In the darkest hours, when his only reality was a life sentence and a five-by-seven cell, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter studied Plato, George Gurdjieff, Viktor Frankl, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and every criminal law book he could get his hands on.

“All of the world’s wisdom,” he later wrote,” (for) trying to find my spiritual path to freedom.”

In the earliest days of a 19-year internment that he endured for a crime he did not commit, he also wrote an eloquent autobiography that burst through the walls of Trenton State Prison and aroused the compassion of people throughout the world, including Muhammad Ali and Bob Dylan.

Carter was a crowd-pleasing boxer, known for his charisma and fierce left hook, and earned a world title fight in 1964, which he narrowly lost.

So after all was said and done – with his incredible life in and out of the ring – when this former middleweight contender with an eighth-grade education and a truculent countenance died Sunday morning a free man at his home near Toronto, Carter could mostly be remembered as a self-made symbol of implacable resolve, one who authored his own quest for freedom and became a cause celebre for the way millions perceived racial justice in America.

The cause of death at age 76 was prostate cancer, according to John Artis, the man with whom he had been wrongly accused, who had cared for Carter the last two years. Carter is survived by his two children.

– Scott Randell (@DefinedByMvsic)