The “Central Park Five” — a group of Black men who were convicted as teenagers and later exonerated of raping and beating a New York jogger — spoke at the final night of the Democratic National Convention, seeking to remind people that Donald Trump once placed full-page newspaper ads calling for the return of the death penalty in response to their case.
After they served years in prison or juvenile detention centers, another man confessed to the crime, and a reexamination of DNA evidence linked him solely to the rape.
Trump has refused to apologize for his 1989 ad.
“Our youth was stolen from us,” Korey Wise said. “Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us because of Donald Trump.”
“45 wanted us unalive. He wanted us dead,” said Yusef Salaam, now a New York City councilman.
“He dismisses the scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong,” Salaam continued. “He has never changed. And he never will.”
Salaam said that if Kamala Harris defeats Trump, many Americans will repeat the same iconic Martin Luther King Jr. quote he said upon being released from after seven years in prison: “Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network civil rights organization, sought to paint a picture of the Donald Trump he has known for decades as he introduced the men once known as the Central Park Five, now the Exonerated Five.
Sharpton said that while the National Action Network doesn't endorse candidates, "we report where candidates stand on criminal justice, economic empowerment, health equity and other issues."
On one side of this race is Donald Trump," Sharpton said, talking about Trump in his capacity of having known him for 40 years.
"Only once in that time did he take a position on racial issues," Sharpton said. "He spent a small fortune on full-page ads calling for the execution of 5 innocent young teenagers."
"What Donald Trump has been consistent about is making himself richer and sowing division to get that done," he charged, referencing his recent comments at the NABJ conference in Chicago refusing to apologize for saying migrants are attempting to take "Black jobs."
"Well in November, we're gonna show him when Blacks do their job," Sharpton said, to cheers. "And we are gonna join with whites and browns and Asians and we are gonna do a job on those who have done a job on us."
In talking about Harris, he invoked Shirley Chisolm, the first black woman to be elected to Congress and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination. "Fifty-two years after she was told to sit down, I know she's watching us tonight as a Black woman stands up to accept the nomination for president of the United States."
"We have fought too hard for women to be told to get out of the kitchen," Sharpton said. "We are now on our way to the Oval Office. We will not go back."
"We fought hard for our LGBTQ loved ones to get out of the closet, we won't go back," he continued. "We fought hard for the right to choose, the right to education. We suffered and died and bled, went to jail, to get the right to vote, we won't go back."