Rubin Carter died the other day, after announcing several months ago he had terminal cancer.
In the boxing forums, in most every forum, and on Facebook, people have dutifully written all they know about the case: "R.I.P."
After all, he was a man of peace...
How could The Great Black God, Hurricane Carter, obviously a victim of Whitey, be a thug outside the ring? Why, to do that, he'd have to be like half the boxers who went to jail before, after or during their careers. More on that, at the end of this rant.
A few more literate folks heard Carter died and wrote a whole sentence. Like: "Damn those white people who put him in jail," or "You can't get justice in AMERIKA," or "He did time for nothing he was a martyr." Or some such shit.
And the reason? BOB DYLAN.
Bob, as most Dylanologist bootleggers know, had to re-write his "Hurricane" song because the first version was loaded with hearsay and libel. One line had Alfred Bello saying, "I was only robbing the bodies, I hope you understand." (This was changed to "I was only robbing the (cash) register.") But let's not get all involved in every line of the song.
The main thing is the song made Carter famous and got him acquitted. It's that simple.
Once more and more facts began to emerge, Dylan stopped singing the song. Several who were on Rubin's side at one time, now think he did it. That includes a 61-year old Muslim, Mrs. Kelley, who was nearly killed while defending Carter. Because Carter tried to kick her to death.
You can find the full story on, of all places, a Martin Luther King-named website, RIGHT HERE
But here's a taste...
Thanks in part to Mrs. Kelley's work as national director of his defense fund - and a hit song by Bob Dylan - Mr. Carter was released on bail on March 17, 1976, to await a second trial. Mrs. Kelley and Michael, then 24, became part of a triumphant Carter entourage that traveled to public appearances and fund-raisers.
The Kelleys, who are Muslims and don't drink, noticed some disturbing things about Mr. Carter.
He drank large amounts of vodka, Mrs. Kelley said, and when he drank, he became abusive. He had a short temper and ordered Michael around like a servant.
But Carolyn Kelley still believed Mr. Carter had been framed, so she reacted naively when, at an event prior to the Ali-Jimmy Young fight in Landover, Md., a man called for Mr. Carter's attention.
"I heard this voice from across the room, saying, 'Hey, Rube, it's me, "Wild Bill" Hardney,' " Mrs. Kelley recalls. "The name was burned in my mind. He had told me for a year that this man could clear him. I said, 'Get a statement from him. Get a statement from him. I'm a notary.' "
Instead, Mr. Carter recoiled and his expression changed in a way that frightened her, she says. "You know how a snake is crawling on the ground and suddenly half of his body is up in the air and his tongue is sticking out, wiggling, wiggling, wiggling, and his eyes are closed almost shut?
"
Here's a man he had said for years could prove he was innocent, and he's backing up and hissing like a snake," she said.
The incident put her on guard, she says, but not enough. After she returned to her hotel room, she had to phone Mr. Carter about a minor discrepancy over who would pay for the room. She called him twice, she says, and each time he cursed at her. She figured he didn't recognize her voice, so she got in her car and drove across the complex to his room.
Mr. Carter opened the door and burst into maniacal laughter, she recalls. Then he went to the bathroom and began gargling with Charlie cologne.
"Then it clicked: I had to get out of there. But there he was, between me and the door," she said.
"I didn't see it coming," she says of the punch that floored her. "I felt everything getting dark. I remember praying to Allah, 'Please help me,' and apparently Allah rolled me over, and he kicked me in the back instead of kicking my guts out. Allah saved my life."
Shortly thereafter, she says, her son was called to the room by other members of the entourage. "My mother was lying on the floor near the door.
She was in a fetal position with her back to that door," he said.
The members of the security team suggested she had fallen, Mr. Kelley recalls, "but there was nothing in the room where you might fall and hit your back on, like a dresser."
He said Mr. Carter denied hitting her. Mr. Kelley took his mother to a room and iced down the large lump on her cheek and the black eyes. The next day, he put her on a plane back to Newark.
She collapsed when she got off the plane and had to be given oxygen by flight attendants. She checked into a hospital and was in traction a month later for her back injuries.....Mrs. Kelley is no longer among those who believe Mr. Carter was framed. "If he could do that to me, a woman who was no threat to him, then he has erased in my mind any doubt that he could kill three or four innocent people," she says."
Mention some of this in a boxing forum, and you get: "Hey man, don't shit on the memory of a GREAT FIGHTER. The man died, this is not the time to be talkin' smack theory."
Or fact. Or to ask people to stop blindly following the SHIT they hear in pop songs. DYLAN sings about how wonderful Joey Gallo was, and how Hurricane Carter was falsely tried...and everybody figures he's got to be right. This, from the guy who pushed Phil Ochs out of the limo and sneered, "You're just a journalist."
Fuckin' pop culture. People are so easily led by a stern face, a strident voice and a catchy melody. It isn't possible that once in a while, Bob Dylan got something wrong? Is it not possible that a film, like Denzel Washington's "Hurricane," dramatized things and faked things? It wasn't a documantary...it was JUST A MOVIE.
For more on the real story of Carter there's THIS WEBSITE, TOO
Dylan fantasized Carter into some gentle giant: "It's my work he'd say, and I do it for pay. And when it's over I'd as soon go on my way...up to some paradise, where the trout stream flows and the air is nice. To ride a horse along the trail..."
Right, that's why Carter was in fuckin' New Jersey, in a shitty town, hanging around in bars! It wasn't in the Dylan song so nobody knows...this was a revenge killing. A black bartender had been murdered across the street. So in the high racial tensions of the day, this bar (that Carter frequented) was buzzing about the killing, and yes, Carter loudly spoke about how somebody should "get even." And it happened shortly after. To a white bartender across the street. Carter had no alibi. He owned guns.
Dylan sang as if Carter "could've been the champion of the world," but Carter was on a losing streak as a fighter and was nowhere near getting a chance at a title.
Carter couldn't be guilty of murder? Boxers are gentle giants outside the ring? How about rapists like Trevor Berbick and Tony Ayala Jr., violent crazies like Ike Ibeabuchi, Herbie Hide, Mitch Green and Charlie Green? How about murderers including Sammy Reeson, Garry Delaney, Mo Hussein, Ron Lyle and Reggie Gross? Too many armed robbers to even list! Even boxing promoter Don King is a murderer!
At least Rubin Carter didn't kill anyone after he got out. That would've been embarrassing for Bob Dylan. Such a thing happened when Norman Mailer championed sensitive murderer/author Jack Abbott. Jack got out of jail...and killed again. This didn't make Norman feel all too good. But that...is another story....
