LOWELL — Nearly 35 years ago, five Black and Latino teenagers were sentenced for the rape and violent assault of a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. They were innocent.
At the time, the youth were known as the Central Park Five, but a couple decades ago, they earned a new moniker: the Exonerated Five.
Yusef Salaam spent much of his adolescence behind bars. He is now an advocate for change, re-examining the criminal justice system — or “the criminal system of justice,” as he calls it — and sharing his experience for the greater good.
Salaam spoke at the UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center Thursday on a panel alongside associate professor of psychology Miko Wilford and New England Innocence Project Executive Director Radha Natarajan, where they analyzed how the system historically fails marginalized communities
His wrongful conviction was that “one ripple” that undeniably changed his life. At just 15 years old, “the spike wheels of justice visited my home,” Salaam said.
“I would not be the person that I am today… The shy person that wanted to be an architect back in 1989, that was going to LaGuardia High School, wouldn’t have found the strength to stand on my own feet in a way that means something to me,” Salaam said.
While others his age were graduating high school, going to college and preparing for adulthood, Salaam was imprisoned, Chancellor Julie Chen said, where he and the rest of the Exonerated Five “lost their youth.”
“Anyone with that experience, understandably, could be burdened by anger and bitterness,” Chen said, “and yet Yusef has committed himself, instead, to spreading the light, to truth-telling, to inspiring others and to demanding accountability.”
The mission of the New England Innocence Project is to represent those who are wrongfully convicted, prevent those convictions and establish a supportive community for those coming out of long-term incarceration, Natarajan said.
More than 80% of the cases they see involve Black men, Natarajan said, and “a confluence of factors” lead to that incorrect guilty verdict. The pressure to make arrests leads to a rush of judgment, kids who don’t have the resources to fight the system and the trust in the process are just some reasons why innocent people are incarcerated, Natarajan said in an interview.
“People who have suffered this, it’s hard for them to take their freedom for granted after everything they went through,” Natarajan said, “and I think (Salaam’s) a really great example of that… He has taken this incredible suffering and turned it into an opportunity to educate people, to prevent it from happening to anybody else.”
Additionally, Salaam and the other four young men convicted were all questioned, as children, “for hours without parents present,” Wilford said, which signals a major problem with the system.
“Children are the most vulnerable members of our society, and the way in which Yusef and the other four suspects in this case were questioned, we should all be ashamed of that,” Wilford said. “It makes your skin crawl to see the way in which children were being treated in this process.”
To bring this to UMass Lowell, a university with “a commitment to social justice,” allows students studying social-justice issues to see the real-world impact, Wilford said.
“The opportunity to have these sorts of panels, which connect directly to a lot of the things that we’re talking about in class, really drives home more than anything else, these aren’t abstract concepts,” Wilford said, “that these are real people who are being impacted by these things every day.”
In the wake of the accusations, former President Donald Trump infamously took out four full-page ads in New York newspapers calling to “bring back the death penalty,” directed at the five suspects. At the panel, Salaam held up a copy of the ad and commented on its intended influence over the trial.
“It’s almost like a nod to the darker enclaves of society,” Salaam said. “They were almost given permission to do to us what they had done to Emmett Till.”
Amy Liss, director of multicultural affairs at UMass Lowell, said the panel’s mission was to allow students, faculty and community members to hear a first-hand account from someone impacted by the justice system instead of just reading them out of a textbook or watching a documentary.
“It brings to light systemic issues that people can read about and understand intellectually, but when you hear some of these stories, you hear the individual experiences of people, I think that really changes your perspective,” Liss said. “Our hope is that it really inspires people to act.”
Rabia Haider, a graduate student studying dietetics, said she was motivated to attend after learning about Salaam’s story.
“For me, as someone who’s a young Muslim individual, I think it’s really inspiring to hear somebody that I can personally resonate with a little bit,” Haider said. “To hear something so awful, that I’ve never gone through, from someone’s personal account and how they’re making strides to change the criminal justice system or work on the system that failed them, I think that’s super interesting. I think that’s super inspiring.”
After the panel, Salaam signed copies of his books, “Better, Not Bitter” and “Punching the Air.” As he struggled with understanding his incarceration, Salaam said he realized his purpose: to be an “example for other people who look like me.”
“You’re automatically fighting for your life if you have black or brown skin. You’re fighting for your life in a way that you don’t even realize until something happens,” Salaam said. “Because the proverbial American Dream is what all people seek. There are some who wake up to the American nightmare, and they can never go back to sleep.”
