NYC Councilman Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerated Central Park Five, to speak on final night of DNC

Normally, a first-term New York City Council member wouldn’t be among the speakers on the final night of the Democratic National Convention. But Yusef Salaam is no ordinary city council member and he’s got a strong message to deliver about Donald Trump’s racism, cruelty and hatred toward Black men in the run-up to Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech.

At age 15, Salaam was one of five Black and Latino teenagers who were arrested in April 1989 after a white female jogger was raped in Central Park. They became known as the Central Park Five.

The teenagers said they were interrogated by police, beaten, and coerced into confessing to the rape. They appeared on video without a lawyer.

And a publicity-hungry, ambitious real estate developer Donald J. Trump took out advertisements in four NYC newspapers, including The New York Times, with a bold-faced headline “Bring Back the Death Penalty.”

Trump wrote:

Mayor Koch has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence. Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will. I am not looking to psychoanalyze or understand them. I am looking to punish them. If the punishment is strong, the attacks on innocent people will stop.

The five teenagers were convicted, based largely on their coerced confessions. They received prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years.

In 2002, a serial rapist and murderer already serving a life sentence confessed to the Central Park rape. A re-examination of DNA evidence proved only his semen was found on the victim’s body. A court vacated the convictions of the Central Park Five, who then became known as the Exonerated Five.

Now it’s Trump who is the convicted felon. And Salaam was elected last November to the City Council representing a Harlem district.

He will be joined onstage by three other members of the Exonerated Five—Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, The New York Times reported.

The Times wrote that Salaam “is seen as an ideal candidate to talk about how dangerous it would be to elect Mr. Trump to a second term.

Not only can he speak to concerns about Mr. Trump’s character, but Mr. Salaam, who is Black, would demonstrate Black men’s backing of Vice President Kamala Harris, as some polls have shown their wavering support for Democrats.

“Something very special is happening in America right now — a Black woman is going to be the president of these United States,” Mr. Salaam said of Ms. Harris as he walked through Central Harlem on Saturday, greeting people during the Harlem Week festival. “It’s also a very dangerous time. Democracy itself is on the ballot.”

Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, who supported the Five’s fight for justice, confirmed on Facebook that he will be introducing Salaam and the other members of the Exonerated Five at the DNC.

A statement from Sharpton’s National Action Network said:

Their story is a powerful reminder of the deep-seated racism and injustice that still persists today. As we stand together tomorrow, just shortly before Vice President Kamala Harris delivers her DNC speech, we invite you to join us in prayer. Pray for their strength as they continue to share their truth. But also, let this be a call to action. Protect our democracy, vote, and never forget what’s at stake. This fight isn’t just about the past; it’s about the present and the future.

It’s another smart move by the Harris-Walz campaign in what has been an incredibly successful convention.

The Trump campaign has been trying to peel off support for Harris among young Black men. Some rappers have endorsed Trump. There have been social media posts distorting and making false claims about Harris’ record as a prosecutor. One debunked claim is that Harris imprisoned 2,000 Black people for marijuana crimes when she was California’s attorney general from 2011-2017.

But Salaam, who spent nearly seven years in prison for the Central Park case, has quite the story to tell about Trump’s racism and hostility toward black men.

In May, Salaam provided a written statement when the Biden-Harris campaign launched a series of ads taking aim at Trump’s mistreatment of Black America. One ad mentioned Trump’s calling for the death penalty for the Central Park Five.

In his statement, Salaam said Trump’s actions  “reveal a deep-seated disdain for Black and Latino lives,” Huffpost reported.

“Today, we point our fingers back at Mr. Trump and stand firmly against him and his campaign for office. Throughout my wrongful conviction, the one thing I would not allow to be taken away from me was my voice. I urge black and brown communities across the country: do not sit this election out.”

And what happened to the 15-year-old Salaam at the hands of Trump in 1989 was a harbinger of things to come on a much wider scale after the reality TV star launched his first presidential campaign in 2015.

Salaam told The Guardian in 2016 that Trump was the “firestarter.”

“Common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty,” Salaam said. He added that when he first saw the ads he had no idea who Trump was.

“We were all afraid. Our families were afraid. Our loved ones were afraid. For us to walk around as if we had a target on our backs, that’s how things were.”

Salaam told The Guardian that he and his family received death threats after Trump’s ads ran. Trump showed his true colors back then.

And Salaam recounted his own experience in a CNN interview about being targeted by Trump just before the start of the former president's hush money/election interference trial in Manhattan this year. At the time, Trump was launching vitriolic attacks against the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan and others..

“Here it is for me, 35 years ago for me, 1989, what he did by placing that ad in New York City’s newspapers, had a domino effect. The way I describe it really was that it was whisper into the darkest enclaves of society for them to do to us what they had done to Emmett Till. We have a long history of oppression in this country when it comes to black people in general."

Till was a 14-year-old Black youth from Chicago who was abducted and lynched after being accused of offending a white woman while visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955. The racist attack caused national outrage and turned out to be a catalytic moment in the emerging civil rights movement.

As recently as 2019, Trump insisted he would not apologize for his harsh comments about the Central Park Five, The New York Times reported.

“You have people on both sides of that,” Trump said at the White House. “They admitted their guilt.”

But Salaam, who became a motivational speaker after director Ken Burns released a documentary in 2012 about "The Central Park Five," knew how to respond when Trump was arrested and arraigned on April 4, 2023. He put out a campaign ad of  his own mimicking the full-page ad that Trump put out in 1989.

NBC News quoted from the letter:

“You were wrong then, and you are wrong now.” He also wrote he will not “resort to hatred, bias or racism” and that he wishes Trump “no harm.”

“Rather, I am putting my faith in the judicial system to seek out the truth,” he wrote. “I hope that you exercise your civil liberties to the fullest, and that you get what the Exonerated 5 did not get — a presumption of innocence, and a fair trial.” 

And when Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts  of falsifying business records, Salaam put out this statement.

Salaam wrote:

Even though Donald Trump wanted us executed even when it was proven that we were innocent, I do not take pleasure at today’s verdict.

We should be proud that today the system worked.  But we should be somber that we Americans have an ex-President who has been found guilty on 34 separate felony charges.  And while today might not be as shocking as January 6th, it is equally profound.

On January 7th, a large majority of Americans agreed that Trump should never again lead this country. Let us hope we wake up tomorrow with the same conviction. We have to do better than this.  Because we are better than this.