William Hodding Carter, I

William Hodding Carter, I (April 17, 1881 - August 3, 1955), was a businessman, Democratic politician, and farmer from Hammond, the largest community in Tangipahoa Parish, one of the "Florida parishes" east of Baton Rouge in southeastern Louisiana. Carter was a leading spokesman for the anti-Long faction.

Carter was born in Kentwood, also Tangipahoa Parish, to Thomas Lane Carter and the former Anna Hennen Jennings. He was educated at Sheffield High School in Sheffield, Alabama, at a college preparatory school in Lebanon, Tennessee, and Rugby Academy and Tulane University, both in New Orleans. After college, he worked in both sugar and cotton production and became the cashier of the American Cotton Oil Company in Vidalia, the seat of Concordia Parish, located west of the Mississippi River.

He moved to Hammond in 1905, and in 1906 married the former Irma Dutartre of Natchez, Mississippi (Adams County), the daughter of cotton planter John D. Dutartre and the former Corinne Henderson. He worked for several farming associations; in 1924, he became manager of the Farm Bureau in Hammond. He and Irma had three children: William Hodding Carter, II (1907- 1972), a newspaper editor and publisher and author; John Boatner Carter (born 1908), and Corinne Carter (born 1910). He later married the former Lucille Ballenger.

From 1928-1934, Carter served on the Tangipahoa Parish Police Jury, the parish governing board akin to the county commission in most states. He was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1940. Sam Houston Jones was elected governor that year in a runoff contest with Earl Kemp Long. Carter himself was anti-Long. Newly-elected legislators in 1940 included such notable figures as deLesseps Story Morrison, Sr., later the mayor of New Orleans, William Joseph "Bill" Dodd, then of Allen Parish in western Louisiana and subsequently lieutenant governor and education superintendent, and Arthur C. Watson of Natchitoches, later the chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee. Morrison and Watson were anti-Long, but Dodd was usually in the Long camp.

For several years, Carter was the postmaster in Hammond. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church and the Chamber of Commerce. Carter served on the board of trustees of Hammond Junior College, which subsequently became Southeastern Louisiana University, until he was removed by Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr.

Carter died in Hammond and is interred in Greenlawn Cemetery there.

References

"William Hodding Carter, Sr.", "A Dictionary of Louisiana Biography", Vol. 1 (1988), p. 157

Henry E. Chambers, "A History of Louisiana" (1925)

"Hodding Carter: An Unforgettable Character", "Reader's Digest", 1954

Carter obituary, "New Orleans Times-Picayune", August 4, 1955