Qualla: Tabor City, North Carolina

Tabor City, North Carolina: Introduction

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. In 1950, the Ku Klux Klan began a recruitment campaign in the small tobacco town of Tabor City, North Carolina. The editor of the local weekly newspaper, the Tabor City Tribune, was a 29-year-old named W. Horace Carter. He began writing editorials against the Klan — week after week, at considerable personal danger, in a town where many of his readers either wore the robes or sympathized with those who did. Three years later, on the same day the Whiteville News Reporter received the same honor, the Tribune won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. They were the first weekly newspapers to win one.

Image: Indy beetle | CC0

Tabor City, North Carolina: Mount Tabor, Renamed

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. The town began as a Baptist congregation. Around 1837, settlers in this corner of southern Columbus County built a log church and named it Mount Tabor, after the biblical mountain. A village grew around the church, organized as a town shortly after 1840 and officially incorporate...

Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain

Tabor City, North Carolina: The Editor and the Dragon

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. When the Klan began organizing in southeastern North Carolina in 1950, most local newspapers stayed quiet. Horace Carter did not. His editorials in the Tribune named names, described floggings, and refused to accept that hooded terrorism was a normal feature of small-town life. T...

Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain

Tabor City, North Carolina: Border Belt Tobacco

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Tabor City sits in what was called the Carolina Border Belt — a network of tobacco markets and warehouses stretching along both sides of the North Carolina-South Carolina line. The first tobacco warehouse went up in 1909, and by 1925 the town had several auction warehouses, two r...

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Tabor City, North Carolina: Yams and Survivors

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog (talk), Public domain. Since 1948, the fourth Saturday in October has belonged to the North Carolina Yam Festival. There's a parade, a Miss Yam Festival pageant for various age groups, classic cars, train rides, vendors, and an art show. It is the kind of small-town festival that survives by being unem...

Image: Pubdog (talk) | Public domain

Tabor City, North Carolina: What Remains

Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The Tribune still publishes, renamed the Tabor-Loris Tribune in 1996. A small W. Horace Carter Newspaper Museum at the Tribune offices holds artifacts from the Klan crusade. The Ritz Theater on Main Street, rebuilt in 2014 with government grants, hosts community arts events. Town...

Image: Indy beetle | CC0