Rubin Carter, nicknamed "Hurricane" with some justification, was a world-ranked middleweight boxer in the 1960s, and something of a Black militant like his bigger fellow-boxer Muhammad Ali. In 1966 he was arrested, along with a younger man whom he only knew slightly, and charged with gunning down three white men in a small bar in Paterson, New Jersey. It was his home town, and he was known and disliked there - even feared - by the white majority headed by Mayor Frank Graves. Found guilty on what seems the flimsiest evidence, Carter fought a long, weary legal battle to prove his innocence, but was middle-aged before he was finally and reluctantly released (Bob Dylan was one of his supporters and wrote a hit song about him). Aggressive and self-advertising, Carter is not asympathetic character, but his steady efforts to rehabilitate himself after false imprisonment, divorce, a broken career and alienation from society must command respect.
- Brian Fallon
A Brief History of the Future: the Origins of the Internet, by John Naughton,