Noting that Hodding Carter, Jr., editor and majority owner of the Greenville, Mississippi, "Delta Democrat-Times," was considered a spokesman of and to the South regarding racial matters during the two decades between the end of World War II and the escalation of the Vietnam war, this monograph examines Carter's newspaper in the two-year period immediately following the 1954 Supreme Court desegretation decision. The monograph's purpose is to examine the issues chosen and the persuasive techniques used in Carter's writings, to consider his personality and background, and to analyze the writings in the light of accepted criteria of journalistic performance. The monograph concludes by noting that Carter was able to meet the criteria for responsible journalism not so much through conscious effort as by meeting the following qualifications of an effective editor: ownership of the medium, active participation as a citizen in the community, respect in the wider journalistic community, the ability to write lucidly, and the capacity for formulating independent views and the desire to express them. (HOD)