Wednesday, January 05, 2000

WILMINGTON, NC -- Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a former middleweight boxing champion who was wrongly imprisoned for murder, will serve as keynote speaker for the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. This presentation, sponsored by the Office of Minority Affairs, will be at 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 20, in Kenan Auditorium. While admission is free, tickets are required and will be available at the auditorium box office.

Carter began his professional boxing career in 1961. Five years later while preparing for a world championship bout, he was arrested, convicted and sentenced to three life terms for a triple murder in New Jersey. In 1974, upon the publication of his autobiography The 16th Round: From Number 1 to Number 45472 and the recantations of the state's two key witnesses, Carter's case attracted international attention. A second trial also ended with Carter's conviction; however, a third trial released him from prison in 1985. In February 1988, the 22-year-old indictment was officially dismissed.

Carter's story is the subject of the major motion picture Hurricane, starring Denzel Washington. The movie, directed by Norman Jewison, was filmed on location in Carter's former haunts in Paterson, N.J., in Rahway State Prison and in Toronto, where he is a member of the Association in Defense of the Wrongfully Convicted.

As an advocate working to free others wrongly convicted of crimes, Carter has testified before the U.S. Congress on the need to preserve federal review of state court convictions. He is a member of the Board of Directors for Human Rights in Atlanta, Ga., and the Alliance for Prison Justice in Boston, Mass. In addition, he has lectured at numerous universities including the law schools at Harvard and Yale universities.

For more information, contact Dr. Joanne Nottingham, director of the Office of Minority Affairs, at 910/962-3832.