Major Works
- The Reagan Years (1988)
- The South Strikes Back (1959)
Biography
Born in 1935 in New Orleans, Louisiana, he grew up in Greenville, Mississippi. He graduated from Greenville High School in 1953. He received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1957. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps for two years after graduation. He returned to Greenville to work on the family’s newspaper, Delta Democrat-Times.
His father, Hodding Carter Sr., was a Pulitzer Prize winner and chief editor and publisher of this Greenville, Mississippi, based newspaper,
W. Hodding Carter, III currently lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where in 2005 he became at professor of Leadership and Public Policy at University of North Carolina at the age of 70. Previously, he was president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a reporter and editor at the Delta-Democrat Times of Greenville, Mississippi, a correspondent for PBS’s Frontline, BBC, and The New York Times, and contributed articles to major U.S. newspapers and cable networks.
In the 1970’s he was the spokesman for the U.S. State Department and the Carter administration during the Iran hostage crisis. His wife, Patt Derian, also worked in the Carter administration’s human rights initiatives in other countries.
Carter has won four Emmy’s and received the Edward R. Murrow Award for broadcast journalism. He was inducted into Vanderbilt University’s First Amendment Center Hall of Fame in 2006.
Interview
Hodding Carter Speaks at Ole Miss (2011) (Part 1 of 4)
Interview with Dr. Hodding Carter, III. Conversations with Peter Wallace.
Related Websites
- First Amendment Center page on Hodding Carter, III
- Hodding Carter III profile in The Harvard Crimson (1965) by Philip Ardery
- Short Bio on Washington University Film & Media Archive
- Interview with Hodding Carter, III
- As State’s Man, Hodding Carter Used to Meet the Press; Now He’s More Likely to Beat It (1981) in People magazine, by Clare Crawford-Mason, Joyce Leviton
- Shedding light on Civil Rights-Era Citizen Councils, NPR interview with Audie Cornish (2010)