The Editor and The Dragon: Horace Carter Fights the Klan

In 1953, Horace Carter earned a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for his reporting on the Ku Klux Klan. Carter persevered in the face of death threats, including those against his family, and used the editorial authority of North Carolina’s TABOR CITY TRIBUNE to protest the Klan’s racist rhetoric and vigilantism. Carter’s bold reporting and the unwavering integrity of his editorials helped lead to the first federal intervention in the south during that era and to the arrest and conviction of nearly 100 klansmen.