Forrest Carter is the pen name of Asa Earl Carter, an American author and political speechwriter who lived from 1925 to 1979. Carter used the pseudonym of Forrest Carter in order to falsely claim Cherokee heritage, but his true identity as a Southern Klansman was revealed by The New York Times after the publication of his novel The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales. Despite the controversy surrounding his politics, Carter's novel was a success and was adapted into the film The Outlaw Josey Wales by Clint Eastwood.
Asa Earl Carter was born in Anniston, Alabama in 1925, the second child of Hermione and Ralph Carter. He attended Calhoun County High School and served in the American Navy during World War II. Carter went on to study journalism at the University of Colorado and married his childhood sweetheart India Thelma while living in Birmingham, Alabama. Using his journalism degree, Carter found work at a Birmingham radio station, WILD, where he gained notoriety for his racist and anti-Semitic speeches. He also served as writer and publisher of The Southerner, a white supremacist magazine. Carter was a founding member of the original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, a white supremacist paramilitary organization responsible for acts of violence against African Americans.
Before his career as a novelist under the name Forrest Carter, Asa Earl Carter was politically active in Alabama as an opponent to 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.