Carolyn McKenzie Carter

Carolyn McKenzie Carter (1919 - April 21, 2010) was an American photojournalist who worked for the Atlanta Constitution (now The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) from 1940 until the early 1950s.

Early life
Carter was born in 1919 and was raised in Moultrie, Georgia. She was a graduate of the Nashville-based Ward-Belmont School. She graduated from the University of Georgia’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications in 1940. Carter met Lieutenant Donnel Earl Carter, cousin of President Jimmy Carter and a journalist for a competing newspaper when her work ended up on the front page of the paper and his was relegated to the end pages. The couple married in 1942.

Career
In 1940, Carter was hired by Ralph McGill to work for the Atlanta Constitution, thereby becoming the first women to serve as a photojournalist at the publication. In the 1940s, she worked for the Gainesville Daily Register and the Alexandria Daily Town Talk newspapers. She would also work at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sunday magazine where captured photographs of the American South.

When the war concluded, Carter began covering more domestic topics, which included one well-known image of a child showing how an iron lung was used. In 1954 Carter became a commercial photographer for the Coca-Cola Company, traveling overseas to document the organization’s international expansion for its employee magazine, The Refresher. She would work at Coca-Cola for five years. In 1959 she moved to New York and did freelance work for the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Travel.

In 2012, her husband Don Carter created the University of Georgia Don E. and Carolyn McKenzie Carter Endowment for Journalism to fund the University’s Chair for Excellence in Journalism

Carter died on April 21, 2010.

Awards and honors
In 1959, Carter was designated a master photographer by the Professional Photographers of America. She was the first female named “Man of the Year” from the Industrial Photographers of America. The Carolyn Carter Award was established in 1986 by Georgia's Department of Industry, Trade and Travel. In 2008 she was a member of the inaugural class of Grady Fellows at the University of Georgia. Carter was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement Hall of Fame in 2017.