William Hodding Carter, Jr., exemplified the image of a country editor with a national reputation, an editor who loved and fought for his community, a writer of recognized ability, and a spokesman for moderate change. Carter--steeped in southern tradition, educated in the North, and cognizant of the importance of national unity as well as southern progress--was among those editors and writers categorized as southern liberals, but known more accurately as southern moderates.

Carter was also a crusading newspaper editor who took seriously the role of editor as reformer or advocate of change. His parents, William Hodding and Irma Dutatre Carter, were prominent residents of Hammond, Louisiana. Because his mother taught him to read when he was four, he entered the fourth grade when he was only seven and graduated from high school at sixteen. He was graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1927. He did postgraduate work...