The Messed Up True Story Behind Klansman Asa Earl Carter s Giant Hoax
By Marina Manoukian/Feb. 11, 2021 12:00 am EDT/Updated: Feb. 13, 2021 12:50 pm EDT
Asa Earl Carter was a white American man who spent the entirety of his life as a racist person, repeatedly going on tirades against Black people and Jewish people. But for the second half of his life, he also adopted an identity that involved pretending he was half-Cherokee and writing romanticized stories about his heritage.
Calling himself Forrest Carter, one of his books,
The Education of Little Tree, became incredibly popular after Carter s death. And despite the fact that Carter was remarkably bad at keeping up his deception, his faux identity wasn t accepted as a hoax until the 1990s.