Members of the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted of rape and assault, addressed the Democratic convention Thursday, chastising former President Trump, who had called for their execution.
Yusef Salaam, Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson appeared onstage alongside civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and addressed a rapt arena.
“Forty-five wanted us unalive. He wanted us dead. Today, we are exonerated,” Salaam, who is now a New York City Council member, said of Trump.
“He has never changed, and he never will. That man thinks that hate is the animating force in America. It is not,” he added.
Wise noted that Trump spent thousands on a full-page ad in The New York Times calling for the group’s execution.
“We were innocent kids,” Wise said.
“Vice President Harris has also worked to make things fairer. I know she will do the same as president,” Wise added.
Trump, in 1989, took out full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty against the five boys, aged 14 to 16, who were later convicted of raping and assaulting a young woman jogging in Central Park in what became a high-profile case.
The boys’ 1990 convictions were later overturned after convicted murderer Matias Reyes confessed to the crime, a confession backed up by DNA evidence.
Trump has, in recent years, refused to apologize to the group for calling for their executions.
The appearance of the Central Park Five members comes as the former president has sought to appeal to Black voters ahead of November’s election, despite creating controversy when he questioned Vice President Harris’s biracial heritage.
President Biden won 87 percent of Black voters in 2020, and Harris will likely need to do at least as well to defeat Trump in November.