Was Steve Biko, South African hero and martyr, a gun-smuggler?
His close friends say, “No!” Rubin “Hurricane” Carter told his biographer, James Hirsch, that he smuggled guns to Steve Biko. Here’s why Hirsch, an experienced journalist, should have been skeptical: Steve Biko 1946 – 1977 Rubin Carter: Civil Rights phony– Carter’s tall tales about : • speaking out against police brutality • the Selma March • the Watts Riots • gun smuggling Here’s the story, as told in Hurricane by James Hirsch: Carter first went to Johannesburg in August of 1965 for a boxing match. There, his “guide” was 18-year-old Steve Biko, who would go on to become a leader of Black resistance to the repressive Apartheid regime. Biko took Carter to some of the clandestine meetings of the African National Congress, or ANC. Hirsch writes that Carter was so moved by the struggles of his South African brothers and sisters that when he returned to New Jersey he decided he “wanted to smuggle guns to the ANC. He prowled through bars in New Jersey and New York, where customers down on t
