Press Release - For Immediate Release

Media Contact: Hayley Richards

(334) 353-1881 or hayley.richards@archives.alabama.gov

Montgomery, AL (01/16/2024) – The Alabama Department of Archives & History (ADAH) will launch its 2024 Food for Thought lunchtime lecture series on Thursday, January 18, at 12 pm CT. Dan T. Carter will present The Double Life of Asa Carter. The program will be held in the ADAH’s Joseph M. Farley Alabama Power Auditorium in Montgomery. It will also be livestreamed on the ADAH’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. Admission is FREE.

Dan T. Carter will kick off the 2024 slate of Food for Thought programs by discussing the double life of Asa Carter. Born in Anniston in 1925, Asa Carter was a political adviser to George Wallace during the 1962 gubernatorial campaign and was an author of Wallace’s first inauguration speech. Carter disappeared from Alabama in 1972 and assumed a new identity in Abilene, Texas, as a Cherokee American novelist. Using the name “Forrest" Carter, he published three successful Western novels, including The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, the basis of a widely acclaimed 1976 Clint Eastwood film. Carter's last book, The Education of Little Tree, became a posthumous bestseller. 

Historian Dan T. Carter first uncovered “Forrest" Carter's true identity while researching his award-winning biography of George Wallace, published in 1995. 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.

Dan T. Carter, the University of South Carolina Educational Foundation Professor Emeritus, is the author and editor of 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 North Carolina.

For additional information, contact Scotty Kirkland at scotty.kirkland@archives.alabama.gov or (334) 353-9270. A complete schedule of our 2024 lunchtime lecture series is available at archives.alabama.gov. Food for Thought 2024 is sponsored by the Alabama Humanities Alliance and the Friends of the Alabama Archives. 

The Alabama Department of Archives and History is the state’s government-records repository, a special-collections library and research facility, and home to the Museum of Alabama, the state history museum. It is located in downtown Montgomery, directly across Washington Avenue from the State Capitol. The Museum of Alabama is open Monday through Saturday from 8:30 to 4:30. The EBSCO Research Room is open Tuesday through Saturday from 8:30 to 4:30. To learn more, visit www.archives.alabama.gov or call (334) 242-4364.

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