The Central Park Five honored.
During an event hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union Southern California, Michael B. Jordan was tasked with presenting the Central Park Five with the Roger Baldwin Courage Award, aligning with the group men’s newest cinematic perspective Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us Netflix miniseries.
“It’s dangerous in America when you’re living in a black body,” Jordan said, going on to cite the perseverance Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise as the ACLU reflected on When They Us.
“The whole time that these men were incarcerated, they never changed their story,” he said. “They insisted their innocence even as they did their time.”
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It was Salaam who would speak on behalf all five men, getting emotional on the stand: “I’m not ashamed to cry in front you,” he declared. “Our story is a story an egregious miscarriage justice.”
The five men also accepted DuVernay’s Social Responsibility in Media Award. While the story the Central Park Five certainly is not new. DuVernay’s four-part series has presented audiences with a nuanced and emotional chronicle the men’s wrongful convictions as teens to their 2002 exoneration.
“After decades being known as the Central Park Five, we thank Ava for acknowledging our humanity and telling our story with honesty and factual representation,” Salaam would say, while accepting the director’s award. “We had to struggle to break the label that the media gave us. We stumbled forward, falling on our face at times.”