The Messed Up True Story Behind Klansman Asa Earl Carter's Giant Hoax

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Asa Earl Carter was devastated by George Wallace's victory. According to NPR, after Wallace's 1971 inauguration, Alabama reporter Wayne Greenhaw approached Carter and Carter started to cry, saying that "Wallace had sold out to the liberals." Greenhaw claims that this was the last time he saw Carter: "It's like he just vanished, dropped off the face of the earth." Carter also called a close friend, Ron Taylor, to tell him that he was "going away."

However, according to Texas Monthly, Carter didn't drop out of sight immediately. In 1971, he set up another paramilitary organization, "whose members wore gray armbands with Confederate flags." It wasn't a success, and seemed only to further demoralize Carter, who was arrested three times on alcohol-related charges the subsequent year. This seemed to be the final straw.

Carter's reinvention and move to the Southeast wasn't unique, "but where others moved to find a new future, Asa Carter moved to find a past." In 1973, Carter and his wife moved to Florida and he fully became Forrest Carter, incorporating the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the KKK and Confederate soldier. Carter set his sons up in Abilene, Texas, and visited often, but referred to them as his nephews. "Forrest" Carter started to create a new past for himself. He told people he was part Cherokee and a former cowboy who "spent his time drifting around the country from his home in Florida, where his wife lived, to the Indian nation, where his kinfolk lived."

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