Forrest Carter was born in Pocahontas, Texas. He grew up on a farm in the post-war era, and attended public schools through high school, graduating from San Jacinto Junior College in 1946. In 1949, he entered the University of Texas at Austin where he completed a Bachelor's Degree in French, English and German from the French Department, a Master's Degree in Education from the Social Science Department and a PhD in German language and literature from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In 1954 he completed a fellowship in German studies at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey
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He taught at Long Island University from 1955 to 1962 and served as an executive officer of the National Endowment for the Humanities for two years. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature for three years between 1962-1965. He was appointed Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature after three years as an Adjunct Professor.
From 1966 until his retirement in 1991, he was an Associate Professor of Germanic Languages and Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi where he taught courses on 19th Century German Thought; Romanticism; Schiller; Heine; Balzac; Grimm Brothers; Goethe; Buddenbrooks; Kleist; Rilke; Hofmannsthal; Nietzsche; Heidegger; Sartre; Proust; Mann; Musil; Faulkner; Kafka. Dr. Carter died on September 6, 1999.
He is survived by his two sons: William Forrest Carter (nee Ida) (1972) and Thomas Forrest Carter (1979), his wife Elizabeth Ida "Beth" Carter (nee MacBain) (1932), his daughter Elizabeth MacBain "Liz" Carter (1979), his brother William MacBain Carter (1939) and his sister Jean MacBain Carter (1951).
