W. Horace Carter, 88

Bitterly opposed the KKK when they began recruiting in the Carolinas -- the Carolinas! -- in 1950.

“The Klan, despite its Americanism plea, is the personification of Fascism and Nazism,” he wrote. “It is just such outside-the-law operations that lead to dictatorships through fear and insecurity.”

Thus began Mr. Carter’s campaign against the Klan, a fiercely antagonistic opposition to the organization’s policies and methods and its very presence in Columbus County, N.C., and Horry County, S.C. Over three years, his paper ran more than 100 Klan-related stories and editorials that he wrote. They reported and commented on rallies, shootings, beatings and a series of floggings that eventually brought the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the region and ended with federal and state prosecutions of more than 100 Klansmen, including Thomas Hamilton, who was known as the Grand Dragon of the Association of Carolina Klans.

Mr. Carter stood up to numerous personal threats against himself and his family. He was twice visited in his office by Hamilton, who promised retribution against The Tabor City Tribune and its advertisers. And though he more than once published letters defending the Klan in his paper, he found himself somewhat isolated by his community, where many people shared the Klan’s pro-Christian, anti-Communist outlook and were roused as well by its white-supremacist exhortations.

“He was a God-and-country kind of guy,” Russell Carter said about his father. “But he was committed to social justice, and he was not prepared for the fact that other people didn’t see it that way. He had very meager support, especially early on.”