RUBIN “HURRICANE” CARTER: A LOOK BACK
Posted on | November 15, 2007 | No Comments
By: Patrick McElligott
In the 1960s, boxing fans knew Rubin “Hurricane” Carter as one of the most exciting middleweights, who knocked Emile Griffith out in one round. In the 1970s, he was known as the most famous inmate in the United States, and the subject of a Bob Dylan classic. In the years since he release from prison, Carter has become a global spokesperson for human rights, and his case revisited by a Denzel Washington movie.
Even after his case was decided in the federal courts, there were some people who continued to say that Rubin was a cold-blooded assassin, who was only released on a legal technicality. Today, while I was looking through an old file of paperwork, I came across a series of letters between Carter, the warden of Rahway State Prison, and the inmate population in April of 1974.
These papers reminded me of a chapter in the longest, most tried case in US legal history, and one that I think Unlimited Fight News readers might find interesting.
One of the opening scenes in the movie “The Hurricane” shows Rubin in his cell, ready to go to war with the guards who have been tasked with moving him. It’s impossible, of course, to put all the important parts of a 20 year struggle into a 2 hour movie. That incident played a larger role in Carter’s 20 case than the movie showed. Let’s take a closer look.
In 1973, I was a 15 year old amateur boxer, who read one of the first articles in a sports magazine that suggested “Hurricane” Carter had not committed the murders that resulted in his being sentenced to triple life in
prison. Being young and idealistic, I wrote to Rubin, and told him that I was convinced he was innocent, and that I was going to get him out of prison. I also assured him that I was on my way to becoming a professional
boxing champion.
Rubin wrote back, and during the summer of ’73, we became fast friends. We discussed boxing, his case, prisons, and school. He encouraged me to focus more on doing well in school, than on boxing. Thus, when I started the 10th grade that fall, I showed one of my teachers, Russell Pokorney, the sports magazine’s article on Rubin’s case. Mr. Pokorney was influenced by the progressive educational advances from the 1960s and early ‘70s, and he encouraged me to study Carter’s case. Soon, two classes of teenagers in rural upstate New York were corresponding through cassette tapes and letters with an inmate who had been convicted of a violent, racist hate crime.
A couple of students believed that if a court of law had convicted him, then Carter was by definition “guilty.” And they didn’t hesitate to tell him so. Rubin wrote back to say that he was impressed that these two were not swayed by the group’s perception, and were thinking for themselves. But he asked them to take the time to read more about his case before deciding if he was guilty or innocent.
In one letter, he wrote: “I somehow think, Tom, that perhaps you have fallen into that same old mirror of images that trapped me and is the cause of my being placed here in the first instance. I’m talking about the diabolical image the news media and law enforcement agencies successfully depicted of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter; but of which was also an image that didn’t necessarily reflect the opinions that I truly expressed. You must remember that this happened during a time when it wasn’t fashionable to be black, and black people weren’t proud …. And the ‘Long Hot Summer Sessions’ were about to set in. That was when there was only Malcolm X and myself telling our people to protect themselves from police brutality and harm …. And if you
can really understand exactly what happened to Malcolm, only then will you be able to understand what happened to me. Our lives were interlocked into each other’s, and the only difference was: the cops feared me just a little more than they did Malcolm – they hired some mentally-dead niggers to kill him! But they couldn’t find any to do it to me ….”
Students asked questions about prison life, and Carter responded in detail in a series of cassette tapes. “This is not the long arm of coincidence, pulling itself out of its socket,” he said, “but the cold and cruel reality of life behind bars.” And the students could hear the sounds of the institution: metal doors, the PA, and bells in the background.
At the age of 15, school still took a second place to boxing. As much as I respected Rubin Carter, I knew that the education business was a sure dead-end, and I wanted to concentrate on a sure thing – my becoming world
champion. I was a pretty good fighter, and Rubin would help with finishing touches. He even sent rare photos of his own bouts, to illustrate certain points. I also sent him pictures of my fights.
“I’ve really enjoyed the pictures,” he wrote in one brief letter. “They reminded me of when I was the sports director in my hometown, and used to train youngsters of your age bracket. Those are some times I can look back on with some joy.”
Then: “…but, man, I kid you not – things are really uptight in this jail, and about to explode in death and destruction. Whatever you do in life, be it good, bad, or indifferent: Please! Stay the hell out of these kind of
places. They’re not fit for man nor beast. But that’s beside the point, isn’t it?”
Rubin had sent me a number of cassette tapes, including some that had parts of his soon-to-be-released autobiography “The Sixteenth Round.” I knew that Carter had been through a violent riot at Trenton, just weeks after Attica. Rubin’s actions were credited with preventing the 27-hour crisis from spreading to a wing of the institution where he and other inmates had saved a guard’s life. And so I wrote and told Rubin to take similar actions to prevent a riot in Rahway.
In an early 1974 letter to my brother, Carter wrote: “Since I’ve been writing to Pat, and he asked me not to let this prison explode, I stepped forward and took control of the jail. Something I never wanted to do in the
past – and which is very dangerous to me …. And now I am the Director of the Rahway Prisoners Council on Penal Reform. So if you and Pat and perhaps Russell P. really want to come into this prison and see what it is like … we can arrange a day in the near future. What the hell! If I can’t go to you –then you come to me.”
A week later, Rubin noted in a letter to me, “since I’ve become Director of the Rahway People’s Council, I’ve been busy beyond belief. Man! I’m just waiting until you can send me the date that you will be in here to see me in person – that’s really going to be a day for me to remember. (smile) I truly love you, little buddy – I think you are one of the best things that ever happened to me. You are a real friend. Thank you.”
For over six years, Carter had been a virtual hermit in prison. The Rahway administration was surprised when he ran for the inmate council, and had at first refused to recognize that he won the election. They were caught even more off guard with the events that followed.
Rubin called in the Police Benevolent Association, church groups, and sociologists for meetings on prison reform. He spoke out on problems with drugs and weapons being smuggled into the prison. I have a copy of an 18-
page letter to a senator’s aide that outlined some of Rubin’s ideas for reducing tensions within the prison. It was becoming evident that Rubin Carter was no ordinary inmate, and he was gaining the attention of a growing
number of people outside of Rahway.
The most influential person who came to visit Carter was Muhammad Ali. The ex-heavyweight champion was interested not only in Carter’s work for prison reform, but also in helping Rubin on his appeal. And so, on April 26, 1974, Rubin wrote to me: “Point of information: Today I talked with Ali and he and I have set a date to fight June 10, 1974 – here at Rahway. So, I have to get back in shape. But I can do it – it’s only been eight years since I’ve had the gloves on at all ….. but since I put something in my mind – that’s it baby! Watch out! (smile) Look at me! Now I’m talking like Tom, what? (smile)”
In the 1960s, Rubin had sparred in some of boxing’s famous “Philadelphia Gym Wars” with Charles “Sonny” Liston. It seemed to me that he was serious about “fighting” Ali, rather than merely putting on an exhibition to draw attention to his case. And so now I advised him: be careful, because Ali was….well, Ali!
“Dear Little Buddy of Mine: Only he who attempts the ridiculous can ever hope to achieve the impossible, and that’s the way I feel about Muhammad Ali – while he may very well be great, he’s still not invincible. Right? In
point of fact: ever since we first started boxing together, he has always sent his sparring partners to whip me …. ‘Sugar Boy’ Nando … Gomeo Brennan …Fernandez … Jimmy Ellis … Ernie Buford ….and none of them has succeeded in the past. And although Muhammad and I are considered friends, we would both like to know who can beat whom – real friendly-like. You know? (smile) With friends like he and I – who the hell needs enemies! (smile)”
But the exhibition never took place. It was then that the prison officials decided to take Rubin from his cell late in the night, and transport him to an isolated cell in the psychiatric wing of the state’s maximum security “hospital” for incorrigible and insane inmates. “Carter was a danger,” the Director of New Jersey’s Institutions & Agencies told reporters the next morning. Rubin had become “too much of a threat to prison security.”
“I have some bad news for you,” Rubin wrote to me from the hole. “It seems that my being elected as Director of the People’s Council, and the Rabbi as the Director of Information, we were putting too much pressure on the
inhumane conditions which exist within the New Jersey prison system. So at one o’clock Wednesday morning – and you have probably heard about it on TV by now – the pigs rolled down on me and the Rabbi with shotguns and pistols and zoomed us through the night to the Readjustment Unit ….where we are right now. We were getting too many people involved in the prison system.
Too many influential people were flocking to Rahway to investigate the conditions – to right the wrongs, if they could – and the administration couldn’t accept that ….
“And this is why I wanted you and your friends to come to Rahway and to see this for yourselves. Now isn’t that a kick in the ass? (smile) So I am sorry to tell you that our meeting date is off for the moment – postponed, but not canceled out completely. Just bear with me for a while, my friend. Okay?”
Lawyers filed an appeal in US District Court, and the federal judge ruled in Carter’s favor. The state had violated Rubin’s rights, and he was released from the Vroom Building’s Isolation Unit and sent to Trenton State Prison. On his first day back, he sent me a postcard: “Hi there, Little Buddy: long time no see! Tommy and I are out of the Vroom Building now, and I’m in Trenton State Prison. Just wanted you to know. I miss you – The Hurricane.”
However, we never made our class trip to the prison. By this time, teacher Russell Pokorney – who was every bit as enigmatic as the Canadians who befriended Carter a decade later – had been fired. And in a few short
months, events were set in motion which resulted in Rubin winning a second trial. Muhammad Ali played a crucial role in energizing the defense, and he was joined by Smoking Joe Frazier in the effort to free the Hurricane.
In the second trial, the prosecution introduced a “racial revenge” theory. A few hours before the Lafayette Bar murders that Rubin was accused of, a white man had killed a black man in a bar in another part of Paterson, NJ.
With no supporting evidence, the DA told the jury that Carter was a racist, and that his hatred for white people was his motive for murdering strangers in “revenge” for the death of a man he had never met. The jury believed this, and convicted Carter and John Artis for a second time.
Looking back, it is hard to find the prosecution’s mad-dog racist assassin in the Rubin Carter who wrote to that 15-year old, his 45 white classmates, and their white teacher. It is not as difficult to recognize what the prison
administration found so threatening about the 3 weeks of work Carter did with the inmate’s council. To counter that threat, they added another label to “criminal” – Rubin became “insane.” New Jersey had learned a lesson from the Soviet Union regarding punishing people for “thought crimes”; indeed, criminals and mentally ill people have few if any rights within the penal institutions.
In 1983, a US Federal District Court ruled that New Jersey had acted maliciously in putting Rubin in Vroom. The court awarded Carter $2760 in punitive damages ($30 a day for 92 days). Carter used the money to hire a
private detective to investigate what actually had happened in the Lafayette Bar & Grill on that tragic night in 1966.
This investigation centered on information that came from the Caruso file. This was a series of notes kept by a Paterson detective investigating the case prior to the 1976 retrial. Caruso quit in disgust when he found major
flaws in the case. Two books. “Lazarus and the Hurricane” and “Hurricane,” detail much of this information.
After studying the case for over 30 years, I believe that I have a good idea of what really happened. First, the earlier murder had not been racially motivated. It was a business dispute, between competing interests, over
money. Of course, this does not make it any less of a crime.
The Lafayette murders were not something that angry people came up with in an hour’s time at the back of a bar. They were a well-planned part of the organized crime wars that were being waged throughout the area at the time. One of the victims identified the gun men to police shortly after the savage attacks. The “mentally-dead” assassins that committed the crime had come from New York City.
Several eye witnesses saw the gunmen leave the bar. None identified either Carter or Artis at that time. One stated later that he knew who the assassins were, and that it wasn’t Rubin Carter. During the grand jury
investigation of the crime two weeks later, the Paterson police detective running the investigation said that the descriptions of the killers did not remotely fit Rubin and John, and that they were not suspects.
However, the police were not able to solve the crime. No weapons were ever located, nor any other physical evidence. After a few weeks, a couple detectives became convinced that Carter was the mastermind behind a revenge killing. Evidence was planted and faked, in order to implicate Rubin. Two career criminals were pressured into identifying Rubin as having been outside the bar after the murders. This became a chain reaction, and other police and prosecutors were convinced that Carter was a killer. The case history shows how evidence of Carter’s innocence was suppressed.
Sadly, even after the federal courts had cleared Rubin Carter, one prosecutor would appeal all the way up to the Reagan Supreme Court. Twice in court motions the prosecutor argued that Carter needed to be incarcerated to protect society; he attempted to use the “psychiatric” history from the Vroom incident to prove Rubin posed an unacceptable risk to the community at large.
Twenty years later, Rubin Carter continues to carry on some of the same type of work he was doing in Rahway. He is an advocate for the “wrongly convicted,” and an opponent of the death penalty. He has met and spoken with men like Nelson Mandela and President Bill Clinton. He has addressed the United Nations, Harvard Law School, and thousands of people have found inspiration in his motivational message. Today, Dr. Rubin Carter is proof that only he who attempts the ridiculous can achieve the impossible.