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History lesson

Yusef Salaam, one of a group of fi ve young men who were exonerated in the Central Park jogger case, speaks at Slippery Rock University earlier this month.
Unjust conviction becomes beacon of hope

“I've been watching you,” the officer said. “You're not supposed to be here. Why are you here? Who are you?”

These words, said Yusef Salaam, changed the trajectory of his life. Had this question not been asked of him, the speaker predicted, he wouldn't have been standing in front of an attentive audience at Slippery Rock University sharing his story.

For a week after being born, Salaam's first name was simply, “Boy.” His parents observed for seven days, pondering what to name their child. They settled on a full name that, while in prison, Salaam would learn translates to “God will increase the teacher with justice and peace.” While in prison, Salaam began to seek the purpose for his life.

Sponsoring the recent event at the Smith Student Center was the Philosophy Club, Gender Studies Program, FMLA (Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance), SGA (Student Government Association), Black Action Society and the Office for Inclusive Excellence

The Central Park Five, a case that would gain much national attention, began April 19, 1989, in Central Park for Salaam and four other young men. That night, four young, black men and one Hispanic were charged with rape — including Salaam.

Salaam and his friends — Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana — were later exonerated of the charges after spending several years in jail.

The story of the Central Park Five was not unique in its wrongful convictions, fitting the pattern of unjust arrests of Latino and young black men in the United States. Several years later, after being exonerated, Salaam reiterated the fact that the system went after the wrong people.

Salaam's journey began in 1989; he was convicted and sentenced in 1990.

“What happens in the black and brown community is this idea that has been woven in and throughout, you're going to be dead or in jail before the age of 21,” Salaam said.

Salaam believed life would go back to the way it used to be when he was bailed out. A year later, during the trial, with court almost over on a Friday night, Salaam was out in the hall on the phone with a friend. “I said, 'Hey, listen, we're about to leave here. I'll see you later,'” Salaam remembered. “'We're going to have a good time.'”

Somebody approached him with news; there was a verdict.

“I walked back into the courtroom, and the jury foreman was asked to stand and read the verdict. And when he came to me,” Salaam said. “I heard the words guilty echo so many times in the court room that I lost count.”

Before sentencing, Salaam was given the one last chance to speak before the court. Those close to him advised him to throw himself on the mercy of the court to receive the minimum ruling. The judge allowed Salaam to say what he needed, asking him to stand.

“I stood up,” Salaam said. “And the most amazing thing happened.”

Throughout the court process, Salaam said, the prosecutors, jury and city all looked at him with a hatred he couldn't fathom. When he unfolded his six-foot-tall frame from the chair, he realized that, the whole time, they'd been looking at his future self, trying to get him to accept a 13th Amendment that reserves the punishment for a crime to turn a man back to slavery. He wouldn't accept it.

Salaam spit out a three-minute-long freestyle rap, blasting those in the room who had wrongly accused and racially profiled him.

“Man, after I sat down, that judge was so angry at the words I just said, it looked like he wanted to change the law right then and there,” Salaam said.

He was sentenced for five to 10 years. He served six years and eight months.

“As I thought about my life and what was happening at that particular point in time, I realized that I wasn't able to escape that gravitational pull,” Salaam said. “I too was caught in that system. And now I was going to jail.”

Salaam was told he and his friends were being brought to Brookwood, a “country club compared to the particular jail we were pulling up into.” That jail was Harlem Valley, a maximum-security juvenile prison.

The young Salaam hobbled forward in shackles, allowing himself a look at the side of the building.

“I stopped for a moment,” Salaam said. “The windows looked like they were painted black. Then I saw movement. Those were people. They were shaking the windows, telling me that they were going to get me.”

He tapped Antron, “Man, keep your head up in this place.”

“We held onto each other,” Salaam said. “We were all we had. It was such a painful reality. We took a vow that day to watch each other's backs, to protect each other.”

When Salaam was a kid, he participated in martial arts training with Master Little John Davis and world-renowned, 10th degree black belt Moses Powell. One exercise was doing push-ups with his knuckles excruciatingly pressed against the concrete in the middle of Central Park. Salaam would slowly inch closer to the grass, seeking comfort, but later realized that these exercises were discipline, shaping and preparing him for life.

“God saw fit for you to be, and therefore you are,” Salaam told the crowd. “If you were born on purpose, then that means that you have a purpose.”

While Salaam was in prison, his grandmother wrote him frequently, addressing her grandson as “Master Yusef Salaam” on the front of each envelope.

“That did something to me,” Salaam said. “That told me to straighten my path. That told me that I was still the master of my destiny and my fate. That told me that this too shall pass. That told me that this was not the worst.”

Salaam said that one of the worst things about being in prison was that the real perpetrator was free, committing more crimes. Before being apprehended, the real offender had raped and murdered a pregnant woman and her unborn child. “They want you to think that the Central Park jogger case is an anomaly,” Salaam said. “That they just got it wrong this one time.”

Over the past 25 years, through the Innocence Project, 349 men and women have been released through DNA evidence.

Salaam serves on the board of directors for the Innocence Project.

In addition to serving on the board, Salaam received the President's Achievement Award from President Barack Obama in 2016.

The Central Park jogger case was more profound than one could imagine, Salaam said.

“It's actually a love story between God and His people,” he said. “It's actually a story of how people can be brought low only to rise because the truth can never stay hidden.”

<iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6CqcooznKmQ" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>Video by: Aaron Marrie and Haley Potter of the The Rocket

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