By Adwoa Masozi
In 1989 I was six; too young to know that in New York City, a half hour from my New Jersey home, a
political lynching of five African-American boys was taking place in full view
of the American public by the justice system and national media. These young
men-- Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef
Salaam—have come to be known as the Central Park
Five. Each of these young boys were falsely accused and wrongly convicted for the 1989
rape and brutalization of a white woman jogger in Central Park.
I asked my
dad, who now is 60 years old, what he remembers about that case when it first
hit the news. He recounts the story well.
“Well, at
first I believed what they said. Five young black kids attacked a white woman
in the park. Donald Trump was out there making statements about it. No one knew
who the woman was—it was kept quiet, but they were parading the kids around on the
TV.”
Before I could get my next question in
he added,
“They were
being interviewed without the parents being there, which was illegal. You can
easily scare young children into saying what you want.”
Q: How do you think the media helped
to influence public opinion on the case?
“The media reported what the police said. At the time there was no solid evidence. The media was going to be biased because it was a white woman and they always want to promote stories of when black males rape a white female. It’s a quintessential case of stereotyping.”
“The media reported what the police said. At the time there was no solid evidence. The media was going to be biased because it was a white woman and they always want to promote stories of when black males rape a white female. It’s a quintessential case of stereotyping.”
Q: When did you stop believing they
were guilty?
“The prosecutors and the detectives kept denying the guilt of the confessor. The guy who did it admitted he did it and the prosecutors and the detectives insisted he was lying.”
“The prosecutors and the detectives kept denying the guilt of the confessor. The guy who did it admitted he did it and the prosecutors and the detectives insisted he was lying.”
Q: What was the role of the white
woman?
“She wasn’t interviewed too much; if I remember right her memory was messed up. You never heard her story, they kept it quiet. I believe she had memory loss.”
“She wasn’t interviewed too much; if I remember right her memory was messed up. You never heard her story, they kept it quiet. I believe she had memory loss.”
Thanks daddy.
His name is Keith J. Burnam Sr.
His name is Keith J. Burnam Sr.
The film produced by documentarian Ken Burns
based on this case, and named after it, The Central
Park Five, will debut this evening at 9 PM on PBS. And I look forward to
watching it. I want to know all their stories, because there were six victims--not just one--in this case. Was the
outcome of their trials because of a biased jury or did it also have
something to do with the quality of their representation—who represented them? Was it the cops involved or the media? Why
didn’t it matter that they were children? Where were their parents? How does the nation make amends to
the wrongfully convicted?
Perhaps, the greater tragedy here is that this case is not isolated—far from it. This story has played out again and again in the cases of the Scottsboro Boys, Susan Smith, Emmett Till, and a host of others that don’t always get national recognition.
While racism is
less conspicuous these days, it remains an effective agent suffuse throughout all
systems servicing or penalizing the American public. Whether we’re talking education,
healthcare, employment, housing or justice—disparities in who has the most and
least access cuts clear across the board.
Sarah Burns,
author of The Central Park Five: A Chronicle of a City Wilding, puts it best, “These
young men were convicted long before the trial, by a city blinded by fear and,
equally, freighted by race. They were convicted because it was all too easy for
people to see them as violent criminals simply because of the color of their
skin."
Adwoa Masozi is the Communications Associate at JPI.
Adwoa Masozi is the Communications Associate at JPI.
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