The Education of Little Tree

The book on which this movie was based was originally published in 1977 under the title and subtitle "The Education of Little Tree: A True Story," with the author's name given as "Forrest Carter." However, after the publication, it was revealed that the book was not really a true story, the author was not really Native American, and "Forrest Carter" was actually a pseudonym for Asa Earl Carter. Asa Carter was a Ku Klux Klansman and the alleged author of George Wallace's 1963 "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" speech. He is widely understood to have been the leader of a Klan lynch mob that nearly killed the Black musician Nat King Cole during a 1956 concert in Birmingham, Alabama. Even aside from the author's white supremacist past and his total falsification of any personal Native American heritage, his representation of Cherokee life, lore, and culture was also invented out of whole cloth. In a 2012 NPR interview, historian Dan T. Carter says that "the Cherokee words that [Asa Carter] used in the memoir weren't Cherokee - they were just made up." The fact that the author was a vicious racist and a known grifter had been revealed multiple times by various historians and journalists before this adaptation was in production.

The film takes place in the 1930s. At that time The Pledge of Allegiance did not include the words "Under God" . It wasn't until 1956 that those words were added to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Featured in Siskel & Ebert & the Movies: The Postman/Mr. Magoo/Jackie Brown/An American Werewolf in Paris/Afterglow/The Education of Little Tree (1997)