Asa Carter: Difference between revisions

From Bhamwiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
mNo edit summary
 
(31 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
'''Asa Earl Carter''' (born [[September 4]], [[1925]] in [[Anniston]]; died [[June 7]], [[1979]] in Abilene, Texas) was a radio host and aspiring politician in [[Birmingham]], the founder of an independent [[Ku Klux Klan]] group and the [[North Alabama Citizens Council]], and the founder and editor of ''[[The Southerner]]'' monthly magazine. He worked as a speechwriter for [[George Wallace]], and, later became a best-selling author, under the assumed identity of '''Forrest Carter'''.
[[Image:Asa Carter.jpg|right|thumb|Asa Carter]]
'''Asa Earl Carter''' (born [[September 4]], [[1925]] in [[Anniston]]; died [[June 7]], [[1979]] in Abilene, Texas) was a radio host and aspiring politician in [[Birmingham]], the founder of an independent [[Ku Klux Klan]] group and the [[North Alabama Citizens Council]], and the founder and editor of ''[[The Southerner]]'' monthly magazine. He worked as a speechwriter for [[George Wallace]], and, later became a best-selling [[List of authors|author]], under the assumed identity of '''Forrest Carter'''.


Carter was the eldest of Ralph and Hermione Carter's four children and was raised in [[Oxford]]. He served in the Navy during [[World War II]] and studied journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He married the former India Thelma Walker and settled with her in Birmingham, raising four children..
Carter was the eldest of Ralph and Hermione Carter's four children and was raised on the family farm near [[Oxford]], graduating from Calhoun County High School in [[1943]]. He served in the Navy as a radioman in the Pacific during [[World War II]] and afterward married his high school sweetheart, the former India Thelma Walker.


Carter, using the name '''Ace Carter''', worked at several [[List of radio stations|radio stations]] before landing a hosting job at [[WILD-AM]] in [[1953]]. His show, sponsored by the American State's Rights Association, was syndicated to more than twenty other stations. His claim that the [[National Conference for Community and Justice|National Conference of Christians and Jews]] was a hotbed of communism provoked community outrage, led by NCCJ Alabama chapter president [[Paul Head]], that got Carter fired. Afterward he supported himself by running a filling station.
Having been trained by the Navy in Boulder, Colorado, he returned to the University of Colorado there to study journalism. After graduating, he and India moved to Birmingham, where they raised their four children. Using the name '''Ace Carter''', he worked at several [[List of radio stations|radio stations]] before landing a hosting job at [[WILD-AM]] in [[1953]]. His show, sponsored by the [[American State's Rights Association]], was syndicated to more than twenty other stations. His denouncing National Brotherhood Week, provoked community outrage, led by [[National Conference for Community and Justice|National Conference of Christians and Jews]] Alabama chapter president [[Paul Head]], that got Carter fired. Afterward he supported himself by running a filling station.


==Race and politics==
Marginalized by the [[Alabama Citizens Council]] for his anti-semitism, Carter founded his own North Alabama Citizens Council, and became an increasingly-outspoken defender of racial [[segregation]]. He told the UPI that the [[NAACP]] had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with rock and roll music and called for jukebox owners to remove black records.  
Marginalized by the [[Alabama Citizens Council]] for his anti-semitism, Carter founded his own North Alabama Citizens Council, and became an increasingly-outspoken defender of racial [[segregation]]. He told the UPI that the [[NAACP]] had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with rock and roll music and called for jukebox owners to remove black records.  


On [[September 1]], [[1956]] he gave a speech in Clinton, Tennessee, lambasting the desegregation of Clinton HIgh School. In the aftermath, a mob of white men damaged cars driven by African Americans and were turned away from the mayor's house by Sheriff's deputies. Fellow speaker John Kasper was charged with sedition and inciting a riot.
By the mid-1950s, Carter had founded the gray-robed [[Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy]], an independent Klan group with paramilitary inclinations. It was members of that group that beat singer Nat "King" Cole at [[Boutwell Auditorium|Municipal Auditorium]] on [[April 10]], [[1956]]. Four members of Carter's group were convicted of torturing and mutilating [[Judge Aaron|Edward "Judge" Aaron]] in [[1957]]. He and [[Jessie Mabry]] also published ''The Southerner'', which promulgated white racial superiority and anti-communist rhetoric.


By the mid-1950s, Carter had founded the [[Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy]], an independent Klan group with paramilitary inclinations. It was members of that group that beat singer Nat "King" Cole at [[Boutwell Auditorium|Municipal Auditorium]] on [[April 10]], [[1956]]. He also published ''The Southerner'', which promulgated white racial superiority and anti-communist rhetoric. Four members of that group were convicted of torturing and mutilating [[Judge Aaron|Edward "Judge" Aaron]] in [[1957]].
On [[September 1]], [[1956]] Carter gave a speech in Clinton, Tennessee, lambasting the desegregation of Clinton HIgh School. In the aftermath, a mob of white men damaged cars driven by African Americans and were turned away from the mayor's house by Sheriff's deputies. Fellow speaker John Kasper was charged with sedition and inciting a riot.


Carter, who was not personally present for those crimes, challenged previously-ousted Police Commissioner [[Bull Connor]] for the office in the [[1956 Birmingham municipal election]], but lost to the better-known hothead. In [[1957]] Connor's police arrested him and his brother James for assaulting officers who were investigating a shooting connected with Carter's KKK group. Carter left the group in [[1958]], but only after shooting two members in a dispute over finances. He was charged with attempted murder, but not prosecuted. That year he [[1958 primary elections|campaigned for]] [[Lieutenant Governor of Alabama|Lieutenant Governor]], finishing fifth in the five-man race which was won by [[Albert Boutwell]].
Carter, who was not personally present for those crimes, challenged the previously-ousted [[Bull Connor]] for the office of Police Commissioner in the [[1956 Birmingham municipal election]], but lost. In [[1957]] Connor's police arrested him and his brother James for assaulting officers who were investigating a shooting connected with Carter's KKK group. Carter left the group in [[1958]], but only after shooting two members in a dispute during a meeting at the [[Central Park Theatre]] on [[Bessemer Road]]. He was charged with attempted murder, but not prosecuted. That year he [[1958 primary elections|campaigned for]] [[Lieutenant Governor of Alabama|Lieutenant Governor]], finishing fifth in the five-man race which was won by [[Albert Boutwell]].


During the 1960s, Carter worked as an uncredited speech writer for [[Governor of Alabama|Governor]] [[George Wallace]] and, later, for his wife [[Lurleen Wallace|Lurleen]]. He is believed to have contributed to Wallace's infamous [[1963]] inaugural address in which he promised to uphold "Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever." Wallace himself claimed not to know Carter, but former staffers say that he was paid by others on Wallace's behalf. When Wallace campaigned for President in [[1968]] and sought to tone down the fervor of his views, Carter was no longer involved with him.
During the 1960s, Carter worked as an uncredited speech writer for [[Governor of Alabama|Governor]] [[George Wallace]] and, later, for his wife [[Lurleen Wallace|Lurleen]]. He is now credited with penning Wallace's infamous [[1963]] inaugural address in which he promised to uphold "Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever." Wallace himself claimed not to know Carter, but former staffers say that he was paid by others on Wallace's behalf. When Wallace campaigned for President in [[1968]] and sought to tone down the fervor of his views, Carter was no longer involved with him.


Carter challenged Wallace for Governor in [[1970 general election]], running as the White Supremacist Party candidate. Once again he finished last in a field of five, with Wallace winning narrowly over [[Albert Brewer]]. Carter and members of his party picketed the inauguration, carrying signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children." After his defeat, Carter moved to Sweetwater, Texas, and later to St George's Island, Florida, where he busied himself with writing.
Carter challenged Wallace for Governor in [[1970 primary elections|1970 Democratic primary]]. Once again he finished last in a field of five, with Wallace winning narrowly over [[Albert Brewer]]. Carter and his supporters picketed the inauguration, carrying signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children."


==Literary career and controversy==
[[Image:Forrest Carter.jpg|right|thumb|"Forrest" Carter]]
After his defeat, Carter sold his farm and moved to Sweetwater, Texas, and, in [[1973]], to St George's Island, Florida, where he busied himself with writing, using the assumed name of '''Bedford Forrest Carter'''.


His first novels, ''The Rebel Outlaw, Josey Wales'' and ''The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales'', feature a former Confederate soldier pursued by cruel federal soldiers. The first novel, originally issued privately by Covington County's Whippoorwill Publishers and later picked up by Delacorte Books, was purchased by Clint Eastwood's Malpaso Productions for $25,000 and made into a [[1975]] motion picture. Philip Kaufman, the original director, objected to what he considered "fascist" overtones in the script and dropped the project, which Eastwood himself eventually directed. When interviewed about the book by Barbara Walters for the "Today Show", Carter was recognized by many in Alabama as the same man who had just run unsuccessfully for governor a few years earlier. He denied being the same man in a follow-up interview for ''The New York Times''.


He and his wife later moved to [[St. George Island (Florida)|St. George's Island]], [[Florida]]. There Carter completed a sequel to his first novel, as well as two books on Native American themes.  Carter separated from his wife, who remained in Florida. In the late 1970s, he relocated to [[Abilene, Texas]].
He followed up with a purported memoir entitled ''The Education of Little Tree'' in [[1976]]. While marketed as Forrest Carter's autobiography, the story was a fiction, portraying young Forrest as an orphan raised in the Cherokee culture by his grandparents. The story has been credited with introducing American readers to a gentler view of Native Americans and has been cited as an influence in screen depictions such as Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves".


Carter's best-known fictional works are ''The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales'' (republished in 1975 under the title ''Gone to Texas'') and ''[[The Education of Little Tree]]'' (1976), originally published as a memoir. The latter sold modestly during Carter's life.  It became a sleeper hit in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.  
The author bio on the back cover of Carter's Delacorte editions claimed that he was "Storyteller in Council" to the Cherokee Nation. Members of the Cherokee nation have disclaimed any connection with Carter and have found numerous inaccuracies regarding their culture and language as described in ''The Education of Little Tree''. Critics and historians have lodged similar complaints, finding his depiction of Native Americans to be drawn from "noble savage" mythology and anti-establishment sentiment rather than from actual native practices and beliefs.


[[Clint Eastwood]] directed and starred in a [[1976 in film|1976]] [[film]] adaptation of ''Josey Wales'', retitled ''[[The Outlaw Josey Wales]]''. In 1997, after the success of the paperback edition of ''The Education of Little Tree'', a film adaptation was produced.  Originally intended as a [[Television movie|made-for-TV movie]], it was given a theatrical release.
In [[1978]] Carter completed a fictionalized biography of Geronimo, entitled ''Watch for Me on the Mountain''. Having separated from his wife, Carter moved to Abilene, Texas where he was working on a follow-up to ''The Education of Little Tree''. He died in June 1979 under unclear circumstances. It is alleged that he was involved in a fistfight with one of his sons in Potosi, Texas and fell unconscious, choking on his own vomit. Other accounts have him dying of heart failure. His body was returned to Anniston for burial at the D'Armanville Cemetery. His family later replaced the original "Forrest Carter" headstone with one bearing his birth name.


In 1978, Carter published ''Watch for Me on the Mountain'', a [[fiction]]alized [[biography]] of [[Geronimo]]. (It was reprinted in 1980 in an edition titled, ''Cry Geronimo!'')
''The Education of Little Tree'' was re-released in a paperback edition by the University of New Mexico Press in [[1985]]. With the controversy over its authorship forgotten, the book sold more than 600,000 copies. It was named "Book of the Year" by the American Booksellers and was ranked atop ''The New York Times'' non-fiction best-seller list for several weeks. When Emory University historian Dan T. Carter, published an article about Asa Carter's double life in the ''Times'' in [[1991]], the newspaper moved the book to its fiction list and the UNM Press reworked the cover, removing the claim that it was a true story. Oprah Winfrey, who had endorsed the book in [[1994]], removed it from her list of recommendations in [[2007]].


Carter was working on ''The Wanderings of Little Tree'', a sequel to ''The Education of Little Tree'', as well as a screenplay version of the book, when he died in Abilene on June 7, 1979.  The cause of death was heart failure.  Carter's body was returned to Alabama for burial near Anniston.  No family members attended his funeral.
''The Return of Josey Wales'', based on Carter's follow-up to the Josey Wales story, was filmed in [[1986]]. ''The Education of Little Tree'' was adapted into a feature length film by Richard Friedenberg in [[1997]], stoking renewed controversy about Carter. The original Delacorte editor, Eleanor Friede, characterized the connection as "nasty gossip".
 
==Controversy and criticism==
Carter spent the last part of his life trying to conceal his background as a Klansman and segregationist, claiming categorically in a 1976 ''The New York Times'' article that he, Forrest, was not Asa Carter.<ref>Greenhaw, Wayne. "Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure", ''The New York Times'', August 26, 1976.</ref>  The article describes him as Forrest Carter being interviewed by [[Barbara Walters]] on the ''[[Today (NBC program)|Today]]'' show in 1974. He was promoting ''The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales'', which had begun to attract readers beyond the confines of the Western genre.  Carter, who had run for governor of Alabama (as Asa Carter) just four years earlier, was identified by several Alabama politicians, reporters and law enforcement officials from this ''Today'' show appearance.  The ''Times'' also reported that the address Carter used in the copyright application for ''The Rebel Outlaw'' was identical to the one that he used in 1970 while running for governor. "Beyond denying that he is Asa Carter", the ''Times'' noted, "the author has declined to be interviewed on the subject."
 
Carter claimed that he was Little Tree and the events of the book were [[autobiography|autobiographical]].  In 1985 the book was purchased for a paperback edition and marketed by the [[University of New Mexico]] Press as a memoir.  It was subtitled "A True Story by Forrest Carter".  The story described the relationship between the boy and his Scottish-Cherokee grandfather, a man named Wales (an overlap with Carter's other fiction).  Written from the perspective of a boy orphaned at age five, the book described how he had become accustomed to life in a remote mountain hollow with his "Indian thinking" 'Granpa' and Cherokee 'Granma', who called him 'Little Tree'. 
 
Granpa runs a small whiskey operation during [[Prohibition]] and the later years of the [[Great Depression]]. The grandparents and visitors to the hollow expose Little Tree to (supposed) Cherokee ways and "mountain people" values. The state removes him to an orphanage, where he stays for a few months until an old Indian friend intimidates the director into allowing Little Tree's release.  (In life, Carter was neither orphaned, nor raised by Cherokee grandparents.)
 
Before taking a new name and identity, Carter had claimed to have distant maternal [[Cherokee]] ancestry, a claim corroborated by some of his family members. [[Delacorte Press]]'s original author biography referred to Carter as the Cherokee "Storyteller in Council."  Members of the Cherokee nation have disputed his claim.  They said so-called "Cherokee" words and customs in "The Education of Little Tree" are inaccurate, and the novel's characters are stereotyped.  Several scholars and critics agreed with this assessment, adding that Carter's treatment of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] repeated the romantic but [[racist]] concept of the "[[Noble Savage]]".
 
In 1985, the [[University of New Mexico]] Press bought rights to ''The Education of Little Tree'' from original publisher Delacorte Press and published it in paperback.  By its second year, the new paperback edition began to sell briskly through word-of-mouth publicity.  Sales eventually surpassing 600,000.  Though Carter's background as Asa Carter was discussed in academic circles, it was not widely known by the book-buying public nearly ten years after the 1976 ''New York Times'' article about him. In 1991, after the book won the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award, it ranked number one on ''The New York Times'' non-fiction paperback best-seller list for several weeks.
 
On October 4, 1991, [[Dan T. Carter]] (a history professor and distant cousin of Asa Carter) published the article "The Transformation of a Klansman" in the ''[[New York Times]]''. This article shed light on Asa Carter's dual identity.  ''The Times'' shifted the book onto its fiction list.
 
In 1997, a film adaptation of ''Little Tree'' was released, which revived publicity about Asa Carter. Carter's widow, India Carter, refused most interview requests during these years. Eleanor Friede, ''Little Tree'''s original editor, defended Carter's background in 1997, telling the ''Times'', "[H]e was not a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I honestly don't see the point of all this nasty gossip dragged out years ago."
 
Following the 1991 publicity, the University of New Mexico Press changed the cover of ''Little Tree'', removing the "True Story" subtitle and adding a fiction classification label.  The biographical material in the introduction has never been changed to include details of Carter's involvement with segregationist politics and the KKK.  ''Little Tree'' has continued to find readers and a place on reading lists for young adults since 1991.  For fans who know of the controversy, many take the position of [[Henry Louis Gates, Jr.]], who argued that ''Little Tree'' can be appreciated for its message of tolerance and its other qualities, despite the biography of its creator. 
 
Richard Friedenberg wrote and directed the 1997 film adaptation.  He also has defended the book, but not the author:
 
<blockquote>Mr. Friedenberg said what appealed to him about the book was that "the characters and milieu they were in represented everything that was good about America and everything that was bad." On the one hand, he said, the book dealt with the strength of the family and not necessarily with traditional families.  On the other hand, he said, it dealt with ignorance and prejudice.  Mr. Friedenberg said he found it perplexing and almost impossible to understand Mr. Carter's motives and literary ambitions.  Although Mr. Carter, who wrote four books, failed to address the issue of his bigotry publicly, Mr. Friedenberg said he believed that "his apology was in his literature." For example, he said, the handful of blacks and Jews in his books are depicted sympathetically. "The bad guys are almost, without fail, rich whites, politicians and phony preachers," Mr. Friedenberg said.</blockquote>
 
[[Oprah Winfrey]], who in 1994 endorsed ''Little Tree'', subsequently removed it from her list of recommended book titles:
 
<blockquote>"I no longer&mdash;even though I had been moved by the story&mdash;felt the same about this book," Winfrey said in 1994. "There's a part of me that said, 'Well, OK, if a person has two sides of them and can write this wonderful story and also write the segregation forever speech, maybe that's OK.' But I couldn't&mdash;I couldn't live with that." </blockquote>
 
The book has also been criticized on literary grounds: "I am surprised, of course, that Winfrey would recommend it," says Lorene Roy, president of the [[American Library Association]]. "Besides the questions about the author's identity, the book is known for a simplistic plot that used a lot of stereotypical imagery."


==Publications==
==Publications==
* Carter, Forrest (1973) ''The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales''. Whippoorwill Publishers. (Reprinted by Delacorte in 1975 as ''Gone to Texas''; and by Dell in 1980 as ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'')
* Carter, Forrest (1973) ''The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales''. Whippoorwill Publishers. (Reprinted by Delacorte in 1973 as ''Gone to Texas''; and by Dell in 1980 as ''The Outlaw Josey Wales'')
* Carter, Forrest (1976) ''The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales.'' Delacorte Press
* Carter, Forrest (1976) ''The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales.'' Delacorte Press
* Carter, Forrest (1976)''The Education of Little Tree.'' Delacorte Press
* Carter, Forrest (1976)''The Education of Little Tree.'' Delacorte Press
Line 63: Line 42:


==References==
==References==
'''Books about Carter's faking of ethnicity'''
* Greenhaw, Wayne (August 26, 1976) "Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure" ''The New York Times''
*''Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities'' (Laura Browder, 2003)
* Carter, Dan T. (October 4, 1991) "[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DE1638F937A35753C1A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print The Transformation of a Klansman]." ''The New York Times''  
*''Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination'' (Shari M. Huhndorf, 2004)
* Carter, Dan T. (1993) "Southern History, American Fiction: The Secret Life of Southwestern Novelist Forrest Carter." in Lothar Honnighausen and Valeria Gennaro Lerda, eds. ''Rewriting the South: History and Fiction''. Tübingen, Germany: Francke. pp. 286-304
*''Native American Fiction: A User's Guide'' ([[David Treuer]], 2006)
*Reid, Calvin (October 25, 1991) "Widow of 'Little Tree' Author Admits He Changed Identity". ''Publishers Weekly''
 
* Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (November 24, 1991) "[http://www.macalester.edu/internationalstudies/Gates-Authenticity.pdf 'Authenticity', or the Lesson of Little Tree]". ''The New York Times Book Review''
'''Articles about Carter's faking of ethnicity'''
* Rubin, Dana (February 1992) "The Real Education of Little Tree." ''Texas Monthly''.
*Carter, Dan T. "[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DE1638F937A35753C1A967958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print The Transformation of a Klansman]." ''[[The New York Times]],'' October 4, 1991.
* {{Eskew-1997}}
*———. "Southern History, American Fiction: The Secret Life of Southwestern Novelist Forrest Carter", in ''Rewriting the South: History and Fiction,'' ed. Lothar Honnighausen and Valeria Gennaro Lerda (Tübingen: Francke, 1993). 286-304.
* {{McWhorter-2001}}
*Gates, Henry Louis Jr. "[www.macalester.edu/internationalstudies/Gates-Authenticity.pdf]." "'Authenticity', or the Lesson of Little Tree". ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'', November 24, 1991.
* Barra, Allen (December 20, 2001) "[http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/12/20/carter/print.html The education of Little Fraud]." Salon.com
*Greenhaw, Wayne. (uncredited) "Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure", ''[The New York Times'', August 26, 1976.
* Morgan, Gillis (March 30, 2010) "[http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-2427 Asa Carter (Forrest Carter)]". ''Encyclopedia of Alabama'' - accessed December 22, 2010
*[[Mark McGurl|McGurl, Mark]]. "[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/yale_journal_of_criticism/v018/18.2mcgurl.html Learning from Little Tree: The Political Education of the Counterculture.]" ''[[Yale]] Journal of Criticism,'' Fall 2005
* Dean, Charles J. (January 10, 2013) "Asa Carter: From KKK to George Wallace to Josey Wales to Little Tree." {{BN}}
*Reid, Calvin. "Widow of 'Little Tree' Author Admits He Changed Identity", ''[[Publishers Weekly]]'', October 25, 1991.
*Rubin, Dana. "The Real Education of Little Tree", ''Texas Monthly'', February, 1992
*Treuer, David. "[http://www.slate.com/id/2185856/pagenum/all/#page_start Going native: Why do writers pretend to be Indians?"], [[Slate.com]], March 7, 2008.


==External links==
==External links==
*[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wallace/peopleevents/pande01.html "Asa Carter"], PBS's People and Events
* "[http://web.archive.org/web/20101208081140/http://alabamaliterarymap.org/author.cfm?AuthorID=104 Forrest Carter] at AlabamaLiteraryMap.org archived December 8, 2010
*[http://www.slate.com/id/2185856/pagenum/all/#page_start David Treuer, "Going native: Why do writers pretend to be Indians?"], Slate.com
* "[http://www.itvs.org/films/gone-to-texas Gone to Texas: The Lives of Forrest Carter]" documentary film
 


{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Asa Earl}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carter, Asa Earl}}
[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:1979 deaths]]
[[Category:1979 deaths]]
[[Category:Calhoun County graduates]]
[[Category:US Navy personnel]]
[[Category:World War II veterans]]
[[Category:Radio personalities]]
[[Category:Radio personalities]]
[[Category:Publishers]]
[[Category:Publishers]]
[[Category:Ku Klux Klan]]
[[Category:Ku Klux Klan]]
[[Category:Writers]]
[[Category:Writers]]
[[Category:Storytellers]]
[[Category:Novelists]]
[[Category:Novelists]]

Latest revision as of 15:25, 2 November 2023

Asa Carter

Asa Earl Carter (born September 4, 1925 in Anniston; died June 7, 1979 in Abilene, Texas) was a radio host and aspiring politician in Birmingham, the founder of an independent Ku Klux Klan group and the North Alabama Citizens Council, and the founder and editor of The Southerner monthly magazine. He worked as a speechwriter for George Wallace, and, later became a best-selling author, under the assumed identity of Forrest Carter.

Carter was the eldest of Ralph and Hermione Carter's four children and was raised on the family farm near Oxford, graduating from Calhoun County High School in 1943. He served in the Navy as a radioman in the Pacific during World War II and afterward married his high school sweetheart, the former India Thelma Walker.

Having been trained by the Navy in Boulder, Colorado, he returned to the University of Colorado there to study journalism. After graduating, he and India moved to Birmingham, where they raised their four children. Using the name Ace Carter, he worked at several radio stations before landing a hosting job at WILD-AM in 1953. His show, sponsored by the American State's Rights Association, was syndicated to more than twenty other stations. His denouncing National Brotherhood Week, provoked community outrage, led by National Conference of Christians and Jews Alabama chapter president Paul Head, that got Carter fired. Afterward he supported himself by running a filling station.

Race and politics

Marginalized by the Alabama Citizens Council for his anti-semitism, Carter founded his own North Alabama Citizens Council, and became an increasingly-outspoken defender of racial segregation. He told the UPI that the NAACP had "infiltrated" Southern white teenagers with rock and roll music and called for jukebox owners to remove black records.

By the mid-1950s, Carter had founded the gray-robed Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, an independent Klan group with paramilitary inclinations. It was members of that group that beat singer Nat "King" Cole at Municipal Auditorium on April 10, 1956. Four members of Carter's group were convicted of torturing and mutilating Edward "Judge" Aaron in 1957. He and Jessie Mabry also published The Southerner, which promulgated white racial superiority and anti-communist rhetoric.

On September 1, 1956 Carter gave a speech in Clinton, Tennessee, lambasting the desegregation of Clinton HIgh School. In the aftermath, a mob of white men damaged cars driven by African Americans and were turned away from the mayor's house by Sheriff's deputies. Fellow speaker John Kasper was charged with sedition and inciting a riot.

Carter, who was not personally present for those crimes, challenged the previously-ousted Bull Connor for the office of Police Commissioner in the 1956 Birmingham municipal election, but lost. In 1957 Connor's police arrested him and his brother James for assaulting officers who were investigating a shooting connected with Carter's KKK group. Carter left the group in 1958, but only after shooting two members in a dispute during a meeting at the Central Park Theatre on Bessemer Road. He was charged with attempted murder, but not prosecuted. That year he campaigned for Lieutenant Governor, finishing fifth in the five-man race which was won by Albert Boutwell.

During the 1960s, Carter worked as an uncredited speech writer for Governor George Wallace and, later, for his wife Lurleen. He is now credited with penning Wallace's infamous 1963 inaugural address in which he promised to uphold "Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever." Wallace himself claimed not to know Carter, but former staffers say that he was paid by others on Wallace's behalf. When Wallace campaigned for President in 1968 and sought to tone down the fervor of his views, Carter was no longer involved with him.

Carter challenged Wallace for Governor in 1970 Democratic primary. Once again he finished last in a field of five, with Wallace winning narrowly over Albert Brewer. Carter and his supporters picketed the inauguration, carrying signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children."

Literary career and controversy

"Forrest" Carter

After his defeat, Carter sold his farm and moved to Sweetwater, Texas, and, in 1973, to St George's Island, Florida, where he busied himself with writing, using the assumed name of Bedford Forrest Carter.

His first novels, The Rebel Outlaw, Josey Wales and The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales, feature a former Confederate soldier pursued by cruel federal soldiers. The first novel, originally issued privately by Covington County's Whippoorwill Publishers and later picked up by Delacorte Books, was purchased by Clint Eastwood's Malpaso Productions for $25,000 and made into a 1975 motion picture. Philip Kaufman, the original director, objected to what he considered "fascist" overtones in the script and dropped the project, which Eastwood himself eventually directed. When interviewed about the book by Barbara Walters for the "Today Show", Carter was recognized by many in Alabama as the same man who had just run unsuccessfully for governor a few years earlier. He denied being the same man in a follow-up interview for The New York Times.

He followed up with a purported memoir entitled The Education of Little Tree in 1976. While marketed as Forrest Carter's autobiography, the story was a fiction, portraying young Forrest as an orphan raised in the Cherokee culture by his grandparents. The story has been credited with introducing American readers to a gentler view of Native Americans and has been cited as an influence in screen depictions such as Kevin Costner's "Dances with Wolves".

The author bio on the back cover of Carter's Delacorte editions claimed that he was "Storyteller in Council" to the Cherokee Nation. Members of the Cherokee nation have disclaimed any connection with Carter and have found numerous inaccuracies regarding their culture and language as described in The Education of Little Tree. Critics and historians have lodged similar complaints, finding his depiction of Native Americans to be drawn from "noble savage" mythology and anti-establishment sentiment rather than from actual native practices and beliefs.

In 1978 Carter completed a fictionalized biography of Geronimo, entitled Watch for Me on the Mountain. Having separated from his wife, Carter moved to Abilene, Texas where he was working on a follow-up to The Education of Little Tree. He died in June 1979 under unclear circumstances. It is alleged that he was involved in a fistfight with one of his sons in Potosi, Texas and fell unconscious, choking on his own vomit. Other accounts have him dying of heart failure. His body was returned to Anniston for burial at the D'Armanville Cemetery. His family later replaced the original "Forrest Carter" headstone with one bearing his birth name.

The Education of Little Tree was re-released in a paperback edition by the University of New Mexico Press in 1985. With the controversy over its authorship forgotten, the book sold more than 600,000 copies. It was named "Book of the Year" by the American Booksellers and was ranked atop The New York Times non-fiction best-seller list for several weeks. When Emory University historian Dan T. Carter, published an article about Asa Carter's double life in the Times in 1991, the newspaper moved the book to its fiction list and the UNM Press reworked the cover, removing the claim that it was a true story. Oprah Winfrey, who had endorsed the book in 1994, removed it from her list of recommendations in 2007.

The Return of Josey Wales, based on Carter's follow-up to the Josey Wales story, was filmed in 1986. The Education of Little Tree was adapted into a feature length film by Richard Friedenberg in 1997, stoking renewed controversy about Carter. The original Delacorte editor, Eleanor Friede, characterized the connection as "nasty gossip".

Publications

  • Carter, Forrest (1973) The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales. Whippoorwill Publishers. (Reprinted by Delacorte in 1973 as Gone to Texas; and by Dell in 1980 as The Outlaw Josey Wales)
  • Carter, Forrest (1976) The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales. Delacorte Press
  • Carter, Forrest (1976)The Education of Little Tree. Delacorte Press
  • Carter, Forrest (1978) Watch for Me on the Mountain. Delacorte Press (Republished by Dell in 1980 as Cry Geronimo!)

References

  • Greenhaw, Wayne (August 26, 1976) "Is Forrest Carter Really Asa Carter? Only Josey Wales May Know for Sure" The New York Times
  • Carter, Dan T. (October 4, 1991) "The Transformation of a Klansman." The New York Times
  • Carter, Dan T. (1993) "Southern History, American Fiction: The Secret Life of Southwestern Novelist Forrest Carter." in Lothar Honnighausen and Valeria Gennaro Lerda, eds. Rewriting the South: History and Fiction. Tübingen, Germany: Francke. pp. 286-304
  • Reid, Calvin (October 25, 1991) "Widow of 'Little Tree' Author Admits He Changed Identity". Publishers Weekly
  • Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (November 24, 1991) "'Authenticity', or the Lesson of Little Tree". The New York Times Book Review
  • Rubin, Dana (February 1992) "The Real Education of Little Tree." Texas Monthly.
  • Eskew, Glenn T. (1997) But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807846678
  • McWhorter, Diane (2001) Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York, New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743226488
  • Barra, Allen (December 20, 2001) "The education of Little Fraud." Salon.com
  • Morgan, Gillis (March 30, 2010) "Asa Carter (Forrest Carter)". Encyclopedia of Alabama - accessed December 22, 2010
  • Dean, Charles J. (January 10, 2013) "Asa Carter: From KKK to George Wallace to Josey Wales to Little Tree." The Birmingham News

External links

Retrieved from "http://bhamwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Asa_Carter&oldid=208183"