Description: Unmasking the Klansman may read like a work of fiction but is actually a biography of Asa Carter, one of the South's most notorious white supremacists (and secret Klansman). In the early 1960s Carter became a secret adviser to George Wallace and wrote the Alabama governor's infamous 1963 inauguration speech vowing "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." When Carter disappeared from Alabama in 1972, few knew that he had assumed a new identity in Abilene, Texas, masquerading as a Cherokee American novelist. Using the name "Forrest" Carter, he published three successful Western novels, including The Rebel Outlaw, which Clint Eastwood made into a movie. His last book, The Education of Little Tree (a fake biography of his supposed Indian childhood) posthumously became a number one bestseller in 1991.
Author Dan T. Carter uncovered "Forrest" Carter's true identity while researching his biography of Georgia Wallace and in a New York Times op-ed he exposed Carter's deception. Although the difficulties of uncovering the full story of the secretive Carter initially led him to abandon the project, in 2018 he gained access to more than two hundred interviews by the late Anniston newsman, Fred Burger. These recordings and his two decades of exhaustive research finally brought Asa Carter's story into focus. Unmasking the Klansman is the result.Brief description: Dan T. Carter is the University of South Carolina Educational Foundation Professor Emeritus. He is the author or editor of more than forty scholarly articles and seven books, including Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South and The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Carter has received eight major literary prizes including the Lillian Smith, Bancroft, and Robert Kennedy awards as well as a special citation in nonfiction from the Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Brevard, North Carolina.