Interview by Geno McGahee

In the movie, “The Hurricane,” an evil and racist detective harassed a young Rubin Carter and maintained this course throughout the majority of his life. Carter most definitely had to deal with racism because it was an extremely volatile time in America with ignorance everywhere, but some of the things that he has stated and that we have seen in the Hollywood production, are less than accurate. In a situation where Carter is trying to come off as a man with impeccable character may have done himself a disservice as he blurred important facts to get his point across. Whether or not this means he’s guilty is not for me to say, but it definitely makes you think.

One of the scenes in the movie, where a white child molester approaches Carter and his young friends, a courageous “Hurricane” stands up to this predator and is forced to stab him in order to save his own life. The police’s account states that a fourteen-year-old Carter actually mugged the man of a $55 dollar watch and that the pedophile story was fabricated. There were many things about the movie that was based on his autobiography “The 16th Round” that are put in there intentionally to steer you in one direction, but that is the way that Hollywood operates, so I can’t fault Carter completely for making the man a victim twice, if that is what he did.

One of the biggest controversies from the boxing world’s perspective was the depiction of the bout that Carter had with Joey Giardello. This was a bout that the majority of the boxing experts claim that Giardello had comfortably won, but in the movie, racist judges joined the vast conspiracy and stole the victory from “The Hurricane.” There was a lawsuit filed and eventually settled, lending proof that the press was correct and that the movie had blurred another fact, possibly hurting the reputation of a great fighter.

The motivation to fabricate situations may have been to make the story more appealing to the public, and to make Rubin Carter a righteous character, or perhaps, as Cal Deal contends, it was an effort to take attention away from the facts of the case. Deal has supplied RSR with a lot of evidence that seems to support everything that he says.

GM: I want to talk about Detective Desimone, who is portrayed in the movie the Hurricane, which I will get to later as a racist corrupt police officer, out to get Carter. Now, on page 35 of James S. Hirsch’s book: Hurricane, Desimone is described as a racist. Hirsch writes that his confessions had less to do with gumshoe police work than with intimidation, he was feared. Was he a racist that used strong-arm tactics to get the answers that he wanted regardless of guilt or innocence?

No, first of all, I don’t believe that Desimone was a racist. I didn’t know him well. I met him a couple of times…talked to him on the phone, and I always got the impression that he was an honorable man. There was this little poem that he carried around in his wallet and was with him on the day he died and it’s called “The man in the mirror” or the “face in the glass” or something like that, and it’s basically a poem that says that you have to look yourself in the eye in the morning and do the right thing. It is about the importance of your name and reputation and being an honorable person. He gave a copy to his son and had a copy in his wallet, and that was the kind of person he was. Now, I’m sure that there were circumstances where he had to play the tough guy, but when you are dealing with tough people, you can’t be a wimp. Who knows what he’s done to play act, but I think that the real person wasn’t a racist. Believe me, if I thought that this was a racist prosecution and that Carter was prosecuted because he’s a black man, I would be on his side and not theirs.

That Bello interview that everyone thinks is so significant, but Bello had already identified Carter twice before ever talking to Desimone. He had nothing to do with Carter being identified by Bello. Bello had told it to a detective that ran into him at a bar and he sat down with him, and Bello was being rattled because he was getting threatened by Carter’s friends to keep his damn mouth shut. He’s around Paterson and around people, so he’s vulnerable. So he was rattled. He says to the detective that “you had the guy but you let him go,” and then finally tells the detective that it was Carter and he asks Bello if he will come back and tell his boss and he agrees.

Bello and the detective go back and tell Captain Mohl and so you have the detective and Mohl being told by Bello that it was Carter and only then do they arrange to send it to the county and Desimone gets involved and does that interview. So, it was a done deal before Desimone was ever involved in the case. Carter’s car was identified by Bello and Valentine and Carter, himself, was identified by Bello way before Desimone was involved…so, how can you blame him?

To further dismiss this racist business with Desimone: his boss, Burrell Ives Humphreys in 1976, the new prosecutor was a member of the NAACP. He was a guy that was such a principle man that he was not racist and defended a black couple that was having difficulty buying a house in his white neighborhood. They were being refused and he represented those people against his own neighborhood. That’s the type of principle man that Burrell Humphreys is. The fact that he was a member of the NAACP doesn’t scream racist to me, and he was very, very concerned about the race issue. He did want to be perceived as a white versus black thing. He made certain, and this terrified his fellow prosecutors, that there were blacks on the jury. They could have gotten them off, but he wanted them on and he got them, and those blacks voted to convict. Calling Desimone a racist is the same thing that Carter does to me…painting me as a racist, but in Desimone’s case, everything was already done before he got involved. It wasn’t him to get Bello to identify Carter or the car.

Interview by Geno McGahee

On June 17th, 1966, two armed men would walk into the Lafayette Grill in Paterson, New Jersey and open fire, killing three and severely injuring another. This is the crime that both middleweight contender, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter and John Artis were accused of and eventually, convicted of. I first became aware of this case in 1999 when a movie entitled: “The Hurricane” was released. Anytime that there is a boxing movie produced, I will be the first in line to see it and this situation was no different. I had mixed emotions after I watched the film. First, Denzel Washington, as always did a great job, and it was an uplifting story of triumph over racism and depression, but I didn’t think that I was getting all of the facts. In fact, the movie seemed to use excessive racism to get the point across that Rubin Carter was the victim of a conspiracy and was, in fact, innocent.

I purchased James S. Hirsch’s book: Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter and it was truly a great read and answered many of the questions that I had at the time. It backed up much of what the movie presented and had many facts that I was unaware of. I was now satisfied that Carter was innocent and that there was racism involved. After all, we are discussing a time when racism was rampant and the playing field was not even for minorities. In 1955, just eleven years prior to the Lafayette Grill shootings, a fourteen-year old, African American, Emmett Till is kidnapped and tortured to death for whistling at a white woman by two white men. If you have never seen a picture of Till after the fact, I recommend that you don’t. It was one of the most disturbing things that I have ever seen. In the end, the two men that did it and would later sell their stories to the press on how they carried out the murder, were found innocent, despite the mountain of evidence against them.

The same year that Rubin Carter was arrested, James Meredith started a solitary march against racism from Memphis to Jackson. A sniper made certain that he would not make it to the finish line. Stokely Carmichael, who coined the phrase: “Black Power,” would finish the march in his memory, along with Martin Luther King, and Floyd McKissick. The militant group: “The Black Panthers” were founded in 1966 by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale out of necessity, as they confronted the negative treatment by white America. This was a very racist time and a time of transition and people don’t like change, which is why Martin Luther King was murdered along with Malcolm X. If murder is not out of the question, then certainly framing a man that is popular and outspoken for a crime he didn’t commit is plausible. Rubin Carter claimed racism and it made sense when you look at the times, but not all agreed.

Cal Deal was there on the front line of the civil rights movement and has covered the case against Carter and saw the story differently than most. I stumbled across his website and I was seriously intrigued. It was put together very well and presented evidence that I personally, have never seen up to that point. Cal Deal was eager to get his side across and granted an interview to RSR, where he explains the other side of the Hurricane.

GM: You have created and maintained a website concerning Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Why did you make this website and what is or was your relationship to the Hurricane?

Well, the website was to counter the Hollywood version of his story which is not true. I first met Carter in 1975 and I went down to interview him and photograph him for our newspaper. Now I was mostly a photographer, but I also participated in the interview and before I went down, I didn’t know anything about the case. I didn’t cover it. I didn’t know the people involved. I didn’t follow it when it was in the news. So I read up the clip files and what was going on with the case and everything was very positive to Carter. It seemed like he was innocent and I went down to the prison with that in my head, but before we went down, I asked our managing editor. I said: “Can we offer to give him a lie detector test and will the paper pay for it?” And he said: “Yes.”

So, we went down there and started the interview and Carter was very outgoing and friendly…very persuasive to people that didn’t really know the facts of the case. We then offered to give him the lie detector test and he refused. We said that if you’re innocent and you’ve got such a good case, then why not? This whole thing as a PR campaign to win over the public and this would be a great thing to pass a lie detector test. It will be magnificent PR and it will be very interesting. So, he refused and when we drove back to the paper, we talked about that and were very disturbed by that fact. It just didn’t seem right that a person that is innocent would refuse such an offer. That’s when I started looking into the case on my own and started developing a four part series that we ran and then I began learning the facts and after not too long, I began to believe that he was guilty, and I haven’t changed my opinion since.

When you don’t know the facts of the case, and you don’t understand how all the pieces fit together, and you listen to his arguments that the cops did this and the cops did that and you don’t have it in the proper perspective, then his arguments can be persuasive, but when you know the facts and you know what really happened that night, the case just falls apart…that’s why he was convicted twice by the juries. So, years later, when the movie was coming out and it was based on his story and he was participating in it, I knew what it was going to be. That is when I began building the website.