CAMPUS NEWS:’Hurricane’ tells USU students to dream, says ‘human’ is only race
“Hate put me into prison, and love busted me out.”
That’s how Utah State University Arts and Lectures Series speaker Rubin “Hurricane” Carter summarized the 20 years he spent in prison for a crime he was later judged to be innocent of.
“Dare to dream” was one of the main messages in Carter’s 30-minute speech Thursday at the Taggart Student Center Ballroom. Carter’s life story was the subject of the 1999 film “Hurricane,” starring Denzel Washington.
As he opened his speech, Carter noted how blessed he felt just to be alive.
“When a black man escapes a state-sponsored execution, it is a miracle. So, my being here this afternoon is miraculous,” Carter said.
Carter was arrested and charged with the murder of three white people in 1966 at the peak of his boxing career as he was preparing to fight for the middleweight championship. He maintained his innocence, and his case received much publicity.
However, he was not released until 1985 when a U.S. District Court ruled that Carter’s conviction had been based on “racism rather than reason and concealment rather than disclosure and that his imprisonment had been a travesty.”
Carter’s speech drew on the hard-won lessons he learned through his experience. He urged the capacity audience, which overflowed outside the Ballroom, to throw aside what he called the myth of racism.
“I came to realize in prison that there was no such thing as racism because there is no such thing as race – there is only one race, and that is the human race, and we all belong to that. So, racism is just a myth. It doesn’t exist,” Carter said.
He did add that for a long time he was angry – a natural response, he said, for someone who was wrongfully imprisoned for 20 years.
“I was the angriest black man in the world in 1966,” Carter said. “I was angrier than a black bear during mating season who wasn’t getting any, and that’s angry.”
Carter made a few references to the 1999 movie about his life.
“I understand that you looked at the movie ‘Hurricane’ last night here on campus. If anyone came here today expecting to see Denzel Washington, I apologize. You know, until I saw Denzel up there on the big screen portraying me I didn’t know how good-looking I was,” Carter said jokingly.
One aspect of his life in prison that Carter discussed was solitary confinement. He estimated that he spent close to half of his 20 years in prison alone in an underground cell with no lights, living on five pieces of stale bread and a glass of water per day.
“I can tell you, my friends, that a long time in solitary will do strange things to you,” Carter said.
Carter spoke multiple times on the importance of dreams, and he repeatedly urged the audience to follow its own aspirations and to refuse to allow others to discourage them.
“When I was accused of those crimes in 1966, I believed in the system, so I was positive that I would be released because I knew I was innocent. The dream of being the middleweight champion is what sustained me. One day that dream abruptly died for me. When I woke up with one blind eye, I knew that I’d never box again, but still I fought on,” Carter said.
At the end of his speech, Carter held up the middleweight championship belt he was honorarily awarded last year as proof of the power of faith and dreams.
Carter answered a few questions after his speech. One member of the audience asked him about the writ of habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to challenge their convictions. In response to that question, Carter called habeas corpus “the crown jewel in the crown of thorns that is the justice system,” and he said that Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, had been one of the main parties responsible for weakening the writ of habeas corpus.