Hurricane preaches to crowd

By Tom Hawthorn

Victoria Times Colonist, February 1, 2000

The boxer they called the Hurricane for the gale-force fury of his punches now prefers to fight with words, not fists.

Rubin Carter, 62, spent 19 years behind bars for a triple murder he did not commit. For much of that time, he was a forgotten man, languishing in a New Jersey jail as No. 45472. He raged at the injustice.

Today, he earns his living by delivering motivational speeches at $10,000 a talk. He is booked solid until the fall. Men want his autograph. Women gush: "You look like a movie star."

He has gone from inmate to icon, portrayed by Denzel Washington in the hit Hollywood movie The Hurricane; celebrated in a haunting and unforgettable Bob Dylan song; fawned over as a talk-show guest by Larry King and Oprah. He has addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and sat up until 2 a.m. with Bill Clinton in the White House.

"It seems like all the seeds that ever been sown in my life have alllllll come to fruition at one time," Carter said Monday in Victoria, punctuating his sentences with robust laughter. "I don't understand it, but I am enjoying it. I am truly enjoying it."

Carter still boasts smooth features, despite his time behind bars and in the boxing ring. He has an old fight scar over his right eye, the glass one, which he lost following a botched prison operation.

He wore a black leather jacket over a black turtleneck with black slacks and black boots Monday. His skin, as described in his searing 1974 prison autobiography The Sixteenth Round, is as "black as virgin soot."

He contends it was that skin, and the hatred it engendered, that led to his wrongful 1967 conviction in the cold-blooded shooting of a white bartender and two white patrons in the Lafayette Bar and Grill in his hometown of Paterson, N.J.

He won a new trial in 1976. During six months of freedom, he fathered a son, Raheem, with his first wife. But Carter was again convicted of the three murders and returned to jail, until a federal judge ordered him released in 1985 because the convictions were based on "racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure."

Hollywood has happy endings. In real life, matters of flesh and blood are less tidy.

Reeham Carter, 23, is in a New Jersey jail unable to make $75,000 US bail on a charge of assaulting his pregnant girlfriend. He has complained to local reporters that his father has done nothing to help him. The elder Carter has not commented on his son's plight.

Carter — Hurricane to old-time fight fans, Rube to his friends — blew into Victoria to preach a message of "hope, dreams coming true, dare to dream, overcoming adversity, the power of personal worth" to an audience of 800 at the McPherson Playhouse.

Carter's lectures — sermons may be a better word — are delivered in the rhyming cadence of a Baptist preacher, of which there are many in his family tree.

In a life that has taken him from the solitude of the "hole" in prison to the podiums of large theatres, from a jail cell to the Oval Office, perhaps the greatest irony is that a boy who once suffered from a debilitating stammer now makes his living as an orator.

Ironies abound in his life. His formal education ended in Grade 8, yet he immersed himself in the law while in prison. In a 45- minute meeting with reporters Monday, Carter quoted the Bible and Dostoyevsky, cited Nazi horrors and discussed current events, notably describing Texas Gov. George W. Bush as "Governor Death" for his support of the death penalty.

Carter went to Bush's state to press for the release from death row of Stanley Faulder, a Canadian executed last June for the 1975 murder of 75-year-old widow Inez Phillips. Carter is also the public face of the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted, a Toronto-based group.

He pursues what he sees as injustice with the same intensity he once used to chase men in the boxing ring. He has no use for jails.

"Prison is prison is prison," he said. "There are no humane prisons. They are inhumane."

To defenders, Carter's legal plight joined his cause to that of such cases of American racial injustice as Dred Scott and the Scottsboro Boys and Emmett Till.

To detractors, Carter remains a dangerous man. One, reporter Cal Deal of Florida, operates a Web site that states Carter "is a free man, although no judge declared him innocent of the bloody crime."

Later this month, Carter will mark the 12th year since the indictments against him were dismissed. He lives in Toronto, where he moved after his prison release to live with a group of Canadians who worked for his freedom. He recently applied for Canadian citizenship ("If any of you has any pull…," he quipped to reporters), and married Teresa Brabham in October.

It was while in prison, Carter said, that he transformed himself.

"I was bitter. I was as mean as a black bear in mating season. Had to be. Had to be in order to maintain my life. I was mean. But that hate began to eat me up. Eat me up. And I began to realize that I had to get rid of this hate. ...

"The movie says hate put me in prison and it did. It really did. And love busted me out. It did. It did."

Storm warning

Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, who once challenged for the world middleweight title, says boxing remains a way out of despair for poor youth.

"I think it should continue," said Carter, who was in Victoria on Monday to make a motivational speech at McPherson Playhouse. "That is the way out of depressed areas in the United States for disenfranchised youth. That's their only avenue. We gonna close that down, too?!

"We've already closed the avenues down of science and lawyering because they're not educated. We gonna close the world of entertainment down, too? Then, where's the hope?"

Carter, 62, was ranked No. 5 in his division when he was convicted in 1967 of a triple murder at a bar in his hometown of Paterson, New Jersey.

He complained from prison that he had been railroaded, winning a convert in Bob Dylan, who championed the cause in a haunting, eight- minute ballad. In Dylan's words, Carter "coulda been the champion of the world."

Carter's story is also told in "The Hurricane," a movie starring Denzel Washington, and in "Hurricane," a biography by Boston reporter James Hirsch that was authorized by Carter.

According to the book, the one-time No. 1 contender no longer follows a sport he considers brutal. He regards boxers as "a class of noble warriors."

He once campaigned to make the sweet science safer by lowering the bottom rope and loosening the rope turnbuckles.

In his day, the 5-foot-8, 160-pound Carter had a sculpted physique and was known for a ferocious style that included a devastating left hook.

His appearance alone inspired fear in fighters. He shaved his head bald and wore a Vandyke beard that gave him a menacing countenance and a memorable presence on televised fights from Madison Square Garden in New York on Friday nights.

Carter was a fierce combatant, punching Florentino Fernandez so hard that the hapless fighter exited the ring head first, his body driven between the top and middle ropes and into the audience.

He became a boxer while serving as a U.S. Army paratrooper in Germany. His first professional fight came the day after he was released from jail for a purse snatching. He won a four-round decision.

As a pro, he compiled a record of 20 KOs. He was knocked out once by Jose Gonzalez. Carter also won seven decisions, lost 11 and had one draw.

On Dec. 14, 1964, he fought Joey Giardello in Philadelphia for the middleweight title. While many ringside observers felt he got the best of the champion, Carter failed to record the decisive victory usually needed to upset a champion.

Perhaps his most decisive victory came a year earlier when he knocked out Emile Griffith in the first round. Griffith later won the middleweight crown.

He once sparred with Sonny Liston, a fearsome heavyweight who stood five inches taller. When Carter removed his protective headgear at the end of the session, he was bleeding from both ears.

Seven years ago, the World Boxing Council presented Carter with an honourary championship belt, believed to be the only one ever issued.

On Monday, fans of the sweet science asked Carter to autograph copies of his autobiography, as well as a boxing glove (appropriately for the left hand). Publicist Dick Melville had the Hurricane sign a print that also bore the signature of former world champion Rocky Graziano.