Atlantic Packaging

With a young journalist’s passion and his drive for business success, Atlantic Packaging began in 1946 when W. Horace Carter founded a small town weekly newspaper, The Tabor City Tribune.

Carter accepted a job as the industrial recruiter for Tabor City, North Carolina, with the added commitment to start a newspaper. He attacked both challenges with zeal, but quickly faced an unexpected foe in the hooded faces of the Ku Klux Klan.

Carter, a champion for justice, fought to purge his new community of the prejudice and violence the KKK promoted.

A two-year campaign of editorials brought financial boycotts of his small paper, death threats and vandalism toward Carter and his family, but he emerged victorious. His efforts exposed the Klan and sent scores to prison.

For his bravery and community service, the Tribune and Horace Carter were awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1952, the first awarded to a weekly newspaper in the Pulitzer’s history. That really began the Atlantic story.