Former State Department Spokesman and Civil Rights Activist Hodding Carter III Dies at 88

Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist who served as the U.S. State Department spokesman during the Iran hostage crisis, has died at the age of 88. Carter later won awards for his televised documentaries and served as the John S. Knight Professor of Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland. He also became president of the John S. Knight and James L. Knight Foundation, based in Miami, Florida. Carter's family had a history of progressive politics, and his father won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials critical of U.S. treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.