Of The NNPA
WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Black publishers around the nation are mourning the sudden death of one of their own this week. Houston Forward Times Publisher Lenora “Doll” Carter, treasurer of the board of directors for the National Newspaper Publishers Association and a former NNPA Publisher of the Year, was found dead of an apparent heart attack on Saturday morning, April 10. She was 69.
Her daughter Karen Carter Richards, associate publisher of the paper who has worked alongside her mother for 28 years, said she went looking for her mother after she did not answer repeated calls. She found her in her room by the bed. “She was already gone,” she said.
She said her mother had been on a regiment of high blood pressure medication.
“She believed in the Lord. That’s what helps me to continue to stand and not completely fall to pieces because all I know is that she would expect me to be there Monday morning and get this paper out like always,” Richards said.
“I know my Mom. We have never missed an issue in 50 years and we can’t start now.”
NNPA Foundation Chair Dorothy R. Leavell, who has known Carter for more than 40 years, persuaded her to run for treasurer in 2003 and nominated her as Publisher of the Year in 2004. Leavell said Carter had hinted at not feeling well during the March 17-19 Black Press Week festivities in Washington.
“Doll exemplifies the publisher that is dedicated to the Black Press. She is active locally, but also consistently active on the national level through the National Newspaper Publishers Association.,” Leavell said of her colleague upon nominating her as Publisher of the Year.
Leavell said she and Carter also “shared these serious relationships with our grandchildren. We shared those stories of our grandchildren and we kept up with what they were doing.”
NNPA First Vice Chair John B. Smith Sr., who worked with Carter during the past four years as chair, described the dedication of “my good friend and ‘sister in the struggle.”
He said, “Doll was not only a friend toward the advancement of African-American achievement. Overall, she personified distinctive grace, character and style as a ‘chaplain for the common good’ as publisher of The Houston Forward Times.”
A publisher, mother, grandmother, and community servant, Carter was also a devoted wife to James McDaniel to whom she has been married for 22 years.
McDaniel said, “I had to share her with everybody. She was not all mine. It took me a little while to get to that point, but that was her.”
McDaniel described his wife’s love for people from all walks of life. “She could talk with world leaders or she could talk with a guy unemployed. It just didn’t matter,” he said. “If you knew her and you were around her, you were not a stranger long.”
The Houston Forward Times, founded by Carter’s late husband, Julius Carter, in January 1960, will commemorate its 50th anniversary in October this year. Carter served as general manager and advertising director until his death in 1971. That year, she became publisher and CEO of the company.
She was recently awarded the NAACP Image Award, the Toombs-Brown Award from Professional Black Women’s Enterprise, Inc., and the “Pace Setter” Award from Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Gamma Phi Sigma Chapter and received the 2002 National Council of Negro Women Pacesetters Award.
Lenora Carter was born in Corrigan, Texas. She graduated from McNary High School in McNary, Arizona and attended Arizona State University majoring in business administration.
She is the mother of two daughters, Constance Yvette Carter and Karen Yvonne Carter Richards. She has three grandchildren, Jesse, Chelsea, and Nykayla. She was an active member of Holman Street Baptist Church where Rev. Manson Johnson is Pastor.
The body of the Houston journalistic icon will lie in state on Friday, April 16, starting at noon at Holman Street Baptist Church, 3501 Holman Street, Houston, Texas with a celebration to be held Friday evening from 7-9 p.m. The Homegoing Celebration will be held on Saturday, April 17th at Holman Street Baptist Church at 10 a.m.
The services are under the direction of McCoy and Harrison Funeral Home located at 4918 Martin Luther King Blvd., Houston Texas, 713-659-7618.
