Hodding Carter
Hodding Carter | |
---|---|
Born | William Hodding Carter II February 3, 1907 Hammond, Louisiana, U.S. |
Died | April 4, 1972 Greenville, Mississippi, U.S. | (aged 65)
Education | Bowdoin College Columbia University |
Occupation(s) | Journalist; writer |
Political party | Democrat |
Spouse | Betty Werlein |
Children | William Hodding III Philip Dutartre Carter Thomas Hennen Carter |
William Hodding Carter II (February 3, 1907 – April 4, 1972) was an American
Biography
Early life and education
Carter was born in
He returned to Louisiana upon graduating. According to
Career background
After a year as a
With his wife, 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 Pierce Long Jr., but its support for the national Democratic Party.
He won the
Fighting intolerance
He also wrote editorials in the Greenville Delta Democrat-Times regarding social and economic intolerance in the
Carter wrote a caustic article for Look magazine which detailed the menacing spread of a chapter of the 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:
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.[3]
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. [4]
Carter was strongly opposed to the
Politics and the Kennedys
Carter was an unabashed supporter of the Kennedys and their quest for the American Presidency.
He had dinner with 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".[6] 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.[7]
Criticism
Columnist
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 segregation, and that after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, he attacked the intransigent White Citizens' Council, but only supported gradual integration.[9]
In defense of Carter, Claude Sitton, writing about Waldron's book in
Research
Mitchell Library at Mississippi State University in 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
- ^ Something About The Author, vol. 2, Gale Research, 1972, p.
- ^ Waldron, Ann. Archived May 8, 2006, at the Wayback Machine Hodding Carter: The Reconstruction of a Racist, Algonquin Books, 1993.
- ^ Roberts, Eugene L. American Society of Newspaper Editors, July 31, 2004. Last accessed: 1/13/07.
- ^ McFadden, Robert D. (May 12, 2023). "Hodding Carter III, Crusading Editor and Jimmy Carter Aide, Dies at 88". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 12, 2023. Retrieved May 15, 2023.
- ^ Women's Crisis Support web site. Last accessed: 1/13/07.
- ^ "General Services Statement" (PDF). web1.millercenter.org. Retrieved October 17, 2019.
- Oral History, interview, ibid.
- ^ Alterman, Eric. The Nation, "And the Beat Goes On", January 8, 2007.
- ^ Waldron, ibid.
- ^ Sitton, Claude. The New York Times, Book Review.
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.
- 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. 156–157.
- Who Was Who in America (1973).
- RootsWeb genealogy web site.