Here comes the story of the Hurricane
The man the authorities came to blame
For something that he never done
Put him in a prison cell but one time he could-a been
The champion of the world.
It was 1966.
The Civil Rights Act was still in its infancy.
Black men, especially strong black men who could take out a man with one punch, were suspected and feared.
That's the world that surrounded Rubin Carter, an up-and-coming boxer driving around Paterson NJ with some of his friends. In 40 fights, Carter had amassed a record of 27-12-1, most notably a first-round defeat in 1963 of then two-division champion Emile Griffith. 19 of his 27 victories were by knockout.
In another part of town, what was allegedly a robbery-gone-wrong had left two men and one woman dead. Carter and his friends were picked up and booked for the crime.
Carter wasn't an angel by any stretch of the imagination, even taking the boxing out of the equation. He'd had run-ins with the law as both a youth growing up in Paterson and as an adult, serving time for assault and robbery. He joined the Army, had some run-ins with authority there but used the service as a stepping stone to his boxing career, competing in Europe. Boxing looked like his best ticket off the mean streets.
All of Rubin's cards were marked in advance
The trial was a pig-circus he never had a chance
The judge made Rubin's witnesses drunkards from the slums
To the white folks who watched he was a revolutionary bum
And to the black folks he was just a crazy ni&&er
No one doubted that he pulled the trigger
And though they could not produce the gun
The DA said he was the one who did the deed
And the all-white jury agreed.
Carter and his companions were sentenced to 3 consecutive life sentences. Throughout it all, Carter proclaimed his innocence and fought for his freedom -- with his words and his mind instead of his fists. While in prison, he wrote his autobiography,
The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472; the book drew attention to his cause and cries rose up for a retrial, especially when the two key witnesses against him recanted their testimony.
Unfortunately, one of the witnesses went back on his recantation, and Carter was once again convicted in 1976. It looked like the story was over.
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell
But it wasn't.
In 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court reviewed Carter's trial and conviction, and concluded that the conviction was based "upon an appeal to racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure." The Hurricane was freed.
Now, after spending 19 years and two trials in prison might make most people bitter, cynical. Maybe that person would end up on the streets. Instead, Carter channeled his energies into being productive. He began to work for improvements in the justice system that had treated him so poorly and fighting for the rights of others believed to have been wrongly convicted. In 1993, he moved to Toronto and founded the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted; he left the organization in 2004 and returned to the United States, where he continued to speak out for the rights of the accused and the wrongly convicted.
In February of 2014, in what might be his last public statement, he wrote a letter to the NY Daily News to plead the case of Brooklynite David McCallum and ask for a reopening of his case.
I am now quite literally on my deathbed and am making my final wish to those with the legal authority to act.
[...]
If I find a heaven after this life, I’ll be quite surprised. In my own years on this planet, though, I lived in hell for the first 49 years, and have been in heaven for the past 28 years.
To live in a world where truth matters and justice, however late, really happens, that world would be heaven enough for us all.
Hurricane was a fighter -- up to the end.
Sources:
"Hurricane" lyrics: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/...
Obituaries:
Former Boxer Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter Passes Away at Age 76 -- Bleacher Report
Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter dies at 76 -- ESPN
BOXER RUBIN 'HURRICANE' CARTER DIES AT 76 -- AP
Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter dead at 76 -- CBC