(Note: This is my review of friend Dr. Rubin Carter's new book, which will be released in Janiary.)
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“If the way which, as I have shown leads hither, seems very difficult, it can nevertheless be found. It must indeed be difficult, since it is so seldom discovered. For if salvation lay ready at hand, and could be discovered without great labour, how could it be possible that it remains neglected by so many people? But all noble things are as difficult as they are rare.”
– Spinoza
I arrived early to a staff meeting at the Chenango County Mental Health Clinic one afternoon, and heard three co-workers discussing the movie “The Hurricane.” While they agreed that it was a great film, one friend said that she wondered if, in fact, Rubin Carter had committed the 1966 triple murder? I told them that I had know Rubin since the early 1970s, and could say without any doubt that neither Carter or John Artis was involved in that vicious crime.
The following day, I brought a nine page letter that Carter had wrote to me on April 10, 1979. This was during what others called Rubin's “Buddha phase,” when he had withdrawn into himself, and was communicating with very few people. The first of my three friends who read the letter was a former Jesuit; he called the message from Rubin “liberation theology.” Next, a forensic psychologist and former amateur boxer said that the letter totally destroyed the myth that Carter was a “mad dog racist assassin,” and provided evidence of an innocent man's need to communicate with the world outside of his prison's walls. The woman who had questioned Rubin's innocence told me that I should sell the letter, because “it might be worth a lot of money.” Thus, two of the three understood.
My communications with Rubin in the late 1970s – including the one I showed my co-workers – had very little to do with the criminal case that lasted from the June 17, 1966 triple murders, to the February 26, 1988 formal dismissal of the indictments against Carter and Artis. Rather, they document the transformation of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, to the gentleman we now know as Dr. Rubin Carter, LL.D.
There are four good books on the legal case: “The 16th Round,” Carter's 1974 autobiography; “Lazarus and the Hurricane,” the 1991 book by his Canadian supporters, which provided much of the material for the 1999 movie; “Rubin 'Hurricane' Carter and the American Justice System,” by Drew University Professor Paul Wice (2000); and “Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter,” by James Hirsch, also in 2000. From these four, readers can decide if they believe the New Jersey police and prosecutors' theory that Carter is a cold-blooded murderer, who poses an imminent risk to society, or if they believe the defense attorneys and federal courts belief that not only was his conviction based upon appeals to racial prejudice and the suppression of evidence, but that Rubin Carter is indeed innocent.
Rubin Carter has also contributed to two other books. He wrote a short story that is included in “Voices from the Big House” (1972). Rubin also contributed an essay for Dr. Lois Einhorn's 2006 book, “Forgiveness and Child Abuse: Would YOU Forgive?”
Dr. Carter's new book, “Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom” (Lawrence Hill Books; 2010), has little to do with the two decades of struggle within the American justice system. Rather, it is the story of the One-Eyed Man's transformation from other “prisons,” those of being the product of the violence of the urban streets, the facilities for troubled youth, the US military, the surreal world of professional boxing, and from prison.
Carter's ability to tell his story has been compared to that of Malcolm X. It's interesting to note that while the general public accepts that Malcolm's trip to Mecca brought about a new understanding that white people were not the devil, those closest to him knew that Malcolm's had begun this transformation before that trip, though he used it as the vehicle to describe his transformation from hatred to an advocate of brotherly love. Likewise, those of us who really know Rubin are aware that beneath the image of his angry exterior lay the gentle, generous, and thoughtful potential which he has brought to the surface. But, like each and every one of us, Rubin was more afraid of his good potential, than of his bad side.
“Eye of the Hurricane” is the message of a Free Man to those who are held in psychological prisons. The book opens with a foreword by none other than Rubin's close friend, Nelson Mandela. And while Mandela himself was once an amateur boxer, his introduction makes clear that this is an entirely different and surprising book. It is about the“liberation theology” of an individual, in a spiritual, though non-religious sense. Carter examines the many things that made him a prisoner of the world around him, as well of himself. He does this with a sense of detached irony, so that the reader can identify his or her own life experiences with the story Rubin tells.
Relatively few of us will face the same level of challenges that Carter did. The man spent twenty years in prison, about half of which was spent in solitary confinement, for a crime that he did not commit. More, just as when, in an earlier time in prison for robbery and assault, Rubin prepared for his boxing career by doing – among other things – 5,000 push-ups and sit-ups each day, Carter “trained” himself for his biggest fight with the same type of rigid discipline.
Yet, as Rubin explained to Dr. Einhorn, “Pain is pain, suffering is suffering – whether being wrongly imprisoned, wrongly placed in a concentration camp, or wrongly abused as a child. But pain is a consequence of suffering, not suffering itself. There are no degrees of suffering.” Thus, though his experiences were extreme, Rubin recognizes that they are closely related to the pain and suffering that others have endure. Indeed, it is part of the human experience.
“Eye of the Hurricane,” which was originally titled “The Way of the One-Eyed Man,” offers guidelines to a path that is accessible to every individual. And, while as Spinoza said, the way of that path is difficult, Dr. Rubin Carter makes clear that it is the best way to reduce the pain and suffering that afflicts society today. More, it is only by the way of this type of change, that an individual can actually begin to institute positive change around him or herself.
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