Hurricane
Yesterday, my Very Good Friend -- known on this forum as "malaise" from Jamaica -- posted an article about Dr. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. The article told how Carter, the former middleweight boxer who was incarcerated for 20 years for a crime he did not commit, is in the final days of his life. Though battling cancer, Rubin's primary focus remains his attempt to get justice for David McCallum.
In the near future, I will post more about David's case. I hope that some from the DU community will take an interest -- an active interest, at that -- in this case of injustice. Until then, people can either "google," or, better yet, get a copy of Rubin's 2011 book, "Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom." It contains a great deal of information on David's case, as well as a foreword by Nelson Mandela.
When I was a little boy, my two older brothers introduced me to the sport of boxing. The first bout I watched on television was the Hurricane knocking welterweight champion Emile Griffith -- who had just been named "Fighter of the Year" -- out in one round.
My family was dirt poor; we knew poverty in ways that few people in this country actually do. About the only "recreation" we could afford was arguing and fighting. And, as we lived on a small farm, the work we did each and every day prepared us for fighting! Now, being the youngest of five kids (two brothers and two sisters), the hand-me-down hand-me-downs I wore to school made me the target of other children's often cruel jokes. Plus, as a result of being poor, I had lost a lot of teeth to an infection, and couldn't talk right, those few times I did try to speak.
Now, you take a strong kid, wearing worn-out, way out of style clothes, who can't talk, but can fight, and who doesn't like being picked on .....and, you guessed it: in my childhood, I got into lots of fights outside of just boxing.
By the time I was 13, I was good enough that Lee Kerr, a British writer for Boxing Illustrated, did a feature article on me, predicting that I was a sure bet to win a world's title when I was in my twenties. Now, I was still a poor kid, and unable to wash that distinct smell of "farm" from my clothing. And although I got very good grades in school, my anti-social circle of friends were what could best be described as inhabiting the margins. But no one picked on me, at least not to my face.
about Rubin Carter's case always interested me. It just didn't make sense that he would have committed the crimes he had been convicted of. This was, of course, long before the internet -- in fact, it was before he published his first book, "The Sixteenth Round," which would gain the interest and support of Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, and many other celebrities. Thus, there wasn't a lot of information available on Carter.
So what is a poor farm boy to do? What else: I wrote to Carter, and told him that I thought he was innocent. I figured that I could get him released, and, in return, he could manage my professional boxing career. This made perfect sense to me at the time.
He wrote back. And soon, we were writing to each other frequently. I have all of the letters, cassette tapes, photographs, and documents that he sent me. In time, Rubin convinced to to quit boxing, and go to college. I was a volunteer worker with his defense committee. And since his eventual release, we have remained good friends. I'm proud to say that all four of my children know Rubin.
I've known about the cancer for a long time now. It had been his choice to keep it private. Rubin doesn't want anyone feeling sorry for him -- he's not that way. On one hand, I had hoped that somehow, this most powerful of men would pull through. On the other hand, I know that in order to advance in our knowledge of life, we must learn to die.
Over the 40-plus years I've known Rubin, we've had some amazing experiences. Maybe I'll write some more about them sometime soon. But for now, I'm looking through some of the letters and court documents that I've collected over the years.
Peace,
H2O Man
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