Asa Earl Carter was a Ku Klux Klan leader, segregationist speech writer, and later famed western novelist. He is notable under his own name for a famed George Wallace pro-segregation line, and for having run for governor of Alabama on a far-right segregationist ticket. In addition, under the alias of supposedly Cherokee writer Forrest Carter, he is known for having created The Outlaw Josey Wales, a novel that led to a National Film Registry film and The Education of Little Tree, a best-selling, award-winning book which was marketed as a memoir but which turned out to be fiction. 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. It also won the American Booksellers Book of the Year award

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