==
Columnist [[Eric Alterman]], in a book review of ''The Race Beat'' (2006) for ''[[The Nation]]'' discusses how Carter and other Southern journalists were "moderate defenders" of the South. That is, they were apologists for the South during the pre-[[civil rights]] era. Alterman says, "'Enlightened'" Southern editors, especially...Mississippi's Hodding Carter, Jr., sold [Northerners] a [[Ahmed Chalabi|Chalabi]]-like dream of steady, nonviolent progress that belied the violent savagery that lay in wait for those who stepped out of line".<ref>[http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070108/alterman Alterman, Eric.] ''The Nation,'' "And the Beat Goes On", January 8, 2007.</ref> One of the reasons segregation had been a success, according to Alterman, is "the way newspapers had neglected it".

In ''Hodding Carter: The Reconstruction of a Racist'', author [[Ann Waldron]] makes the case that although Carter crusaded for racial equality, he hedged on condemning [[Racial segregation|segregation]], and that after ''[[Brown v. Board of Education]]'' in 1954, he attacked the intransigent [[Citizens' Councils|White Citizens' Council]], but only supported gradual [[Desegregation in the United States|integration]].<ref>Waldron, ibid.</ref>

In defense of Carter, Claude Sitton, writing about Waldron's book in ''[[The New York Times]]'' says, "[R]eaders of today will ask how an editor who opposed enactment of a federal antilynching law as unnecessary and [[Public school (government funded)|public school]] desegregation in [[Mississippi]] as unwise can be called a champion of [[social justice|racial justice]]. The answer, which she gives in the book's introduction, lies in the context of the times...Absent his efforts and those of other Southern editors of courage and like mind, change would have come far more slowly and at far greater cost."<ref>Sitton, Claude. ''The New York Times,'' Book Review.</ref>

==Research==
Mitchell Library at [[Mississippi State University]] in [[Starkville, Mississippi|Starkville]] holds Carter's personal papers.

==Books==
* ''Lower Mississippi'' (1942)
* ''The Winds of Fear'' (1945)
* ''Southern Legacy'' (1950)
* ''Gulf Coast Country'' (1951) (with Anthony Ragusin)
* ''John Law Wasn't So Wrong: The Story of Louisiana's Horn of Plenty'' (Baton Rouge, La.: Esso Standard Oil Company, 1952).
* ''Where Main Street Meets the River'' (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1953)
* ''Robert E. Lee and the Road of Honor'' (1954)
* ''So Great a Good'' (1955)
* ''Marquis de Lafayette: Bright Sword for Freedom'' (1958)
* ''The Angry Scar: The Story of Reconstruction'' (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959)
* ''First Person Rural'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963)
* ''The Ballad of Catfoot Grimes and Other Verses'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1964)
* ''So the Heffners Left McComb'' (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965)
* ''The Commandos of World War II'' (1966)
* ''Their Words Were Bullets: The Southern Press in War, Reconstruction, and Peace'', Mercer University Memorial Lectures, No. 12 (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1969)
* ''Doomed Road of Empire: The Spanish Trail of Conquest'' (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963)

==References==
{{reflist}}

===Sources===
* Garry Boulard, 'The Man' vs. 'The Quisling': Theodore Bilbo, Hodding Carter and the 1946 Democratic Parimary," ''Journal of Mississippi History'' (1989), 51, 201-17.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20060925010503/http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers/Hodding/CarterHodding.html William Hodding Carter, II] at the Mississippi Writers and Musicians Project of Starkville High School.
* "William Hodding Carter, Jr.", ''A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography,'' Vol. 2 (1988), pp.&nbsp;156–157.
* ''Who Was Who in America'' (1973).
* [http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi RootsWeb] genealogy web site.

== External links ==
* [https://specialcollections.usm.edu/repositories/3/resources/561 William Hodding Carter/The Angry Scar Manuscript], Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi (Historical Manuscripts)

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Hodding}}
[[Category:1907 births]]
[[Category:1972 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:American newspaper editors]]
[[Category:American newspaper publishers (people)]]
[[Category:Bowdoin College alumni]]
[[Category:Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni]]
[[Category:Journalists from Louisiana]]
[[Category:Nieman Fellows]]
[[Category:People from Greenville, Mississippi]]
[[Category:People from Hammond, Louisiana]]
[[Category:Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing winners]]
[[Category:Writers from New Orleans]]
[[Category:Louisiana Democrats]]
[[Category:Journalists from Mississippi]]
[[Category:20th-century American journalists]]
[[Category:American male journalists]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]