Lessons From the Exonerated 5

After a long day of running around trying to find classrooms, familiar faces, and a dining hall with somewhat small lines, I arrived at Moss Arts Center on Wednesday evening, eating a salad as I waited in line. Four of the five Exonerated 5, formerly known as the Central Park 5, had come to Virginia Tech to join us for a discussion panel in honor of celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday that Monday. Those waiting in line are the same that sprinted with me up the stairs to make sure we had seats because the spillover crowd would have to go to the Haymarket ballroom in Squires to watch the livestream of this panel.  The entirety of Fife theater was filled to the brim, by people of every age and race, some wearing the shirts with the five men’s names: Korey, Raymond, Yusef, Kevin, and Antron. I sat there attempting to give my friend a quick synopsis of the Central Park jogger case back in 1989 until the lights went dim and my complete and utter attention was focused on the stage below. 

The entire theater stood and cheered as four of the five men came on stage. That included Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, and Korey Wise. The fifth member, Antron McCray, couldn’t attend the panel. Korey shouted something to the crowd and gave us all a beaming smile, before taking his seat alongside his best friend since 1989, Yusef. We all sat down and waited in silence for one of the men to begin speaking. As the discussion began, we heard about their experiences readjusting into modern-day and how they continuously advocate for justice reform. They joked with each other about how they brought each other up when they were at their lowest points, particularly between Korey and Yusef.  

In the summer of 2019, with the help of the five men, award-winning director Ava DuVernay, created a docu-series about what happened with the Central Park jogger case and what the criminal justice system did to frame five innocent boys. The series is called “When They See Us,” and is something I highly recommend to anyone who says they don’t care or are too confused to understand why people fight for justice reform. The men spoke honestly and with intense raw emotion explaining how what happened to them has still, “left [them] broken” to this very day.  

However, one thing that Yusef said still rings in my ears and has left an impression on my heart, just as their story had: “The media has the power to make the innocent look guilty, and the guilty look innocent.”  

As a multimedia journalism major here at Virginia Tech, one of the main reasons I became interested in the major was the fact that people have the power to influence thousands of others. The media has the power to convince people who weren’t even in the courtroom, that the drawn images the court produced were a completely accurate portrayal as to what was happening. The media, as a whole, has so much power that I don’t even think we can fully understand, and that they can portray lies as truth and vice versa.  The coverage of this case was based on outrageous, heinous headlines of an already nightmare crime, but also drew these five innocent boys to be the “super predator” and “wildin’” characters that further dehumanized them. As did the infamous name they were given, “the Central Park 5”. Since their exoneration in 2002, they are known as the “Exonerated 5”. 

I wanted to make something clear from writing this, particularly to people who are questioning their majors, their dream jobs and ambitions, and themselves in general. You WILL find a source that reignites that decision and that fascination as to why you even declared that major in the first place. Walking, well, running into that theater, I knew I was about to listen to a painfully honest panel that discussed some major issues within our criminal justice system, but I did not expect to have a realization as to the power that the media holds and how one would harness and use it to promote truth and only truth. 

So, my message to you, inspired by the Exonerated 5, is that while you feel like you’re in this dark place of confusion and fear, you can and will make it through. You will find that shining light that will bring you back to why you are here, as a Hokie, in the first place. 

Image: Author’s own

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