Walter Horace Carter (January 20, 1921 – September 16, 2009) was an American newspaper publisher in Tabor City, North Carolina, whose paper won a 1953 Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and his editorials which opposed them.
He served in the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw action in the North Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Theater of Operations.
The KKK didn't appreciate Carter's actions, and Thomas Hamilton, Grand Dragon of the Association of Carolina Klans, threatened his paper and its advertisers.
Along with Willard Cole's Whiteville News Reporter, Carter's Tabor City Tribune won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service citing "their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities.
Carter died at age 88 on September 16, 2009, of a heart attack while being transported to his Tabor City home from the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina.