Education

• B.A. University of South Carolina
• M.A. University of Wisconsin
• Ph.D. University North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Bio

Before his retirement, Professor Dan Carter taught United States History and has a special interest in national 20th century politics and the post-Civil War American South. Dr. Carter has taught the US Since 1877 survey, the history of the New South, and courses on documentary films as well as the making of Southern culture. He has also taught graduate courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction,  20th century US history and the post civil-war South. His publications include: Scottsboro: a Tragedy of the American South; When the War Was Over: the Failure of Self-Reconstruction in the South, 1865-1867; The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics, and From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994.

Activities

Since retiring in 2009, I have moved full-time  to Brevard in the mountains of western North Carolina where I have served as President of the local Unitarian-Universalist Congregation and as a member of  the board of the Western North Carolina American Civil Union.  While actively participating in local and state politics I also continue to write and lecture.  Since retirement from full-time teaching, I have contributed essays to Dissent magazine and written a new and extended introduction to the third edition of my book on the Scottsboro case, an introductory essay for a collection of articles on Southern student activism in the 1960s, an introductory essay for the memoirs of my late friend, Eugene “Nick” Zeigler and an essay in a collection marking the 60th anniversary of the publication of V.O. Key’s Southern Politics in State and Nation.   I have also served as an on-camera commentator and/or consultant on the PBS documentaries The People v. Leo Frank (2009), 1964  (2014) and  Klansville USA (2014).   Most recently I have worked with CNN Producer Kirk Sadusky on  Episodes 5 (“The Long March to Freedom”) and 7 (“The Times They Are A-Changing”)  part of the CNN 10 part series, The Sixties (2014) episodes of CNN series The Seventies as well as CNN’s 1968: the Year that Changed America (2018).  And I continue to work on my long-term project on Klansman/Wallace Speechwriter/best-selling author, Asa (a.k.a. “Forrest”) Carter.