Human spirit will not be confined
04.10.2003
By: Tony Koch
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NEXT week Brisbane will be visited by a remarkable man.
He's American, black, a former prizefighter and soldier, and he spent more than 20 years in prison for the nightclub shooting murder of three white men -- a crime he did not commit.
He is Rubin Carter, better known by his ring name of ``Hurricane'', and still better known as the wronged prisoner portrayed in the movie of that name by Denzel Washington.
Hurricane, who now lives in Toronto, gives endless interviews about his time in prison, his unfair treatment and his religiously underwritten philosophy on life.
And there is no doubt his insistence on his innocence meant he did his time hard. He would not wear prison clothes, speak to prison guards or eat prison food. Because of his intransigence he spent time in solitary confinement -- in a cell in the ground where light was unable to penetrate, and exercise was impossible.
This is in the US, the ``world's greatest democracy'', where today one out of three black men aged between 20 and 29 is under the control of the criminal justice system.
An insight into how single-minded and determined this man is can be gained from this response he gave to American author Ken Klonsky in his publication Going The Distance: ``Because I was unjustly imprisoned, I refused to eat the prison food. My ration of food was an 8oz can of soup brought in from outside once every three days.
``In order to get to that point I had to overcome all of my bodily functions. I had to overcome all of those things that tell you that you're hungry -- the growling of your stomach, or a headache, or whatever else informs you that you need something to eat. The physical body doesn't know anything about heat, cold or being sick, but the mind does, and the mind controls the physical body.''
He earned his nickname through the proficiency with which he used to dispatch his boxing opponents, and rose to the stage where he was a genuine contender for the world middleweight crown.
When he was imprisoned, not only did Bob Dylan write a song about his innocence, but the greatest athlete in the world, Muhammad Ali, dedicated one of his boxing world title defences to him.
He's rubbed shoulders with great men but now devotes his life to heading an organisation which fights to secure the release from prisons around the world of people imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.
``I knew Nelson Mandela before he became a political prisoner,'' he says.
``In 1965 I went to South Africa to fight their champion, Joe `Axe Killer' Ngidi, and Nelson was on trial at that time.
``I had an 18-year-old guide who used to take me out in the bush to run. That guy's name was Steve Biko, who went on to head the non-violent Black Consciousness movement.
``He also took me to outlawed African National Congress meetings. I felt like I was home, because the very same struggle for civil rights was going on in the US -- but the blacks in South Africa were fighting. I told Steve I wanted to help him.
``When I came back for a second fight in South Africa in 1966, I brought four duffel bags full of weapons. I'd gone to all the bars in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to buy up all the weapons they got from customers who would pawn their guns for a drink.
``I packed them in duffel bags along with my boxing equipment and shipped them over there. I was lucky no one went into those bags. Those people would have killed me. I didn't know what I was doing.''
Australian audiences can expect Hurricane to recite a poem he found in the seat pocket of an aeroplane after he was released, and to which he attributes much of his belief in the folly of feeling revengeful or bitter. The author of the poem was James Patrick Kinney, and it is titled The Cold Within:
Six men trapped by happenstance
In dark and bitter cold;
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first man held his back,
For of the faces round the fire,
He noticed one was black.
The next man looked across the way,
Saw one not of his church,
And couldn't bring himself to give
The fire his stick of birch.
The third man, dressed in tattered clothes,
Then gave his coat a hitch,
Why should his log be given up
To warm the idle rich?
The rich man sat back thinking of
The wealth he had in store,
And how to keep what he had earned
From going to the poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge
While fire passed from sight.
Saw only in his stick of wood,
A way to spite the white.
The last man of this forlorn group,
Did nothing but for gain.
Give only unto those who gave
Was how he played the game.
The logs held firm in death-stilled hands
Was proof of human sin.
They died not from the cold without
But from the cold within.
Hurricane explained to Klonsky: ``When you spend a great deal of time in darkness, in solitary confinement, where everything blends into one, if you're fortunate you'll begin to see things more vividly than you've ever seen them before.
``It may take days, weeks, months, years, but you'll begin to see things as they really are, because when you can't see outside, you can only look inside.
``In a very real sense, going to prison was the best thing that ever happened to me. Without it, I would never have been able to find myself. I would've been a bald-headed, mean-looking ex-prizefighter talking through a screen of conditioning, anger and bitterness.
``Because I was innocent I refused to act like a guilty man. I refused to obey the prison rules. I refused to wear prison clothing. I refused to wear the stripes of a guilty person. I would have refused to breathe the prison air if I could have done so and yet kept my innocence alive. Because that is the only thing I had -- my innocence.''
Rubin Carter will address a Griffith University fundraising dinner at the Brisbane Convention
and Exhibition Centre next Thursday
