Carter had been an active participant in several white supremacist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens' Council.[5] He was also a speechwriter for Alabama governor George Wallace, for whom he allegedly wrote Wallace's famous line "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."[2] Although Carter claimed to be part Cherokee, in 1970 he ran for governor of Alabama against Wallace and others (Wallace eventually won another term after a runoff), on a White supremacist platform, finishing fourth among the seven candidates listed on the Democratic Party ballot.
In the years following his active political engagement, Carter left Alabama, changed his name, and began his second career as an author, taking care to conceal his background. He claimed categorically in a 1976 article in The New York Times that he, Forrest, was not Asa Carter.[6]
When Carter died in 1979, he was working on The Wanderings of Little Tree, a sequel to The Education of Little Tree, and on a screenplay version of the book. Twelve years after Carter's death, the fact that Forrest Carter was actually Asa Earl Carter was documented in a 1991 New York Times exposé by history professor Dan T. Carter (no direct relation). The supposed autobiographical truth of The Education of Little Tree was revealed to be a hoax.
In 2007, Oprah Winfrey pulled the book from a list of recommended titles on her website. While Winfrey had promoted the book on her TV show in 1994, calling the novel "very spiritual", she said she "had to take the book off my shelf" after learning the truth about Carter.[7]
Whether or not Carter wrote The Education of Little Tree from his childhood memories of his Cherokee uncle and grandparents has been disputed. The publisher's remarks in the original edition of the book inaccurately describe Carter as "Storyteller in Council" to the Cherokee Nation. When Carter's background was widely publicized in 1991, the book was reclassified by the publisher as fiction. Today, a debate continues as to whether the book's lessons are altered by the identity of the author. Sherman Alexie has said Little Tree "is a lovely little book, and I sometimes wonder if it is an act of romantic atonement by a guilt-ridden White supremacist, but ultimately I think it is the racial hypocrisy of a White supremacist".[7]
Members of the Cherokee Nation have said that so-called "Cherokee" words and many customs in The Education of Little Tree are inaccurate, and they point out that the novel's characters are stereotyped.[5]
In spite of the exposé, the book was adapted into a film of the same title in 1997, which was meant to be a TV movie but was given a theatrical release. In 2011, the documentary The Reconstruction of Asa Carter examined the life of the author; it has aired frequently on PBS.[8][9] On June 13, 2014, This American Life aired the episode "180 Degrees", which argued whether or not there was a change in Carter's attitudes between the period from politician to writer.[10]
