Dr. Yusef Salaam continues to keep his best foot forward.
The author and activist have announced that he will be running for Harlem State Senate and is looking forward to filling the vacated seat of current Harlem State Senator, Brian Benjamin.
Salaam is best known for being a part of the exonerated five, where he along with Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Kevin Richardson were all wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a white woman in Central Park in 1990.
The five men’s story would become a topic of discussion after Ava DuVernay’s “When They See Us” aired on Netflix in 2019.
All of the boys would go on to serve jail time before having their convictions overturned when Matias Reyes would confess to committing the crime. Salaam served seven years in prison before becoming fully exonerated in 2002.
Yusef Salaam would go on to be a motivational speaker and a recipient of the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award presented by President Barack Obama.
Salaam’s campaign will include attention to police brutality, ending solitary confinement in juvenile prisons, and criminal justice and prison reform.
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