The POP-EXPOSE ‘Ruben Hurricane Carter’ By Mitchell Smith!

Rubin Carter was born May 6th 1937 in Clifton, NJ. Carter was a middleweight boxer most famous for being wrongfully accused of a murder and spending 20 years in prison for it. His story was told through the 1975 song by Bob Dylan “Hurricane”. Carter had a troubled life and honestly probably the best place for him was behind bars, but when you carry a murder sentence when your not guilty, that’s a hard pill to swallow. Carter was 1 of 7 children and was sent to juvenile reformatory for stabbing a person when he was 11 years old. In 1954 Carter broke out of reform and joined the Army. He took up boxing but was discharged from the military after 4 court-martials deemed him unfit for service. 

He did some jail time right after the military for muggings, but soon entered the professional world of boxing. He had a pretty successful boxing career (27 wins in 40 total fights), where he earned the nickname “Hurricane” for his hard hitting and aggressive fighting style. He was a menace to society though and he was convicted for murder on little evidence basically framing him to get him off the streets before he did kill someone. Carter would eventually have the charges overturned and it was determined he was wrongfully accused and released from prison in 1985. When he got out of prison Carter moved to Toronto and became executive director of Association in Defense of the Wrongly Convicted. He spent most of the rest of his life trying to help people get proper justice. Carter battled cancer for a few years before he passed away in 2014 from it. While in prison Carter wrote an Autobiography called the Sixteenth Round, definitely worth checking out to learn a bit more for the man locked up unjustly and how he lost a good portion of his life. 

There is also a movie from 1999 “The Hurricane” where Carter is played by Denzel Washington. Although the movie makes Carter out to be a bit of a saint to enhance the prejudice and lack of justice for African Americans in the 60’s the movie is still worth taking a look at just to see some history and how far our country has come in equality over the past 50 years or so.

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