Famed prizefighter Rubin "Hurricane" Carter has died of prostate cancer at the age of 76, some two-years after being diagnosed with the illness.
Carter remains legendary based on how he was jailed in New Jersey at the height of his fight career for more than 20 years in the 1970s for a 1966 triple murder it was later revealed he was wrongfully convicted of having committed.
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His life story became immortalized in a 1999 movie entitled The Hurricane, which earned Denzel Washington an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of the grizzled fighter who earned his ring name based on his rapid punching style. Singer Bob Dylan also composed and released a song in his honor.
Born in Clifton, N.J., Carter told the story in his prison-penned novel The Sixteenth Round of how he was bullied as child and took to fighting as a means of protecting himself. Before so much as even becoming a teenager, he was sent to reformatory school for viciously beating a man he claimed was a pedophile.
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In the Jersey murders, Carter and lifelong friend John Artis were initially convicted by an all-white jury and despite the fact the two key witnesses against them were a pair of known petty criminals who changed their versions of what they witnessed on several occasions.
As a protest of his incarceration, Carter largely refused to take part in prison activities or eat any prison food. With the help of then teenager Lersa Martin and members of the Toronto-based commune he was residing with, Carter won his freedom in the 1980s. Martin had become interested in Carter's plight after reading his book.
Following his release, Carter continued to fight for those he felt were wrongfully incarcerated through the Innocence International organization he founded and other platforms and in 2011 he penned his memoir entitled Eye of the Hurricane: My Path from Darkness to Freedom, which Nelson Mandela wrote the foreword for.
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