by Yusef Salaam
The sound track—everything from Eric B. and Rakim, and Public Enemy, to Boogie Down Productions—took me right back to late 1980s New York City. I was most interested in seeing how these actors and actresses would portray us. And from the first few scenes, the film had our attention. We were engulfed in it. You could hear a pin drop. There was no sound in the room except what was coming from the screen.
Soon, there was a quiet sniffle. Following that, a sigh. Then, a muffled sob. Seeing ourselves portrayed on that screen was the purging we needed. Every actor nailed it. And because they got it so right, we relived our traumas in that room. But we were together and we were safe, and so those tears were held sacred by everyone there. And when I say we cried? Whew! We sobbed with abandon. It was painful in some places. But it was also a form of freedom. It released us. And it healed us in many ways.
I remember thinking at one point, Wow, men do cry in the dark. I can’t speak for the others, but I had entered the room with a certain amount of machismo. I’d been sure: Man, I’m not going to cry. But I did. And it was okay, natural. Watching that first part of the series, I threw that machismo out the proverbial window and broke down. It felt so good.
At the end of part one, we hugged each other so tightly. We hugged Ava and thanked her. We’d had our Sankofa moment. We’d been transported into our past with an eye on our future. We had needed to sink deeply into our experience in order to move forward.
After a brief break, we were excited about watching part two. This time, when they asked, “Are you all ready?” we said, “Yes, definitely! Let’s go!” Sure enough, we had the same experience the second time. We sobbed and sighed. Our hearts were full.
There was a dawning upon us then. That moment was the true realization of having survived this. We had survived—even though we weren’t supposed to.
We all knew that based on the way the system is structured, even if we physically survived prison, we weren’t supposed to survive socially. Our experience was designed to break us no matter what. We knew that as soon as we came home. We were walking around, hiding in plain sight, because we knew the depths of the hatred people had for us. We knew that our best bet was to disappear. But we didn’t disappear. And then there we were, sitting in the Netflix studios, with our story on that huge screen. We were fully present and alive in every way that mattered.
At the after-party of Oprah Winfrey’s special for When They See Us Now.
There was another, longer break after part two. We were high-fiving one another and talking about shared memories. There was such a feeling of camaraderie and brotherhood in that space, this sense that we not only survived this awful thing but that we also survived it together. This was another moment when I believe God revealed His love to us.
We weren’t supposed to watch parts three or four of the series, but during our break, we went to the studio’s rooftop and looked out at the Los Angeles skyline. It was so incredibly beautiful. For miles and miles, we could see mountains and lights in every direction. God was smiling on us at that moment. Then Ava asked, “You want to watch the rest?” We chose to keep going.
We watched part three and were healed all over again. It portrayed our journey to freedom and how we struggled to get our lives back once we were released. We were so grateful that our story was captured in this beautiful way. After another break, we reentered the screening room. Korey had not yet returned. Ava grabbed my hand and told us, “This is Korey’s part; this is the TV version.” The room was tense, especially for me. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew Korey had endured something terrible, having been imprisoned the longest, but I did not know the depths of his story.
Ava was very clear with us. We could not leave for a single minute during this part. It would be disrespectful, and it would dishonor what this man had endured. We didn’t move. But we also thought that we’d cried enough. We’d been torn down and built back up three times already. So, surely, we were on the other side of the emotionality of this.
We weren’t.
Korey returned and we began part four. If we were sobbing earlier, we were ugly-crying after watching part four. And we didn’t care. The emotion spilling out of us was raw and unfiltered. When the credits rolled and the lights came up, Raymond was the first to speak. With tears in his eyes, he went over to Korey and pronounced, “You’re a fucking LION!” He grabbed Korey and hugged him so tight.
I was still processing. I knew that Korey believed I was the cause of his being incarcerated. That if he hadn’t gone down to support me at the precinct that night, his life would have been different. To see his journey on that screen shook me to my very core. He believed that I was the cause of his being there, and he didn’t know that I believed him to be the cause of our freedom. Without Korey, without his seemingly chance meeting with Matias Reyes, the actual rapist, without him moving Reyes to confess to the crime, we could still be locked up. And if not physically bound, then certainly still convicted by society. But I also had to acknowledge my role in Korey’s pain. His truth was front and center in a way that we’d never talked about and I could not, would not, ignore it.
I couldn’t get up fast enough. Raymond had beat me to him. I wanted to grab Korey first, but then I got my arms around him.
“Thank you. I love you, man. You’re my brother.”
I grabbed everybody. “Yo, man, I love you all!” To feel that love, in that way, was everything we needed.
We’d never talked about what we’d gone through before this. We’d sat down and shared our experiences for the 2012 Ken Burns documentary The Central Park Five, but it would take another seven years to get this kind of breakthrough. For When They See Us, we talked with movie people. Sometimes we talked to a camera. We’d even had another moment in Tribeca Studios prior to the Netflix release, where we all apologized to Korey and had an emotional, vulnerable moment. But I’m not sure we fully knew then what we were apologizing for. Now the series spoke for us, and it was powerful. In the Netflix private screening, we were able to look into one another’s eyes. We were able to truly see one another.
You hear Black folks say all the time, “Oh, you got the right one this time!” It’s a way of announcing to our enemies that they may have made a foolish choice to test us. Well, that’s how I feel about the Exonerated Five. We were the five right ingredients to reveal to the world just how devious this system is and continues to be to Black people. As hard as it was, and as much pain as we endured, it could have only been us. God would use that pain, the attempts to take our lives, as the special spice to catapult us into the future.
Without a doubt, there have been plenty of Black men who went through what we did. Who’d walked this road before us. They walked so we could run. We run for them. For the 72As still behind bars. For the guilty and the not guilty.
I really hate that Antron missed the screening. Of course, we understood. But there was so much healing and love in that room that I wanted him to share in it. I’m not sure if he ever got to see that shift of going from most hated to most loved. Not in the way we did in that screening. He’s been with us at other amazing events, but in that moment we got to speak and feel freely in ways that we haven’t since.
This is the first time the Exonerated Five were on a stage together. We were at the SVA Theatre, being interviewed by the late Jim Dwyer of the New York Times after the first screening of the Central Park Five documentary.
The beauty of this is that everybody is at different stages of their healing journey. And it’s all okay. Korey, Kevin, and Raymond might be in one place. Antron might be in another. I am at a different place. It’s all good. Because we are all constantly healing. That’s the work. Every time we tell our story, it’s like a therapy session. We get it out of us. We get a little bit better. We are able to move through life a little bit lighter. And that’s how we should all aim to move through the hard times. One step at a time. All so we don’t become ticking time bombs of grief.
Antron screened the film afterwa
rd, so I know he felt that release also. And we connected with him later. But after that moment of bonding, we all got to step out of that screening room with a different outlook on our experience. We truly became the Exonerated Five, eschewing the Central Park Five moniker forever. We know who we are now, and we show up differently. It’s not just about the story. We now are part of the civil rights movement, the human rights era. We survived a lynching. We are still here.
This case was a love story between God and us because we are still alive to tell the story, to live and breathe and love and heal. We could have died without the truth being known. Like Emmett Till. Like Mamie Till. They knew, but the world didn’t know. The world hadn’t yet heard Emmett’s accuser say, “I made the whole story up.” What does that say about the criminal justice system? It says the truth about it. That it is actually the criminal system of injustice.
One of my friends, Ronique Hawkins, showed me footage from the Emmett Till murder trial. We all know the story. They began deliberations. They came back an hour later with a verdict of “not guilty,” despite all the evidence. But during a break, one of the jurors was questioned by a reporter.
“Hey, what took you so long? What was your process for deliberating? What led to you coming back with a not-guilty verdict?”
The juror responded: “We knew we were going to come back with a verdict of not guilty. We just wanted to take a soda pop break so that we could appear to be doing our job.”
We live in two different Americas. We live in the America my mother was trying to teach me about when I was younger. The one that birthed the Jim Crow South. The one that taught us we needed the Harriets like her to teach us how to live in a war zone, to equip us to survive it. And then there’s the aspirational America. The America we hope to one day become. The one we hope to be proud of one day.
Bernard Kerik, a former police officer and police commissioner in New York City, summarized this perfectly in his book From Jailer to Jailed:
Don’t promote yourself as a country of constitutionality and compassion if you honestly believe that putting people in prison and treating them like animals is justified. Stop all the hype that we live in a free and democratic society. I used to ramble on about the same stuff. But now—are we really a country that believes in fairness and compassion? Are we really a country that treats people fairly?
How do you survive as a Black person in this country? How do you maintain a positive outlook in the midst of such sorrow and trauma? For me, prayer has been paramount in my ability to remain mentally and spiritually free. I know that not everybody believes in God or prayer, but no matter your belief system, consider it as communion with a higher force, whatever that may be for you.
In addition, there’s meditation. If prayer is speaking your heart and making your requests known, then meditation is being still long enough to listen for the answers. Meditation gives you the power to be able to move throughout your day as if your prayer has been fulfilled. I achieve stillness through my breath. Through understanding the power of energy and how to move it around to my benefit. But more on meditation later.
I’ve found it vital to have some way of documenting my experience. It could be journaling, drawing, doodling, or any other creative expression. It’s not about being good or having natural ability or talent. It’s about drawing those emotions from inside your body and out onto the page. After basketball, I spent so much time in my cell writing poetry and drawing. I attribute it to my ability to process my feelings on a daily basis. Poetry allowed me to participate in the war.
I wrote a poem titled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” borrowing the title from the great spoken-word record by Gil Scott-Heron. Writing that piece while behind bars helped me to remind myself of who I was.
I can remember when that statement made me sad inside
Too young to be in it
Now I couldn’t even see it, Why?
why couldn’t the revolution be televised?
The Last Poets’
Gil Scott Heron
As I grew up I began to see
They left theirs and I too wanted to leave a mark on History
A Man in half and I wanted to bask
in the task that set men free
But a revolution
The Revolution, is where I knew I had to be
The Revolution will not be televised
They don’t want to display the victory of those “Lesser Men”
The Revolution will not be televised
Smile I know
Because I am the Revolution!
Sharing my new rhymes with my sister. She not only encouraged me, but she would also advise me on the phrasing and make suggestions.
That poem reminded me that I have to be my own answer, and that I am the revolution. There’s no white liberator coming for me. I have to liberate myself. And in doing so, perhaps I can liberate others. There’s a verse in Islam that says, “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they first change themselves.” There’s another hadith that says, “When you come to Allah walking, Allah comes to you running.” God doesn’t necessarily meet you at the beginning. He sees and recognizes that you have started, and the creative force rushes to aid you. Then, in desperate times, He carries you.
The beauty of this concept of love and war, or maybe it’s better to say love in war, is that it teaches you to be in alignment with a creative force. And in doing so, your vision can become your reality. In doing so, you’re putting yourself in a position to be used in a positive manner. Your biggest hardship teaches you to reach for something greater or higher than yourself. But you have to trust the journey. You have to let go. You have to pray even if you don’t want to. Then you must act as if your prayers have been answered and meditate. Just put it out there. Cast down your bucket. And then you have to document it. That documentation may look different for you than it did for me. Documentation looked like poetry and art for me. Perhaps it will look like dancing or biking or yoga or writing flash fiction for you. Documentation allowed me to remain mentally free even though my body was in bondage. No matter the form, it will help you to do the same.
SEVEN
SALAAM BALONEY!
Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner, unless you eat some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.
MALCOLM X
I COULD SEE THE HATRED IN their eyes. I was a sixteen-year-old child, but somehow that was not who they saw. When I rose to speak, I saw them shrink. They were forced to hide behind their false notions of supremacy. My words would cause them to retreat even further. It was just a rap. A lyrical defense. A reclamation of my identity before they dared to sentence me. Borrowing from the books my mother encouraged me to read, from Malcolm X, a man I held in the highest esteem, I opened my statement with, “I’m not going to sit here at your table and watch you eat and call myself dinner. Sitting here at your table doesn’t make me dinner, just like being here in America doesn’t make me an American. Let us begin.”
Just hours before, I didn’t know what I was going to say. Antron, Raymond, and I had already endured a grueling trial leading to our conviction on August 18. We were now faced with the sentencing. Our convictions were upheld on September 11, 1990. The moment the verdicts came in, I felt like my life went into warp mode. The word guilty caused the whole room to erupt, and it caused my heart to burst. At least it felt that way. As soon as the gavel kissed the wooden bench, we were taken away from everything we loved. We didn’t have the opportunity to hold our loved ones. Everyone in the room was crying, some in victory, others in sorrow.
My mother wasn’t even allowed to be in the room because she had already been told one too many times, “I’m going to need you to control yourself.” And then, “Officers, remove her from the court.” My mother was my fiercest protector, so to hear lies about her son was too much for her. She’d cry out in pain or
anger. She’d say things like “These are all lies. You’re lying against my son!” She might have seemed stoic and self-possessed in all those photos of her, but it was still her baby boy’s life on the line, for something she knew he didn’t do. She wasn’t going to stand for that. The verdict was delivered to her secondhand. But my aunt was there in that courtroom. So was my sister. They wanted to hug me, but the officers grabbed me first. They handcuffed me and took me to the back.
Of course, there is a disparity between the way Black people who are convicted of a crime are treated post-sentencing and the way some white people are treated. After the sentencing, not only was I not allowed to hug my mother or my aunt or my sister, but I also wasn’t given a date in the future to turn myself in. But haven’t we seen that happen for others?
Perhaps a “Hey, listen, go to your vacation home, eat some of your favorite grilled chicken and risotto, and turn yourself in, say, in two weeks?”
Or a “Is two weeks good for you? Okay, well, let’s say a month. Don’t go crazy now. You have to do your time. But go ahead and prepare yourself and your family.”
I’m being only slightly sarcastic. In the Black and Brown communities, a delayed start to doing time is practically unheard of.
When we were brought into that holding room, Antron, Raymond, and I broke down. All the emotions we were holding fell from our eyes and mouths in heavy sobs. We knew right then that we were all we had. The three of us were the first to go to trial, before Korey or Kevin.
At one point, our attorneys came to us and said, “It doesn’t look like we’re going to win. We didn’t tell you all this, but there was an offer on the table where you could have copped out to something of a lesser charge. We may want to revisit that now. What do you guys think?”