ASA EARL CARTER Biography - Writers

 
 

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ASA EARL CARTER

Name: Asa Earl Carter                                                                 
Born: September 4, 1925                                                               
Died: June 7, 1979                                                                   
                                                                                     
Asa Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1925, the eldest of four children.       
Despite his claims (as author "Forrest" Carter) that he was orphaned, he was in       
fact raised by his parents, Ralph and Hermione Carter--both of whom lived into       
Carter's adulthood--in nearby Oxford, Alabama.                                       
Asa Earl Carter was an American speechwriter and author.                             
He worked as a speechwriter for segregationist Governor George                       
Wallace of Alabama, and was founder of the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC)     
and a pro-segregation monthly titled The Southerner. Under an assumed identity       
as 'Forrest Carter,' he published two Westerns and a purported memoir, The           
Education of Little Tree, in which he portrays himself as having been orphaned       
into the care of Cherokee grandparents. In 1976, following the success of his         
western The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales Forrest Carter was revealed to be               
segregationist Asa Earl Carter by the New York Times. His background once again       
became national news in 1991 after Little Tree topped the Times paperback best-seller 
lists (both non-fiction, and later, fiction) and won the American Booksellers