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In remarks that leaned heavily on his background as a reverend, Al Sharpton delivered an impassioned speech on the fourth night of the DNC.
“On one side of this race is Donald Trump, a fellow New Yorker I’ve known for 40 years. Only once — 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 five innocent young teenagers,” Sharpton said in reference to the Central Park Five.
These were five Black and Brown New York teenagers who were wrongly convicted of rape. Trump took out ads in the newspaper calling to reinstate the death penalty.
“It was there that I saw Trump loved to fan racial flames,” Sharpton said.
“On the other side is a woman that I’ve walked with in Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Kamala Harris spoke to me that day about unity and passing bills.”
Sharpton later introduced the Central Park Five to deliver joint remarks.
Members of the Central Park 5 voice their support for Harris
Exonerated members of the “Central Park Five" called on the DNC audience to "vote with us" for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
In 2002, the five men — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise and Yusef Salaam (now a member of New York City Council) — saw their convictions vacated for a 1989 crime in which a white jogger was badly beaten and raped in Central Park. The crime dominated headlines in the city, already dealing with racial tensions.
At the time, former President Donald Trump, then a rising real-estate mogul in New York, took out full-page ads in newspapers demanding the state bring back the death penalty.
The five were just teens when the attack took place, but police rounded them up and interrogated them for the crime. They were convicted and served years in prison before the case got another look. Another man, a serial rapist and killer, eventually confessed to the crime.
"45 wanted us unalive," Salaam said, referring to Trump, the nation's 45th president. "Today we are exonerated because the actual perpetrator confessed and DNA proved it. [Trump] still says he still stands by the original guilty verdict. He dismisses scientific evidence rather than admit he was wrong."
Salaam spoke alongside activists Wise, Santana and Richardson. McCray was not in attendance for the address.
Trump has not apologized for taking out the full-page ad (which didn't name the five men explicitly) and in 2019 said, “You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt.”
The New York Times reported Trump said, “If you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city never should have settled that case — so we’ll leave it at that.”
After their convictions were vacated, the five men received a multi-million dollar settlement from New York City.
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