Hurricane Carter Rewrites His Past "And you, Mister Bigshot, sit your f**** ass down! I'm especially locking you up!" According to Carter, that's what the policeman said, his hand on his gun, as he framed Carter for illegal gambling. But Carter changed the wording of the newspaper article reporting the arrest, in his book. He also changed the date of the arrest from just before a boxing match, to just after.

Here's the story from the Sixteenth Round:

The year before the Lafayette Bar murders, Carter tells us, he was cruising around at 5:00 o'clock in the morning and decides to visit his friend Slam, where five other people are "sitting around... listening to tapes and talking." But "two minutes"after Carter arrives, the police come charging in and accuse them of holding an illegal craps game.

"If there had been no one else there but me, he would have snaked his gun out and shot me down," Carter tells us. "In self-defense, he would have claimed! The nasty scum-sucking sonofabitch."

Next day, the newspaper reports that he's been arrested for playing craps and "abuse." The Evening News, says Carter, "had consistently shown itself to be a racist arm of the police" and their "vicious lies" were all part of a conspiracy to persecute black people.

But compare the real newspaper article with the version Carter put his autobiography.

When Hurricane Carter wrote The Sixteenth Round, back in the mid-seventies, he couldn't have anticipated the Internet. The Internet makes it possible for a long-buried old newspaper clipping to be posted on the Web for anyone to see. The evidence is undeniable -- Carter changed the wording of the newspaper article for his book, then complained about the newspaper's "vicious lies." Bonus Round: The arrest for "craps" is one of a string of incidents that Carter says proves that the police were out to get him. In his autobiography, he says that this arrest endangered his boxing career and he had to pay a bribe to the arresting officers. He says at the time of his arrest, he had just fought Johnny Torres (opposite) and was scheduled to fight Dick Tiger on May 20th. Carter has changed dates around to hide the facts. He wasn't relaxing with his friends a few days after his fight with Johnny Torres. The April 30th fight with Johnny Torres was six days away. He was in an illegal nightclub at five in the morning when he was supposed to be in training camp. This would suggest that Carter had a discipline, as well as a drinking, problem. Carter dramatically claims that at this point, there were constant threats on his life and non-stop police harassment, all of which harmed his boxing career. (See the Penthouse article, for example.) But just two days after his arrest in the illegal nightclub, Carter signed for the fight with Dick Tiger. And this sports column (opposite) about the Torres fight doesn't say anything about Carter being a controversial civil rights figure; it doesn't even get into Carter's legal troubles.	Would a black militant pose for a picture like this? "Carter gets a trimming -- Johnny Torres, Paterson Puerto Rican middleweight, right, indicates what he plans to do when he fights Rubin Carter, left, the Paterson puncher. Friday night, April 30 at the Paterson Armory. Happy over the prospect is Lou Duva, center, who signed them for the important match." The newspaper added, "This promises to be the biggest Paterson pugilistic program since Joe Louis opposed Paterson's Pat Comiskey... in 1948.... Putting the stamp of approval on the fight at the signing ceremonies (was) Mayor Frank X. Graves, Jr." The article about the Torres signing (quoted above), claimed that Carter would stay at training camp through the month of April, fight a match in London, then "immediately return to train at (Esham's training) camp for the Paterson Armory fight on April 30th." It's hard to blame the police and The Man when you're caught in an illegal nightclub when you should be in training camp. No wonder he switched the dates in his autobiography to claim that he'd already fought Torres when he was arrested!
The threats on his life that Carter complained about were supposedly as a result of his black militancy. But no articles quoting Carter on civil rights have surfaced -- even his supporters do not provide any evidence that he was active in civil rights. And his arrest apparently did not, as he claims, jeopardize the fight with Dick Tiger. At the time of his arrest, he hadn't yet signed for the fight.
Here are some of the relevant portions of the book, The Sixteenth Round, from the chapter, "The Awful Scream of Silence." "After I had been home (from London) with my family for just a few days, I had to fly to Kansas City, and then back to London for a fight on April 20th. Ten days later I returned to Paterson to fight Johnny Torres, knocked him out, and got locked up again right after the fight. But let me explain that to you. "I was, by nature, a devoted night owl whenever I wasn't in training -- would much rather sleep all day and stay up all night... So early one morning I went to see a friend named Edgar "Slam" Shewmaker...." (By the way, Carter says ol' Slam was really a business partner, so it wasn't a social call. Shades of the night of the Lafayette Grill murders! That night, he claims he was also at a midnight business meeting. Carter always has a good reason for being out late. Anyway, over at Slam's, the police bust in to arrest everyone) "Ooooh, shit! I said to myself. Let me get out of here. Getting locked up right then would have been all I needed to have my forthcoming May 20th bout with Dick Tiger in Madison Square Garden canceled out permanently. That was my only chance of getting another shot at the title...."
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