Rumors [View all]

"In prison, a rumor twice repeated becomes accepted fact."
-- Rubin "Hurricane" Carter; 1973 letter to H2O Man


I was going through some older files today, and happened upon some things from the early years of my friendship with Rubin. At the time, he was in Rahway state prison in New Jersey. Rubin had been transfered from the harsher prison in Trenton earlier, and we were able to communicate quite freely at first.

There were, of course, very different currents in the larger society. There was the Nixon administration's efforts to get "tough on crime" -- at least some types of criminal activities. Nixon announced his "war on drugs" in the summer of 1971, and it led to a rapid increase in the numbers of people being incarcerated. In 1994, a former top Nixon administration official spoke about this:

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” -- John Ehrlichman
https://eji.org/news/nixon-war-on-drugs-designed-to-criminalize-black-people/

In those years, and to a surprising extent even after J. Edgar Hoover died in May of '72, a number in the FBI were concerned about the influence of black prisoners' influence on the white youth (think Eldridge Cleaver and George Jackson), and the possibility of black revolutionaries organizing in the low-income neighborhoods in American cities.

On the other side, there were significant numbers of people across the country concerned about the war in Vietnam, civil rights, women's rights,poverty, the environment, and Native American rights. From these groups, there were many who began to see the connections between these. And interested in penal reforms.

Rubin explained that inside the prison, the increase in the young inmate population brought about over-crowding. There was an influx of veterans who had witnessed the worst in humanity in Vietnam, who opted for drugs other than the sedatives prescribed by the prison doctors. And there was racism sparking at tiny fuses leading to potential large powder kegs.

Those of my generation remember the September 9 - 13, 1971 riot at the prison in Attica. In the weeks before Attica, there was a stand-off between the Onondaga Nation and the NYS DOT. The NYS Police had gathered, fully armed in riot gear. Chief Billy Lazore, who was familiar with the inside of Attica, was leading the Onondaga protest. My cousin was sitting with John & Yoko when Governor Rockeferr's order the police hurry to Attica came through.
https://www.nytimes.com/1971/08/22/archives/indians-protest-upstate-highway-enlarging-of-route-81-held-to-be.html

There is a great book about this, "Blood in the Water," by Heather Ann Thompson. Despite the book's providing important information on how to avoid prison riots, NYS has banned it from jails and prisons. We know that those who ban books always have the public's beast interests at heart, so I won't quote from friend Heather's book, but instead suggest you read it. And I'll quote from Howard Zinn's most famous book on the conditions in the Attica prison leading up to the riot:

"Prisoners spent 14 to 16 hours a day in their cells, their mail was read, their reading material restricted, their visits from families conducted through a mesh screen, their medical care disgraceful, their parole system inequitable, racism everywhere."

Official statistics showed that 54% of the inmates were black, 37% white, and 9% Hispanic. I asked Chief Lazore about this, and he said the Iroquois inmates at Attica had long understood that they were recognized as zero percent of society.

Two months later in Rahway, inmates were allowed to gather to watch a movie. Rubin told me that he avoided movies, though just the names "Superfly" and "Shadt" clued him in on what role the weaker men would attempt to don for the following weeks. Being in the Thanksgiving season, a number of inmates had consumed quanties of home-made wine before gathering in the theater.

One inmate, Clay Thomas -- who had been a good light heavyweight boxer before being incarerated -- began to encourage inmates to riot. (Note: Clay was in a blackout, and had no memory of this the following day.) A couple inmates sought out Rubin, and asked him to come to the theater and try to calm Clay down. Rubin went and tried, but it was too late. So he got guards and other inmates opposed to rioting, and locked themselves in a safe wing.

The riot was put down, and the administration clamped down on prisoners' rights, which did not ease the tensions. However, because Rubin's protecting guards' lives, we were able to communicate more openly than other inmates were allowed to. But by 1974, he would tell me that tensions were rising, primarily among younger inmates based on racial identies. I remember him saying these young inmates did not understand how hard the older inmates had worked to end the poison of racism.

A well known fact is that teenaged boys know the exact answer to everything, especially things they know nothing about. Being an expert in all, I reminded Rubin that he had attempted to stop Clay's riot, and was credited in saving lives. So get started stopping it now, before it happens. A few days later, Rubin wrote to my brother, and told him that my letter had inspired him.

Rubin went from a hermit, to talking to the most dangerous leaders of the most violent gangs, telling them that there was a better way. He was running to be the president of the prison's inmate council. At the time, the council was as weak as any junior high school student council. When Rubin won the election, the administration opted to recognize the loser as president. But within two weeks, they admitted Rubin had won.

After renaming it the Rahway People's Council, Rubin got to work. I have copies of the letters and other documents from that time, when university professors and elected NJ officials ventured to Rahway to discuss prison reform with Rubin. Perhaps my favorite visitor was Muhammad Ali, who announced he would face Rubin in an exhibition match to highlight his case.

Perhaps like the book "Blood in the Water," prison officials determined this was not a good thing. One day, Rubin had inmates turn in weapons to the administration, surely a move too far. They said it was evidence of him planning violence. Late in the night, 25 guards in riot gear came to remove Rubin from his cell, and place him in the Vroom Psychiatric Wing at Trenton.

There is a scene based loosely upon this in the movie "The Hurricane." Older forum members may be reminded of Princeton professor Gresham Sykes' 1958 study of the Trenton prison, "The Society of Captives." In it, he wrote "Centers of opposition in the inmate population -- in the form of men recognized as leaders among the inmate population -- can be neutralized through the use of solitary confinement or exhile to other state institutions. Just as the Deep South served as a dumping ground for particularly troublesome slaves before the Civil War, so too can the mentsl hospital serve as a dumping ground for the maximum security prison."

Rubin served 92 days in Vroom before a federal judge ruled that he was wrongly placed there for attempting to improve conditions by peaceful means at Rahway. However, he was placed in the more restrictive Trenton prison. Several years later, Carter was given an award of $30 per day he was wrongly held in Vroom. That money went to hire one of the state's investigators, who had recognized the case against Rubin and John Artis wasseverely flawed, and that the pair were not the gunmen they were convicted of being.

A couple years after Rubin died, one of the two gunmen made a deathbed confession, identifying himself and a friend as the murderers. I have records that show these two had both failed polygraphs the day of the early morning murders, and one was held in jail for several weeks. Also, that both Rubin and John had passed polygraphs that same day. Yet there are some who still insist that my friend Rubin was a cold-blooded murderer. I say this as a reminder that, as Malcolm X said, a lot of people's minds are in prisons.