A Black man who spent seven years behind bars as a member of the Central Park Five – the teenagers wrongly convicted of the rape and assault of a jogger – looks set to join New York City Council in his home neighbourhood of Harlem.
Yusef Salaam declared victory in the Democratic primary in Harlem’s 9th District, 34 years after false accusations – including by Donald Trump – upended his life. Local voters are unlikely to elect a Republican when the council seat comes up for grabs in November.
The poet, activist, and author, now a member of the Exonerated Five, appeared in court at age 15 at his sentencing hearing in August 1990, telling the judge that he saw “this legal lynching as a test by my God Allah”.
His conviction was overturned 12 years later. As the primary results came in on Tuesday night, Mr Saalam looked likely to receive just over 50 per cent of the votes out of the around 11,000 ballots cast in the district.
A seemingly stunned Mr Salaam said: “Harlem is the place that gave me a second chance. I am my ancestors’ wildest dream.”
“This campaign has been about those who have been counted out. This campaign has been about those who have been forgotten,” he said.
During his campaign, Mr Salaam, 49, emphasised housing and criminal justice reform.
“I’ve often said that those who have been close to the pain should have a seat at the table,” he told the AP earlier in June.
Mr Salaam was wrongly convicted of the attack on Trisha Meili, a white woman in her late 20s who was jogging in Central Park on 19 April 1989. He was sentenced along with Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – all aged between 14 and 16.
The case against the teenagers went ahead despite witnesses contradicting each other and despite the lack of forensic evidence connecting any of them to the crime.
Mr Trump bought several full-page newspaper advertisements calling for the return of the death penalty over the crime.
All five spent between five and 12 years behind bars before the convictions were overturned in 2002. DNA evidence revealed that a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, was connected to the attack. The city agreed to a settlement with the exonerated men worth $41m (£32m).
“When I came back here from prison, I couldn’t afford my apartment,” Mr Salaam told Air Mail earlier in June. “I remember that big, orange eviction sticker on my door. I remember the shame I felt when my neighbors saw that.”
“We have to climb out of the gravitational pull of all the negatives that pull us down,” he said.
Mr Salaam is now set to join the framework of city power that once put him in prison.
“When people look at me and they know my story, they resonate with it,” he said. “But now here we are 34 years later, and I’m able to use that platform that I have and repurpose the pain, help people as we climb out of despair.”
Poverty in Harlem is around 10 percentage points higher than the 18 per cent across all of New York City, figures from New York University’s Furman Center show.
More than a quarter of those living in Harlem spend more than half their income on rent, and the area has some of the highest child homelessness rates in the city.
Mr Salaam has never received an apology from Mr Trump. Asked in 2019 if he would apologise, the president said there were “people on both sides” of the issue.
“They admitted their guilt,” he said, although the five have said they were coerced into confessing.
“Some of the prosecutors think the city should never have settled that case. So, we’ll leave it at that,” Mr Trump said.
As Mr Trump was indicted in New York in April on 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection to hush-money payments to women who are alleged to have had affairs with him, Mr Salaam shared a mocking ad on social media, similar to the one Mr Trump had placed in the papers decades previously.
“Over 30 years ago, Donald Trump took out full page ads calling for my execution,” Mr Salaam tweeted alongside the ad, which stated, “Bring Back Justice & Fairness.”
