Rubin Carter

Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (May 6, 1937 – April 20, 2014) was a legendary American-born middleweight boxer, author, and civil rights activist who famously became a Canadian citizen and global symbol of the fight against racial injustice. A fierce contender in the ring with a devastating knockout punch, his sports career was brutally cut short in 1966 when he and a friend were wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury for a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey. While serving three consecutive life sentences, Carter penned his explosive 1974 autobiography, The Sixteenth Round: From Number 1 Contender to Number 45472, which galvanized international advocacy from icons like Bob Dylan, who recorded the famous protest anthem "Hurricane," and Muhammad Ali. Following nineteen years of incarceration, his conviction was finally overturned in 1985 by a federal judge who ruled it was predicated on racism and concealment of evidence. Carter subsequently relocated to Toronto, Canada, where he served as the executive director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC, now Innocence Canada) from 1993 to 2005, dedicating the remainder of his life to exonerating the innocent and inspiring the Oscar-nominated 1999 feature film starring Denzel Washington.