Legendary journalist and Carolina journalism alumnus, Horace Carter has died at the age of 88.

Jean Folkerts, dean of the school of journalism and mass communication at UNC, says Carter, who passed away Wednesday in Tabor City, has had and will continue to have a lasting impact on the school and its students.

Carter’s career as a journalist included investigative stories in the 1950s against the Ku Klux Klan which resulted in more than 100 convictions of Klansmen. His journalism and campaign against the Klan, during his tenure at the Tabor City Tribune, won the Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service in 1953. It was the first weekly newspaper to win the prize.

He founded the Tribune in 1946 and its publishing company Atlantic Publishing.  A 1943 graduate of Carolina, he was the editor of The Tar Heel student newspaper, now known as The Daily Tar Heel.

Carter’s family established the W. Horace Carter Distinguished Professorship in his honor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Folkerts says the professorship will honor his legacy.

The family requests that memorial gifts be made to the professorship, and Carter is among those featured in “Consecrated to the Common Good” exhibit now at the North Carolina Collection Gallery in UNC’s Wilson Library. The exhibit documents 100 years of journalism education at Carolina.