Was Rubin "Hurricane" Carter an activist?

March through Mississippi:
On June 6, 1966, James Meredith was shot by a sniper as he made a solitary protest march through Mississippi. Other activists take up the march on his behalf, calling it "The March Against Fear."

Stokely Carmichael
Greenwood, Mississippi
"We want Black Power!"

$200.00 Reward
to the first person who produces a news clipping published before June 17, 1966, documenting Rubin Carter's claimed civil rights activism. Clipping must be from a reputable news organization. Decision of Cal Deal is final.

Meet the Real Activist
in the Carter Family: Ed Carter

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter claims that he was framed for murder by the Paterson, New Jersey police because he was a black activist. As the "Hurricane" song puts it, the police wanted to frame him because "that sonofabitch is brave and gettin' braver."

But Rubin Carter wasn't an activist and he did not participate in the civil rights movement.

His cousin Ed, who also lived in Paterson, was an outspoken activist. He was the Passaic County CORE chairman, perhaps the foremost black activist in Paterson. He wasn't framed for murder, however.

On June 16, the night of the Lafayette Grill murders, Carter was drinking in the bars of Paterson, five minutes from the murder scene.

Ed was down in Mississippi, marching with civil rights activists James Meredith, Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McKissick, to demand voting rights and an end to Jim Crow (laws and customs that made blacks second-class citizens).

It was on this march that Carmichael introduced the phrase "Black Power" to the national media, which marked a turning point in the civil rights movement from pacifism to militancy.

On June 28th, Ed Carter returned to Patterson and brought Meredith and McKissick with him to meet with the mayor, Frank X. Graves. Graves sent an "air-conditioned limousine" to the airport to pick them up and he met with him in his office.

If the Paterson police were going to frame a black activist, they would have framed Ed Carter, not Rubin. But they didn't.

The year before, Ed Carter and Paterson officials, including the mayor, marched together to protest racism

In March 1965, Ed Carter organized a march in Paterson (Carter's home town) in solidarity with the people beaten by state troopers during the Selma to Montgomery March. After the Paterson march, Ed Carter gave a fairly militant speech, using quotations from Malcolm X. 

March, 1965: Ed Carter, the tall man in the middle of the photograph, marches in the streets of Paterson, New Jersey in support of Martin Luther King and the protestors in Selma, Alabama. With Carter are the police chief, the mayor, the chief of the fire department and other unidentified activists.

Rubin Carter is nowhere to be seen in this demonstration in his home town, led by his own cousin, and he was not mentioned in the lengthy accompanying newspaper article, which mentioned all of the speakers at the rally that followed the march. Carter had returned to Paterson from his fight in England, but there is no sign that he attended this event, nor did he mention it in his autobiography.

The mayor, Frank X. Graves, marched at the head of the protest parade organized by Ed Carter and told the marchers, "Never before has the community been unified in such a cause. Even those who don't particularly believe in the civil rights movement have been disgusted by the atrocities committed in Selma. We in Paterson stand shoulder to shoulder with you." The police chief also marched in the parade, along with civic and religious leaders. The local paper collected donations to help the family of the Reverend Jim Reeb, a minister who was killed by white thugs in Selma. Undeniably, the people in power in this photo are all white and Paterson, like other American towns, had a long way to go. But nobody's wearing a bedsheet, either.