[4] He enlisted in the United States Army during World War II, serving as a rifleman with the 97th Infantry Division.

[6] The book is a fictional account set in the late 18th century that traces the story of the first White pioneers to settle in the Appalachian wilderness of the mountains of Western North Carolina.

The Land Breakers, out of print for several decades, was republished in 2006 by Press 53, a small imprint in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Among his six works of non-fiction is the 1965 book The Free Men, which is a first-person chronicle of the desegregation struggle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina at the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

From 1964 to 1966, Ehle served as an adviser on President Lyndon B. Johnson's White House Group for Domestic Affairs.

[12] The heiress Anne Forsyth had created this organization to provide full scholarships for Black students to attend some of the all-White "Seg academies."

Ehle and his wife Rosemary Harris can be heard interviewing prospective candidates, Black public school students, on surviving recordings.