![]() ![]() Interview highlights Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice, Yusef Salaam Grand Central Publishing "It has nothing to do with the individual who harmed you, but everything to do with yourself." "You have to be able to forgive so that you can cut yourself from the ball and chain that's holding you back," he says. ![]() In the memoir, Better, Not Bitter, Salaam reflects on his wrongful conviction and his efforts to forgive those responsible for his vilification. Their stories were told in a 2012 documentary by Ken Burns and in the 2019 Netflix series When They See Us, directed by Ava DuVernay. Salaam now refers to himself, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise as the Exonerated Five. We will never know what our life would have been like had we not gone through this horrible experience." "But for those of us who had five to 10 years prison sentences, we had done all of someone else's time. "When the truth came out, that's when we got our lives back," Salaam says. A serial rapist and murderer had acted alone in committing the crime. It wasn't until 2002 - well after Salaam had completed his nearly seven-year prison sentence - that DNA evidence confirmed that they were all innocent. I'll be home.' And I didn't come back until seven years later."Įach of the boys, then known as the "Central Park Five," was convicted. ![]() "And I told the person, 'Hey, they got the verdict. "I was on the phone with a friend of mine and I remember someone running up to me, 'They got the verdict! They got the verdict!' " Salaam says. In 1989, 15-year-old Yusef Salaam was one of five Black and Latino teenagers who were wrongly accused of assault and rape in the so-called Central Park jogger case.Īt the time of his 1990 trial, Salaam, then out on bail, felt confident that the truth would come out and that he and the other teens would be proven innocent. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg via Getty Images Listen Yusef Salaam, shown above in 2019, reflects on his wrongful conviction in the memoir, Better, Not Bitter. ![]()
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