The identity and fatal bestseller that betrayed the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan

Forrest Carter’s autobiography “The Education of Little Tree” was a bestseller published in 1976, won numerous literary awards and was praised by everyone for its authentic look at the lives of Indians.

Four years ago, the same author gave US book lovers the excellent “The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales” (1972), another western with Indians that was again a commercial and artistic success.

In 1976 he would even make a movie Clint Eastwood (directed and starring), released in our country as “Avenger outside the law”.

Native American Forrest Carter was now a big name in American literature. “The Education” in particular was a tender tribute to how he grew up with his Cherokee grandparents and touched the hearts of white Americans.

After reappearing on the New York Times bestseller list in 1991, when it was reissued, and even Oprah suggested it to its audience, something seemed out of place. The Times had written it since 1976, but it was fine.

By the time Forrest Carter was posthumously awarded the prestigious American Publishers Association Prize in 1991, the Times had rewritten it: the book was not autobiographical. Forrest Carter was not a Native American, there was not even a Forrest Carter!

It was just the literary nickname of Asa Earl Carter. The “Indian” of the 70s was a violent white racist who had acted in the 1950s and 1960s as its regional leader. Mr. Klux Klan.

And he was so extreme that even his like-minded people had cut lots with him.

This is the special story of the man who reinvented himself to escape his intolerant past…

Who was Asa Carter, the proud member of the CCP?

Born in Alabama in 1925, Asa Earl Carter told everyone that he was orphaned from a very young age. But this was also a lie, he was raised by his parents, Ralph and Hermione, him and his three brothers.

The little one grew up listening to stories about his glorious ancestors, all Confederate soldiers in American Civil War.

By the time he finished school, he was already a racist, firmly believing in white supremacy. And the inherent inferiority of all others.

Even when he joined the Navy to do his patriotic duty in World War II, he complained that he was fighting in a “Jewish war” against the Nazis. He regarded the Germans as equal to his Scottish and Irish ancestors.

After the war, he married, studied journalism in Colorado, and found a job at a radio station. In 1953 he returned to Alabama, the medicinal heart of racial segregation.

And he did find a big hug waiting for his intolerant rhetoric. The eminent preacher of hatred watched his audience go crazy with the racist views he uttered every time he opened his mouth.

He would soon have his own newspaper, Southerner, further propagating his dark views. However, as a sign to those who would follow, Carter had a strange love for Native Americans.

“Blacks do not know from misfortune,” he said on his airwaves, “Indians have suffered more.” Despite the fact that the local community gladly accepted what he said about them African Americans, managed to divide the world because it was becoming more and more extreme.

He hated blacks and Jews alike, and for some the mixture of hostility was explosive to endure. So he was fired from the radio and he responded becoming even more extremist.

In 1954 he founded the White Citizens’ Council, which was considered a somewhat better version of the Ku Klux Klan. Carter remained a member of the CCP and at one point formed his own paramilitary group within the CCP, the “Authentic Ku Klux Klan of the Confederation”.

Full-frontal attack on the “enemy”

Now he would go out and say that blacks were infiltrating the white youth of the South through music, calling on nightclub owners to remove “black artists” from their jukeboxes.

The New York Times described him in a 1956 article as “the leader of racial segregation” and “executive secretary of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.”

He would become a real star of the racist movement the same year, when top jazz pianist Nat King Cole was to perform in Birmingham. Alabama and members of the CCP attacked him on stage.

The same group, his own group, launched attacks on black activists. In perhaps the darkest case, an African-American was caught, tortured and castrated in the end as a “warning to black troublemakers”.

He was not always present at these events, but he spoke openly in her favor violence. In fact, as the federal government pushed the South for greater integration of black citizens, he replied “if violence is what they want, they will get violence.”

His huge resonance among white racists would persuade him to enter the political arena.

Politician Asa Earl Carter

In the early 1960s, Carter came close to George Wallace, who had been governor of Alabama in 1958 but lost to John Patterson.

Wallace was convinced that his defeat came from the simple fact that his opponent had the support of the CCP.

And so he wanted a prominent member of the white supremacy movement by his side. Carter seemed the ideal choice. The latter had also left the CCP in 1958.

His speech had become extreme even for the Ku Klux Klan and he went so far as to call the new leadership of the organization “a bunch of rubbish”.

Carter was last in the running for a seat in the state House, but that was what Wallace needed. Armed with the medical rhetoric of his shadow aide, Wallace managed to get elected to the Democrats in 1962.

In 1963, at his inauguration, the new governor delivered the speech that Carter had written to him and made headlines. Especially one proposal was to remain engraved forever in the minds of citizens, either for good or for bad: “[Φυλετικός] separation now! Separation tomorrow! Separation forever! “

The cooperation of the two men, however, would not last long. In 1968 Wallace decided to go down for President of the United States and had to reduce his racist crowns. Carter saw this as a betrayal.

And so in 1970 the two men came face to face politically for the position of governor.

Carter lost, but he won the impressions in his statements after the defeat: “If we continue as we go, with the mixing of the tribes, we destroy the plan of God”, he said with tears in his eyes, “there will be no land to live in 5 years”.

Although he was now a prominent politician in Alabama, he magically disappeared. As if the earth opened up and swallowed him…

The missing racist

Humiliated politically, Carter left Alabama for Florida sometime in the early 1970s. He now split his time between the sunny state and Texas, where his two sons lived.

We now know that he worked feverishly to bury his meager past and to spring up reborn and “clean”. And the tragic irony is that his plan worked with the above.

He now appeared in jeans and a cowboy hat and claimed to be of Indian descent. He was raised by his Cherokee grandparents in a hut. And since his skin was dark, no one suspected anything about the newcomer that everyone seemed to appreciate.

Although he adopted his new identity, it was not possible to completely leave behind his entire past. “Forrest” which was his new name came from him General of the Confederation, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the very founder of the Ku Klux Klan.

He now appeared as a Western writer and in 1972 published The For The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales as Forrest Carter. The book was very much liked by Clint Eastwood, who would eventually make it into a movie.

After his writing success, he was persuaded to continue with literature. Several books followed, always in the western genre, and the most notable was “The Education of Little Tree”, which he promoted as a “true story” of his life, about how he grew up with his Indian ancestors.

In fact, the universal message of the book, this love of your neighbor, was adored in the lengths and breadths of the USA.

And here goes our story about Wayne Greenhaw, the journalist who interviewed Carter after the 1970 election defeat.

The Unveiling of Forrest Carter

A well-known and award-winning author in the US, Forrest Carter did not hesitate to give interviews. One such, in the journalist Barbara Walters in 1975, Greenhaw saw and realized that somewhere she knew him “Indian».

It would not take him long to find his true identity. She had met him personally in Alabama, it was Asa Earl Carter!

“He asked him questions and murmured those answers,” Greenhaw recalled the fateful interview. “He said he grew up with horses and, when he lived in Oklahoma, was the Cherokee storyteller.”

The journalist went and found him. Carter said, “Come on, you’re not going to hurt Forrest, are you?” And Greenhaw replied, “Come out and say who you are, Asa, I recognized your voice.”

It was Greenhaw who spoke to the New York Times in 1976, but the revelation was meticulous. The Forrest Carter readers obviously did not want to believe that it was all a scam.

And he did not believe it even when the press came back with statements from real Cherokees who confirmed that the words from their dialect contained in his books were not real!

The featured Forrest Carter continued his interviews denying that he was Asa Earl Carter. He was always humble cowboys of Indian descent with good pen.

So he spent his cisterns until 1979, when he died of a heart attack after a drunken quarrel with one of his sons. Their reports even wanted to exchange punches.

People had to wait until 1991 for the full revelation of the scandal. In an article in the New York Times, historian Dan Carter (and George Wallace biographer!) Reiterated who his favorite author was:

“Between 1946 and 1973, the Alabama-born breed made a violent career in Southern politics as a Ku Klux Klan terrorist, far-right radio producer, and a staunch American fascist and anti-Semite.”

The historian did his research and proved beyond doubt that Forrest Carter was a scam. He also exposed the widow and his children, who kept the plot as a seven-sealed secret.

As for the appearance, it was Ron Taylor’s friend who described the magic: “He did enough sunbathing, left a mustache, lost 10 kilos and became Forrest Carter “.

The reading public was left with many questions and it is certain that not everyone believed the truth. People who knew him personally also refused to speak in the years that followed. One by one.

The titles finally fell to him in his privileged field, literature.

In 2001, in the reissue of “The Education of Little Tree” for the 25th anniversary of the book, this time the “true story” note was missing from the cover…