Quick Facts
- NAME: Rubin Carter
- OCCUPATION: Boxer
- BIRTH DATE: May 06, 1937 (Age: 75)
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Clifton, New Jersey
- AKA: Rubin "Hurricane" Carter
- ZODIAC SIGN: Taurus
Best Known For
At the height of his career, boxer Rubin Carter was twice wrongly convicted of a triple murder and was imprisoned for nearly two decades.
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Rubin Carter. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 07:31, May 23, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248
Rubin Carter [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248, May 23
" Rubin Carter." 2012. Biography.com 23 May 2012, 07:31 http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248
' Rubin Carter', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 [accessed May 23, 2012]
" Rubin Carter," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (accessed May 23, 2012).
Rubin Carter [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 May 23]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248.
Rubin Carter, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (last visited May 23, 2012).
Rubin Carter, http://www.biography.com/people/rubin-carter-9542248 (last visited May 23, 2012).
Synopsis
Rubin Carter was born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. n 1966, at the height of his boxing career, Carter was wrongly convicted twice of a triple murder and imprisoned for nearly two decades. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celébrè for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. He was ultimately exonerated in 1985.
Contents
Quotes
"There is no bitterness. If I was bitter, that would mean they won."
"I never agreed to wear the prison clothes, eat the prison food….I felt to do that would be to implicitly agree that I was a criminal settling into the routine of a prisoner who'd accepted that title…"
"…they sentenced me to a life of living death. And that is the only way of describing prison."
Early Life
Athlete. Born May 6, 1937, in Clifton, New Jersey. In 1966, at the height of his boxing career, Carter was wrongly convicted—twice—of a triple murder and imprisoned for nearly two decades. During the mid-1970s, his case became a cause celébrè for a number of civil rights leaders, politicians, and entertainers. He was ultimately exonerated, in 1985, after a United States district court judge declared the convictions to be based on racial prejudice.
Carter, who grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, was arrested and sent to the Jamesburg State Home for Boys at age 12 after he attacked a man with a Boy Scout knife. He claimed the man was a pedophile who had been attempting to molest one of his friends. Carter escaped before his six-year term was up and in 1954 he joined the Army, where he served in a segregated corps and began training as a boxer. He won two European light-welterweight championships and in 1956 returned to Paterson with the intention of becoming a professional boxer. Almost immediately upon his return, police arrested Carter and forced him to serve the remaining 10 months of his sentence in a state reformatory.
Rise to Boxing Fame
In 1957, Carter was again arrested, this time for purse snatching; he spent four years in Trenton State, a maximum-security prison, for that crime. After his release, he channeled his considerable anger, towards his situation and that of Paterson's African-American community, into his boxing—he turned pro in 1961 and began a startling four-fight winning streak, including two knockouts. For his lightning-fast fists, Carter soon earned the nickname "Hurricane" and became one of the top contenders for the world middleweight crown. In December 1963, in a non-title bout, he beat then-welterweight world champion Emile Griffith in a first round KO. Although he lost his one shot at the title, in a 15-round split decision to reigning champion Joey Giardello in December 1964, he was widely regarded as a good bet to win his next title bout.
As one of the most famous citizens of Paterson, Carter made no friends with the police, especially during the summer of 1964, when he was quoted in The Saturday Evening Post as expressing anger towards the occupations by police of black neighborhoods. His flamboyant lifestyle (Carter frequented the city's nightclubs and bars) and juvenile record rankled the police, as did the vehement statements he had allegedly made advocating violence in the pursuit of racial justice.
Arrest for Triple Homicide
Carter was training for his next shot at the world middleweight title (against champion Dick Tiger) in October 1966 when he was arrested for the June 17th triple murder of three patrons at the Lafayette Bar & Grill in Paterson. Carter and John Artis had been arrested on the night of the crime because they fit an eyewitness description of the killers ("two Negroes in a white car"), but they had been cleared by a grand jury when the one surviving victim failed to identify them as the gunmen. Now, the state had produced two eyewitnesses, Alfred Bello and Arthur D. Bradley, who had made positive identifications. During the trial that followed, the prosecution produced little to no evidence linking Carter and Artis to the crime, a shaky motive (racially-motivated retaliation for the murder of a black tavern owner by a white man in Paterson hours before), and the only two eyewitnesses were petty criminals involved in a burglary (who were later revealed to have received money and reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony). Nevertheless, on June 29, 1967, Carter and Artis were convicted of triple murder and sentenced to three life prison terms.
While incarcerated at Trenton State and Rahway State prisons, Carter continued to maintain his innocence by defying the authority of the prison guards, refusing to wear an inmate's uniform, and becoming a recluse in his cell. He read and studied extensively, and in 1974 published his autobiography, The 16th Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, to widespread acclaim. The story of his plight attracted the attention and support of many luminaries, including
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