Asa Earl Carter (September 4, 1925 – June 7, 1979) was an American political speechwriter and author. He was most notable for publishing novels and a best-selling, award-winning memoir under the name Forrest Carter, an identity as a Native American Cherokee. In 1976, following the publication success of his western The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, The New York Times revealed Forrest Carter to be Southerner Asa Earl Carter. His background became national news again in 1991 after his purported 1976 memoir, The Education of Little Tree, was re-issued in paperback and topped the Times paperback best-seller lists (both non-fiction and fiction). It also won the American Booksellers Book of the Year (ABBY) award.
Prior to his literary career as "Forrest", Carter was politically active for years in Alabama as an opponent of the civil rights movement: he worked as a speechwriter for segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama; founded the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC) and an independent Ku Klux Klan group; and started the pro-segregation monthly titled The Southerner.
Read more about Asa Earl Carter: Early Life, Career, Literary Career and Death, Controversy and Criticism, Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the words earl carter, earl and/or carter:
“I have looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God recognizes I will do this and forgives me.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The greatest dangers have their allurements, if the want of success is likely to be attended with a degree of glory. Middling dangers are horrid, when the loss of reputation is the inevitable consequence of ill success.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A nation’s domestic and foreign policies and actions should be derived from the same standards of ethics, honesty and morality which are characteristic of the individual citizens of the nation.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)