by Yusef Salaam
In the youth facilities—Harlem Valley, in particular—there were so many guys who would do anything to avoid going to the adult prison. Including lying about their ages. I remember men just disappearing because the system finally figured out they were twenty-two instead of fifteen.
That happened to Asiatic. When we played ball, everyone wanted him on their team. Not just because he was good—like I said, many guys were good—but because his level of skill included elevating your own game. When I would play with him, he’d throw me the ball, and suddenly I was dunking the ball and doing 360s. Then, one day, he was just gone. Never returned to the court.
Apparently, he was older than he said he was. The fear of going to adult prison was real. It’s like somehow people knew that it would be much harder to find mental freedom there. In the youth facility, the older you were, the less likely you were to be assaulted. No one tried you. When you went to the adult facility, you knew you were going to be tried from the very beginning. You had to establish yourself quickly and ruthlessly or you’d be at risk of becoming a target. In the youth facility, you could definitely be confronted with a fight. That was common. But in the adult facility, a fight meant you could lose your life. In Harlem Valley, people would put soap in a sock and hit another person in the head. In Clinton, those socks could be replaced with tuna cans from the commissary.
This idea of being mentally free even when you are physically captive reminds me of an old Nike T-shirt I saw once. Underneath the trademark swoosh it said, “Just elevate and decide in the air.” That was what we all learned to do. We found something that would allow us to elevate, even if only for an hour of our day. In that time, our ability to decide who we were was returned. In that elevation, we were liberated.
Elevating and deciding in the air is something I would use as a mantra once I returned home from prison. While attending Hunter College, I had many amazing professors. One in particular, Dr. Marimba Ani, taught us so much about Africa, including West African spirituality. She wrote:
Our cultural roots are the most ancient in the world. The spiritual concepts of our Ancestors gave birth to religious thought. African people believe in the oneness of the African family through sacred time, which unites the past, the present and the future. Our Ancestors live with us.
Dr. Ani added scholarship to our understanding of being the kings and queens, as we called ourselves in hip hop culture. She introduced us to people like Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, who reminded us that Africa was the starting place of mathematics and science. It was Africans who taught the world geometry and trigonometry. Our Eurocentric educational systems may have taught us to hold up the Greeks and Romans, but they only regurgitated what the Africans had taught them. My mind was blown on the one hand, and I felt affirmed on the other. Something in me knew this on some kind of cellular level already, but hearing it all confirmed through the books I read and the lectures I attended, after having spent time in prison for a crime I didn’t commit—solidified the importance of defining myself for myself.
Smiling for my mom: She kept asking me to smile in photographs because I never liked smiling when having my photo taken.
So when I think about those brothers in jail, ballin’ like Jordan and Magic, I consider them captive royalty. I witnessed greatness. And in my witnessing, I experienced a psychological respite. Their aerodynamic leaps reflected a kind of athletic trigonometry that could come only from the DNA of a people with galactic intelligence.
That said, there was another side to my experience with basketball. One that was less about elevation and freedom and more about some people’s inclination toward envy. I didn’t realize at the time I was learning and enjoying basketball that I was also in what they called “Gladiator School.” In jailhouse ball, there were no rules. There was no such thing as “calling a foul.” If you were hit, you were just hit. All that mental freedom and no rules meant that someone was going to get hurt.
It wasn’t long before I became that guy. The one that other men would say, “Oh, we want Yusef on our team.” I was new to the game, but I’d learned a few things from playing with these great players. I figured out that more than height, I had speed. I regularly thought, Oh, I can bake ’em. More than anything, I was enjoying myself. There’s something satisfying about the journey toward mastery, and I was finding that basketball was something I could work on. What I didn’t know was that there were others who were not as happy about my development. They were plotting.
He looks like he is having too much fun.
I don’t like that dude.
The first time I was tripped on purpose. Of course, I was still playing sleep—soaring in the freedom of the moment—so I wasn’t even aware that it was intentional. They were fouling me hard and I was just thinking, This is amazing. The second time, they tripped me again and actually really tried to hurt me. I was supposed to fall on my face. I was supposed to go to the medic with a bloody nose, but I didn’t. I rolled right out of the fall.
One of the guys, the one we were all scared of, stopped the whole game.
“Hold up! Hold up! What the hell? How did you do that?”
Still oblivious, I said, “What are you talking about?”
All I knew was, they got the ball from me, but I was still on the guy. Yes, I rolled out but, Hey, this game is so cool.
Because I’d studied martial arts for several years before the case, I knew how to fall. It was a life lesson our master jujitsu teacher taught us. In life you’ll inevitably fall, but it’s how you fall that will determine whether you live or not. So we were trained in various ways to break a fall. For me it was an instinctual response, but for them it was fantastic. It gave them a reason to respect me. We just tried to really hurt this guy, and he’s still in the game.
I suppose that is a real-life example of the constant grace I’ve been blessed with, despite the tragic circumstance I found myself in. Unbeknownst to me, my life before the Central Park Five case had prepared me for what I would encounter afterward in every way. I was protected even when I felt like I wasn’t. I feel like God was like, “Oh, word, you’re going to try to trip him up? But you don’t know what I gave him years ago in martial arts to enable him to get out of that.” And so life’s constant attempts at hurting me got thwarted every single time. There’s a privilege in that, I know. But I think we all can look at the hard parts of our lives and realize that we survived because we really did have the tools. It might not have felt like it at the time. We might have even been as unaware, oblivious, or naive as I was on that court, but when we make it to the other side, there’s a Sankofa moment: of looking back to see how far we’ve come, in order to move forward to something great.
But that doesn’t mean life—or in my case, these other ballplayers—will stop trying to take us out.
My basketball star days ended when I went up to dunk a ball on that same court and another player, seemingly frustrated because they couldn’t jump as high as I could, reached up and ripped my arm nearly out of my shoulder. The pain was beyond anything I’d felt before; my arm was literally hanging awkwardly out of the socket. I’m pretty sure I asked for my mama, it was that bad. And of course, this sidelined me from playing ball because they had to take me to the hospital. I was devastated and felt like someone had snatched away the little bit of freedom I had found.
Damn, I can’t even do the one thing I was enjoying.
That was the first of four times my arm was pulled out of the socket. The rough play became so frequent that, at some point, I stopped bothering to even go to the hospital. I’d just pop my arm back in place, scream really loud, and keep it moving. Most of the time I did it not to avoid the hospital, but because I didn’t want to be on time-out. In the youth facility, time-out meant that all your activities were restricted. You couldn’t go to the gym. You couldn’t even shoot a ball or you’d get written up.
I eventually returned to the court but, if I’m honest, it wasn’t the same. I had to play basketball awake now. I
still had fun, but because I had to attend to the motivations of the people around me, I couldn’t escape as much. My freedom was limited by the people who didn’t want me to elevate as much as I did.
This isn’t unusual. It’s the necessary evil that comes with being great. You’ll find the thing that makes you feel free and excel in it, but there will always be people who see that and, because your ability amplifies their insecurity, will try to pull you down.
My time on the court dwindled, yes, but it also pointed me toward something that I’d always been good at but never really dived into: art. I’d sketched things here and there, but since I couldn’t play on the basketball court the way I wanted, I determined that I would redirect my attention. I also began reading more about this faith I claimed but didn’t know that much about. For instance, I didn’t realize that there was a difference between the Nation of Islam, the Nation of Gods and Earths (Five Percent Nation), and Sunni Islam. I ultimately used the loss of basketball as a tool for freedom, and to become who I was supposed to be. To edify myself through my own talents and gifts. Art, poetry, and Islam became my primary modes of mental freedom, and these were things that no one could steal from me.
I recognize the privilege in being able to find mental freedom in a system dead set on killing you, at the very least on a spiritual level. That’s truly the witchcraft nature of white supremacy. And there were so many people I met in prison who couldn’t unravel themselves from that kind of sorcery. Even those singular moments of freedom on the court or in a book could not stop them from getting caught up in recidivism.
There’s a friend of mine, who’s in prison right now, who was also in prison when I was first there. He was in Spofford serving a bid for a notorious case when I first arrived. He was known as the .25-Caliber Kid, and even as a juvenile he was a hit man. He was truly about that life, as young people would say. He was such an interesting personality, and we connected because he identified as a Muslim. He wasn’t necessarily practicing, but like me, he’d come from a family of Muslims and that was the faith tradition he’d always known. In many ways, that was my story until I began to read and study the faith of my father and truly take it on myself. I remember thinking, Oh, you mean you can’t just be Muslim because your family is? You actually have to at some point accept Islam? I still have my Shahada letter, signed by my Imam, confirming my official acceptance of the faith. But this guy, Mack Moton, like many people, didn’t think of being Muslim in those same terms. At the time, it was just part of the streets.
In late 2019, I spoke with Mack, just to check in with him. He’s been in jail off and on since I was there in the early ’90s. Now, mind you, he’s come home a few times. When I was in Spofford, he was released. Then he came back when I was in Harlem Valley, having been sentenced to fifty years, which was later appealed down to twenty-five.
There was one moment in particular, during our time in prison together, when it dawned on me that Mack’s journey in the system would look very different from mine.
One day a riot broke out in the facility because, according to some, there was a young man named Hansel Muños who was being influenced by us Muslims.
Hansel had come to us saying, “Man, I want to be a real Muslim. I’m being harassed. I like the protection you all give.”
Inmates had been robbing him. Any items he’d get from the commissary—soap, Little Debbies—would get stolen. So he accepted Islam because, more than anything, we took care of our own. Abdur Rashid always made sure that nothing went down.
One day we were all in my unit and a guy named Erskine, a tall guy who was known to be belligerent, started talking trash about the Islam we practiced. He was a five percenter, part of a religious movement called the Five Percent Nation, which started in Harlem and was influenced by some of the tenets of Islam. Erskine always stood in opposition to us. He’d say things like, “Oh, that’s not Islam; this is Islam: I, Self, am Lord and Master.” It was like a competition for him. This wasn’t the case with all the men who were with the Five Percent Nation. Many were like, “Oh no, y’all Muslims are all right.” I was even in jail with Capone and Noreaga from the hip hop duo of the same name, and they were cool. But for others, there was definitely some resistance and beef. Their stance: “Fuck y’all, let’s fight.” Erskine was that kind of guy.
Hansel, our newest convert, came to us saying that Erskine and others were harassing him. I said, “Okay, well, let me go talk to them.” I went over to the men and said, “Look, we’re Muslim. We’re about peace. Let’s not do this.” I don’t remember what exactly the response was, but it wasn’t positive. Tensions rose, things escalated, but, at least on that day, we all walked away without coming to blows.
The facility often allowed religious leaders within the population to move about more freely than others. Abdur Rashid and I were allowed to go to different housing units to minister to other brothers. We went to Erskine’s unit to try to come to some kind of agreement or truce. Rashid began first, saying to him, “Look, we’re not trying to be about war. We’re not about fighting nobody. You know what I’m saying? Islam is about peace. We are just trying to be peaceful.”
I will never forget the way Erskine took his glasses off. It was like he was moving in slow motion. His words came flying out in a staccato beat. “I’m not trying to hear nothing y’all got to say.” Now, Rashid, whose cousin is Floyd Mayweather, was mostly peaceful, but there was a clear reason why he was our head of security. He was nice with his hands and his anger was legendary. In that moment, Rashid’s anger went from zero to 1,000. I saw it on his face. He’d slipped back into the streets. His body squared off, and he was about to rip this dude apart. Rashid was the type of person who was always in control. Even his rage was controlled. But it was still rage, and the officers saw it, too. They jumped in: “Y’all got to go.” Again, that time, nothing happened.
For prayer, one of the many Muslim officers who worked on Friday, our holy day, would pick us all up and take us to the room where we would either listen to a sermon, lead a sermon, or participate in or lead prayer. One of the younger Muslims, a comedian whose name I don’t remember, was late coming to the prayer room. I truly believe that, spiritually, it happened for a reason. He was not really late; he was right on God’s time. If he had been on time, he might not have heard what he did. We were sitting in our circle, a time where we’d have conversations about issues in our community and make sure everyone had what they needed. When he walked into the room, he said, “Yo, man, they are planning on jumping y’all when y’all go back to the unit.” There was no confusion. The they was Erskine and his crew. As the leader, I said, “Okay, we’re going to have Brother Abdur Rashid take over.” So Abdur Rashid, who studied Islamic strategy and war while I focused on spirituality, gave us our marching orders.
We knocked on the door to the unit and they opened it. They shoved me to the ground and when I looked up, I saw Officer Chris Johnson’s face transition from “Hey, what’s up?” to “Oh my God!” in a split second. Fists flew. When I could finally stand, I went in and started grabbing people off of others. Somebody grabbed me and we fell on a couch. I was holding the person in place trying to keep him from swinging. But then I saw my friend Mack before he saw me. He reached over the couch ready to take out whoever was there. He had a razor in his hand, but I could see in his eyes that he was back out on the block and that razor was his gun.
He was mentally at war. I knew right then that it would be such a hard road for him to ever come back. Thank God he saw that it was me before he “pulled the trigger.”
“Oh, y’all all right,” he said, and kept fighting.
Finally, this tall West Indian guy named Bigga jumped up, put his fingers in the air, and said, “Peace, Muslims. No beef.” By that time, though, no one was listening. I let my guy go and walked through the unit as everyone—officers and inmates—was still fighting and wrestling. Officer Chris Johnson was holding down a Muslim brother named Harmel. In hindsight, it reminds m
e of how police officers handle people on the streets today, holding the man from behind, his head turned over his shoulder. Harmel was moving as the officer’s grip was tightening around his waist. The officer was yelling, “Stop resisting! Calm down!” What the officer didn’t know was that another man, David, was behind him punching Harmel in the face. Harmel wasn’t resisting. His body was responding to blows that the officer couldn’t or didn’t want to see. When I saw David advancing a third or fourth time, I could no longer sit and watch. I put my foot in his chest, Jim Kelly–style. David flew into the wall and slumped down.
Usually, when there was a melee in prison, especially if it was in the mess hall, they would automatically shut all the doors by lowering these iron gates. This happened later when I was in Clinton. When the gates lowered, you were even more trapped. Then all of a sudden, from the ceiling, pods of tear gas would drop and explode.
I wish that was the worst of it.
Next, the “turtles” would arrive. These were officers dressed in full riot gear. Everyone in the room would be laid out on the ground and, trust me, if you tried to get up, they would lay you back down—maybe even permanently.
Thank God that protocol was not used in this one instance at Harlem Valley. But when other officers came into the unit to help subdue those who were fighting, I said in a calm voice, channeling Spike Lee’s version of Malcolm X to all the brothers, “Everybody line up.”
We all lined up on one wall and prepared ourselves to be sent to what was essentially solitary confinement. There was no alternative. We were the ones who came in there, and despite the backstory, it looked like we were the aggressors.