Writing a tribute to a writer bristles with difficulties. That is particularly the case when writing a tribute to Hodding Carter III, who died recently at age 88. It is important to get beyond the basic facts.
The basic facts can be found in the national newspaper obituaries. Hodding grew up in Greenville in the shadow of a father who edited the Delta Democrat-Times, won a Pulitzer Prize, and wrote books, most notably the autobiographical “Where Main Street Meets the River.” Hodding graduated from Princeton in 1957 and turned his senior thesis into a good book of his own, “The South Strikes Back,” the story of the White Citizens Council. After service in the Marines, Hodding returned to Greenville to run the newspaper just as the civil rights fights heated up in the 1960’s.
As an editor he championed civil rights for black people and expressed optimism that school desegregation would help the south progress. He became a “Mississippi Loyal Democrat.” He helped lead its racially-integrated delegation that won the fight to be seated at the 1968 Democratic convention. In the late 1970’s he moved to Washington D.C. and served as press spokesman for President Jimmy Carter’s State Department. Later he originated a PBS program, Inside Story, that won Emmy Awards. He presided over the Knight Foundation in Miami, and taught at several colleges.
But there are a few things the national obituaries left out.
For one thing, they did not talk about his courage. As a Greenville newspaper editor, he became a target. For a period of time he thought it necessary to place a small piece of scotch tape across the gap between his car hood and his car so he could tell whether, during the night, someone had lifted the hood to place a bomb.
Another item the newspapers left out was his election, in 1983, to represent Princeton alumni on the university’s board of trustees. The board valued his service so much that it extended his term. Ultimately, it lasted 14 years. On the board he championed a proposal to use Princeton’s generous endowment to fund scholarships that would ensure that all its graduates can, with a bit of work, finish without debt. Princeton ultimately endorsed the program, and other universities have since copied it.
When he retired as a Princeton trustee, an administrator who worked with him penned a poem to read to an alumni gathering. After mentioning Hodding’s commitment to “social justice for his nation,” it added:
As a trustee most intrepid,
As a voice for change, his role,
Critical lover, loving critic,
Was Princeton’s heart and soul:
Ever probing, ever prodding,
He’s the trustee known as Hodding.
After the poem was read, the audience collectively gave him a “locomotive” cheer - “sis, sis, sis, boom, boom, bah! Hodding! Hodding! Hodding!” That was an appropriate send-off for a man who, as an undergraduate, had led cheers on the football field and later reported on the activities of his classmates in the alumni magazine.
As the poem suggests, another point the newspapers missed was his love of life. Many men admired him. Many women adored him. One of those was Patricia Derian, his second wife. They met in Mississippi in the 1960’s. They were part of a racially-mixed group that sought the license of WLBT after the FCC took it away from the previous owners because of racist programming. She hosted Sen. Robert Kennedy when he visited Mississippi. She and Hodding served together at the State Department, where she started its initiative to promote human rights in foreign countries.
Hodding enjoyed mentoring young writers. He suggested the major I chose at Princeton, gave me a summer job at the Delta Democrat-Times in 1969, helped me get a job the following summer at the Washington Post, and inspired me to write a college senior thesis, as he had done, on a racial issue in Mississippi.
And he was devoted to his family, something my family and I witnessed in later years at an annual multi-generational Carter family Christmas pageant held at his daughter Catherine Sullivan’s house in Jackson.
At the recent commissioning of a U.S. Navy destroyer built in Pascagoula, a representative of the company that supplied its engines handed out key rings. On them was written the motto, “Run fast, turn hard, and leave a great wake.” That is a pretty good description of what Hodding, a former Marine, did with his life.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
