Mr Superboy's excellent video on the Central Park Five
I was just 18 years old when this happened. The 1980s/early nineties were a period of racial polarization. Bush Sr. pushed the Willie Horton ad to the public, then he called the Civil Rights bill as "a quota bill". Next, the Bensonhurst murder where Yusef Hawkins was shot because racists thought he was seeing a white girl, Charles Stuart lied to the public regarding the murder of his wife. That coward got so many innocent Black men abused and railroaded by the Boston police, notorious for its racism. When his story didn't add up and his own brother was about to turn him in for the murder of his wife, he cowardly took his life. WS republican David Duke was flexing his political might in Louisiana. There was a war against Black men in America. We need to take this seriously.
The media made a big deal out of the boys who were falsely accused of rape, while the actual guy by the name of Mathias Reyes was out there serially raping and murdering women during this time. Also, there was a Black woman who was raped, beaten, thrown into the elevator shaft to be left for dead in Harlem. No persons of interest and almost no media coverage whatsoever. We are conditioned to value certain races of women, while disregarding the lives of Black and brown women as victims.
See the continuation of the stories of the now-exonerated men known as the Central Park 5: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise. When They See Us is based on a true story that gripped the country in 1989. The four part limited series by Ava DuVernay chronicles the notorious case of five teenagers of color, labeled the Central Park Five, who were convicted of a rape they did not commit. Watch their rise to triumph on May 31st, only on Netflix.
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