Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009

Editor took on Klan in face of peril

Dr. James Lee, a Conway dentist, remembers the time white cops jumped out of their cruiser, shot the Lee family dog and drove off.

He was 6 years old.

``I ran home and told my mom,'' he said. ``That was the first time I saw my mom cry. This was the sort of things we went through.''

It was 1946. Lee didn't know it at the time, but a white man named Horace Carter, 19 years Lee's elder, would launch a weekly newspaper, the Tabor City Tribune, just across the Horry County border in July of that year, and start a career that would help end the everyday terror area blacks faced.

Names such as Burroughs and Chapin and Garner and Anderson and Jackson and Grissom, among a handful of others, are well known for helping build and shape the Grand Strand. Carter should be on that list.

Carter was a Southern Baptist from Albemarle, N.C. He was the first in his family to graduate high school. He admitted to having racial prejudice until he was ``18 or 19 years old'' but began writing for equality as a journalism student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC.

It was a period when the Ku Klux Klan was prominent and its members were firmly entrenched in the area's power establishment.

It was before the Brown v. Board of Education decision marked the beginning of the end for segregated schools. ``Blacks only'' and ``whites only'' signs were the norm.

Atlantic Beach was the only area beach where blacks were freely allowed.

It was a time when most white Southern newspaper editors either turned a blind eye to the terrorism committed against blacks by the KKK or advocated for it when it meant the customs of the day would be upheld.

As a preteen, Lee, living in Conway, began a paper route. He noticed a photo of a Klan rally in an area paper, one of the rare times such events were covered until Carter came along.

``One of my customers was right there up front, with his hood on,'' Lee said. ``He owned a business in downtown on Third Avenue. He was the father of the person who ended up being chairman of County Council.''

Lee also remembers a billboard. It had a Klansman on a white horse and a red background. It said, ``Welcome to Klan country.''

He remembers Klan raids through area black neighborhoods.

He remembers the violence they inflicted, including one night on a Myrtle Beach black club owner, Charlie Fitzgerald, because he allowed black kids and white kids to dance and mingle together.

One person died during that particular Klan uprising: James Daniel Johnson, a police officer. He wore his police uniform underneath his Klan robe.

``It was a little bit frightening,'' he said. ``And people wonder why we're angry.''

The Ku Klux Klan attacked blacks and the whites who supported equality.

A teenage Egerton Burroughs was chased and threatened by the Klan after he upheld the Burroughs & Chapin Co. Inc., policy of no politics at The Myrtle Beach Pavilion and Amusement Park by turning down a request from supporters of segregationist George Wallace.

While Lee was still taking care of his paper route, Carter was just beginning to put his imprint on the area. He and Marcellus ``Mark'' Craig Garner formed the Atlantic Publishing Co. Inc. to print the Tabor City Tribune and a new paper, The Myrtle Beach Sun, a predecessor of The Sun News, according to the Center for the Study of the American South.

Both men saw the growth potential of the Grand Strand. Both also saw the Klan as a stain on the area.

Garner, except for covering and commenting on one violent Klan uprising _ without blaming the Klan _ didn't cover the group. His first editorial was about having ``faith in the future of Myrtle Beach'' and its economic development growth potential.

Carter wrote of that potential as well, but also confronted the Klan, attended its rallies and exposed its members.

In his first editorial he wrote: ``Here is the beginning of a newspaper designed to live and serve the peoples of all races and colors living in the area surrounding Tabor City with special emphasis on Columbus County, N.C., and Horry County, S.C.''

The Klan threatened to boycott his advertisers, which could have shut Carter's paper down. Many in the community sided with the Klan, leaving Carter with little support. But he didn't back down, kept writing, kept exposing.

The Klan threatened his life and his family. Carter knew the threats were real, given that the KKK had flogged and shot blacks and whites. But he kept writing, kept exposing, kept saying in editorials: ``No Excuse for KKK.''

The Klan's grand dragon visited Carter twice, and also called on Carter's ally, editor Willard Cole of the Whiteville News Reporter.

The Klan kept up the violence, beating blacks and whites for such things as ``adultery, physical abuse, child neglect, not attending church, excessive drinking, or making moonshine,'' according to the UNC center.

Carter kept up his writing.

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

Parenting expert Jim Rogers, who now lives in Surfside Beach, worked for Carter when he was in high school.

``The editorials were quite brave and clear, and even though there were threats of violence against them, and their families, the two of them continued their fight against the leaders and any of those who followed them,'' he said of Carter and Cole. ``There were, I believe, a couple of cross burnings in the front yard of Mr. Carter, but that didn't stop him.''

Carter's more than 100 articles about Klan activities, along with those by Cole, attracted an FBI probe.

That led to the conviction of 254 Klansmen; 62 were sent to prison or fined.

He and Cole won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service for their four-year crusade against the Klan.

Looking back and knowing how much things have changed, Lee can hardly believe what he and other blacks who grew up here endured.

``It's unbelievable that's the way it was,'' he said.

Because of people like Carter, it no longer is.