'We dedicate ourselves to doing all we can in helping free Rubin Carter, a Great Man who was unjustly imprisoned.' Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, 1975
In 1967 the boxer Rubin Carter was pulled over by the Paterson police and accused of a triple bar-room murder: the victims were white, all the jurors at the trial that convicted Carter were white, the judge was white. Carter was one of the best-known black-power advocates of the era. During the first ten years in prison, he amassed evidence of his innocence and attracted celebrity support for his freedom, including Bob Dylan, who wrote the song 'Hurricane' about Rubin. But his appeals failed. Instead, the support of a young boy from the ghetto and a Canadian commune led to Rubin's freedom, first from despair and ultimately, triumphantly, from prison for good, in 1985.
This account, written with Carter's express co-operation, is a poignant combination of jailhouse redemption, David versus Goliath legal battles, and human heroism under the repeated blows of injustice. It's a fighter's story.