Facing Southern Demons

Part of the challenge of being an intellectual southerner is learning to face your demons for what they are and then having confronted them retain the best of your culture without revising your history or burning it down. The famous author Forrest Carter wrote poignantly about the complex relationship between Cherokees and the larger culture in his award winning novel "The Education of Little Tree." In earlier years, this book reached near scriptural authority with liberals. Carter also wrote the novellas upon which arguably the best western movie ever filmed was based, "The Outlaw Josey Wales." Again, he put a human face on violent and marginalized people whose side of the story was never told.
 
Carter was a brilliant student of southern culture and his analysis of the Celtic influence on Southern Hill Culture deserves a place on your bookshelf. (If you can find a copy of his work that hasn't been ceremonially trashed by a PC librarian.) LINK TO ARTICLE

But, there was another side to Forest Carter. Before he became the darling of the liberals for his sensitive writing about the state of Native Americans he went by anther name, Asa Earl Carter. Asa Earl Carter was a hard core segregationist, a major figure in the "League of the South" movement, a Klansman and the speech writer for George Wallace. It was Carter who penned the words, "Segregation now. Segregation forever."

So how do you reconcile the bitter racist bigot Carter with the man who wrote so sensitively about Cherokee culture? How do you come to grips with the brilliant novelist who also had a terrible past? In some cases you don't. He was what he was. But, his work also is what it is.

So, you take his work on face value, read it critically in light of his background and learn what you can from it. You don't burn the books and the movies and you don't dig up his bones and scatter them on a trash heap. You praise him for what he did well and reject what he did wrong.

Carter died in a drunken bar fight in Southern Texas, perhaps a fitting end for such a talented, complicated and sometimes violent man.