Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

Hello Everyone I'd Like to share with you the story of a black man that was wrongfully convicted of murder, I think that this case is related to the racial segregation that we saw in class. The brief story is about Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, an American/Canadian middleweight boxer who was born in Clifton, New Jersey in 1937. People gave him that nickname because of his aggressive style and punching power. He looked like a killing machine while he was fighting , but he wasn't a bad guy. He was also considered one of the best boxer before the tragic event that sent him to prison for 20 years.

The tragic story begins in 1966 when Rubin Carter and his friend John Artis were arrested by police because of a triple-homicide committed in the Lafayatte Bar and Grill in Paterson, New Jersey. The police found ammunition but they didn't take fingerprints. Rubin and his friend were tried and convicted twice, one of them in 1967 and the other one in 1976. However, the conviction of 1976 was later overturned in 1985.

After the first conviction in 1974, George Louis formed a campaign to support Carter in an attempt to increase the number of people in favor of freeing the boxer. Louis demanded public apologies for Carter. Muhammad Ali supported this campaign  alongside Bob Dylan, who wrote the song "Hurricane" which made Carter's innocence known. This song was also sung in the prison where Rubin Carter was an inmate.

In 1985, Carter's lawyer sent a petition for an habeas corpus in federal court. Judge Haddon Lee Sarokin granted the writ and said that the prosecution had been "Predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure". Rubin Carter was freed without bail in November 1985 when he was 48 years old.

It's a sad truth that two years after the signing of the civil the civil rights that Martin Luther King fought for in 1964 yet another man was unjustly impriosioned for 20 years for the mere fact of being black(1966). Today, things don't change and each time it seems that we´re farther away from forming a more human society and putting aside racial differences.

Here's a short video where you can learn more about Rubin Carter

Here's another video of the song "Hurricane"- Bob Dylan