When rock ’n’ roll no longer produces a version of itself worth banning, none of it will be worth listening to.
You know what, Greil, I’m kind of getting worried.
I’d decided to do a Substack article on the history of anti-rock censorship efforts. It’s a long, ugly history, and with the current repressive, authoritarian tone coming from what’s left of The White House, I figured there would be plenty of current examples. After all, the group known as Moms For Liberty has been in the headlines for the past few years for their courageous efforts to yank “offensive” books from school libraries, harass gay kids, fight “Critical Race Theory” etc. etc.
But despite the group’s delight in banning books, Moms for Liberty for the most part has left music alone. In fact the only example I could find of MFL going after music was not even a rock ‘n’ roll song. It didn’t even have dirty lyrics — or any lyrics at all. It was a symphonic piece composed by renowned African American composer Omar Thomas.
Here’s the offending composition, called “Mother of a Revolution,” performed in 2022 at the University of North Texas, conducted by Eugene Migliaro Corporon. (No children were harmed in this concert.)
The meddling Moms were upset because the work was written to commemorate Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman who was one of the participants in the Stonewall uprising of 1969, which was credited for starting the gay rights movement.
As I said, this kind of worries me. Has rock grown so safe and sterile that not even Moms for fuckin’ Liberty will attack it?
Chew on that for awhile while we stroll down history lane.
Warning: The more I looked into in, the more I realized that the single article I initially envisioned wouldn’t be realistic. So, what you’re reading now is just the first of a multi-part series about anti-rock crusaders and the damage they do in the name of “protecting the children.” These pieces will feature a parade of villainous villains of the rock censorship world, some that you’ll recognize, some that you’ve hardly even heard of.
Let’s turn first to a funky dude from Alabama named Asa Earl “Ace” Carter. He was the founder and leader of a quaint little social club called the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy, a conspiracy kook obsessed with Jews and communists, founder of the North Alabama Citizens Council (basically a maskless Klan group), a right-wing radio host in Birmingham and a George Wallace speechwriter, whose most famous Wallace line was “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” used in the governor’s 1963 inaugural address.
Now this guy was a real piece of work. He and his followers would picket rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and jazz shows with signs like “Jungle Music Promotes Integration” and “Bebop Promotes Communism.” In PopMatters three years ago, Iain Ellis devoted a big chunk to Carter in a feature titled “The Rise of Rock ‘n’ Roll Nation and the Far-Right Reaction”:
Asa Carter, the founder of the North Alabama Citizens Council (NACC), used the new music culture as a wedge issue with which to wage war on immorality, miscegenation, and communism.
For Carter, rock ‘n’ roll was part of a conspiracy he traced from youth fans back through the NAACP and to its (supposed) communist benefactors. Its aim, he claimed, was to “mongrelize America”. To prevent such an outcome, Carter embarked upon an anti-rock campaign focused on the jukeboxes that had become a fixture of youth gathering places; by 1955, more than half a million were in use—one for every 300 people. Intent on removing what he called “immoral records in the new rhythm”, Carter sought to capitalize on the growing number of well-publicized complaints being made about sexually implicit songs.
This Wynonie Harris tune is the kind of immoral record in the new rhythm that Carter and his ilk hated:
Ellis continues:
Although his mission to fight this manifestation of juvenile delinquency was met with sympathetic ears, coin music operators did not take kindly to the removal of money-making hits. In a case of capitalism triumphing over censorship, step one of the NACC’s campaign largely failed.
So Carter went back to tried and true Klan tactics, namely violence and thuggery.
His first major musical target was a native of Montgomery, Alabama who had done well: Nat “King” Cole.
Cole was by no stretch of the imagination was a rocker. But he did have a big hit in 1950 called “Mona Lisa.”
And everyone knows MONA WAS A WHITE GIRL!
On April 10, 1955, Cole was playing a gig at Birmingham’s Municipal Auditorium. Actually, two gigs: one for white people, another for Black. Southern heritage, you know …
So Carter gathered several of his segregationist cronies and, as Ellis wrote, “sent them to the show to cause trouble and create headlines. As directed, the five thugs stormed the stage, one punching Cole, before security intervened.”
Such brave patriots!
Ellis continues:
Although the singer managed to return to finish the concert, the Citizens’ Council had achieved its goals: receiving national attention for its grievances while making it clear that rock ‘n’ roll and race mixing would not be accepted without resistance in the American South.
According to Alabama Heritage magazine, Carter’s actual plan was to kidnap Cole. “The cost of the ill-conceived attack to the people of Alabama proved substantial because Nat “King” Cole never again set foot in the state of his birth,” the article says.
It has to be noted that Carter himself was never charged in the attack on Cole.
And sure enough, when asked about it by the Birmingham Post Herald, Carter downplayed the attack. “I feel this has all been played out of proportion … It’s nothing more than a fellow got mad and took a swing at a Negro.”
I agree with Thomas Doherty a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, who used that quote in a 2022 article he published in Quillette: “The copy editor doubtless cleaned up Carter’s actual word choice.”
As for Asa Carter, his twisted story only got more twisted, though — sorry music lovers — he seemed to lose his obsession with music and mongrelization. Please indulge my digression (following this filthy early rock ‘n’ classic by The Treniers):
More than a year after the attack on Cole, a bunch of merry fellows from the Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy attacked, tortured and castrated a black handyman named Edward Aaron. Police found Aaron, near death from blood loss. Police arrested six of Carter’s henchmen, four of whom actually were convicted of “mayhem.” The four were sentenced to 20 years, but pardoned by George Wallace’s parole board in 1963. By this time, Carter was on Wallace’s staff.
Again, Carter himself was never charged with the attack on Aaron.
After this “mayhem,” Carter quit the Klan. This was because Jesus led him to repudiate his racist ways and become a source of light for the world.
Just kidding! He quit after shooting two members of his Klan group over a dispute over finances. The Birmingham cops arrested Carter for attempted murder, but as tended to happen with violent KKK kreeps during that time in Alabama’s proud history, the charges eventually were dropped.
Wallace and Carter eventually parted ways. In fact, Wallace denied even knowing ol’ Ace, despite all evidence to the contrary. Asa actually ran against his former boss in the 1970 gubernatorial primary. Wallace was just too moderate for him. But Carter came in a distant fourth. According to The New York Times, “He and some supporters demonstrated at the governor’s 1971 inauguration, carrying signs reading ‘Wallace is a Bigot’ and `Free Our White Children.’ After that he dropped out of sight.”
Carter moved to Texas, then to Florida, grew a mustache and, somewhere along the line, renamed himself Forrest Carter, which most assume was a tribute to his hero, KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest, and began his career as an author.
You’ve probably heard of some of his books. The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, published in 1972, was very successful and was made into a movie by Clint Eastwood simply called The Outlaw Josey Wales.
Then in 1976, University of New Mexico Press — yes, the publishing arm of my alma mater — published “Forrest” Carter’s next book, The Education of Little Tree: A True Story. The “True Story” part of the title has been removed, but it’s still on sale there. According to the UNM Press website, it “tells with poignant grace the story of a boy who is adopted by his Cherokee grandmother and half-Cherokee grandfather in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee during the Great Depression.”
If that ain’t heart-warming. Or at least heartworming.
The fucking New Agers loved it! Even after The New York Times exposed Carter’s real identity, many continued to advocate for “Little Tree.” Oprah Winfrey, the talk show host who introduced right-wing blowhards Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil to the world, endorsed Little Tree in 1994 though 13 years later, she denounced it.
For several years the UNM Press website didn’t mention anything about Carter’s violent, racist past. A 2001 story in Salon quotes journalist Diane McWhorter, who wrote about Cater equating this omission to “publishing a book of Hitler’s paintings without mentioning the word ‘Nazi.’” (McWhorter wrote about Carter in her 2001 civil-rights history Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution.)
Go Lobos!
Somewhere long the line, apparently after that Salon article, that changed, though you have to click around the UNM Press site some to find the author “was born as Asa Earl Carter and was raised in Oxford, Alabama. He was a segregationist speech writer who reinvented himself as a Western novelist …”
Carter died and went to Hell in 1979. According to a 1992 Texas Monthly article by Dana Rubin:
It was at his son’s home in Potosi, south of Abilene, that Carter died mysteriously. Listed as the cause of death on the certificate was ‘aspiration of food and clotted blood’ due to “history of fist fights.” The ambulance driver told one of Carter’s friends that Carter had had a drunken fight with his son, fell, and most likely choked on his own vomit.
Thankfully the “mongrel music” he hated lives on!
Coming soon: Krazy Kristian Krusaders Against Rock ‘ n’ Roll: Part 2 , BURN BEATLES BURN! Until then, enjoy this Hank Ballard classic!
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