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  Copyright © 2021 by Yusef Salaam

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  Quotation from Qur’an 28:61 from the Marmaduke Pickthall translation of the Qur’an, republished by the Folio Society, 2012.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Salaam, Yusef, 1974–author.

  Title: Better, not bitter : living on purpose in the pursuit of racial justice / Yusef Salaam.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2021. | Summary: “They didn’t know who they had.” So begins Yusef Salaam telling his story. No one’s life is the sum of the worst things that happened to them, and during Yusef Salaam’s seven years of wrongful incarceration as one of the Central Park Five, he grew from child to man, and gained a spiritual perspective on life. Yusef learned that we’re all “born on purpose, with a purpose.” Despite having confronted the racist heart of America while being “run over by the spiked wheels of injustice,” Yusef channeled his energy and pain into something positive, not just for himself but for other marginalized people and communities. Better, Not Bitter is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. Yusef writes his narrative: growing up Black in central Harlem in the ’80s, being raised by a strong, fierce mother and grandmother, his years of incarceration, his reentry, and exoneration. Yusef connects these stories to lessons and principles he learned that gave him the power to survive through the worst of life’s experiences. He inspires readers to accept their own path, to understand their own sense of purpose. With his intimate personal insights, Yusef unpacks the systems built and designed for profit and the oppression of Black and Brown people. He inspires readers to channel their fury into action, and through the spiritual, to turn that anger and trauma into a constructive force that lives alongside accountability and mobilizes change. This memoir is an inspiring story that grew out of one of the gravest miscarriages of justice, one that not only speaks to a moment in time or the rage-filled present, but reflects a 400-year history of a nation’s inability to be held accountable for its sins. Yusef Salaam’s message is vital for our times, a motivating resource for enacting change. Better, Not Bitter has the power to soothe, inspire, and transform. It is a galvanizing call to action.—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020054033 | ISBN 9781538705001 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781538704981 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Salaam, Yusef, 1974– | Prisoners—New York (State)—New York—Biography. | False imprisonment—New York (State)—New York | Judicial error—New York (State)—New York. | Discrimination in criminal justice administration—New York (State)—New York.

  Classification: LCC HV9468.S244 A3 2021 | DDC 365/.6092 [B]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020054033

  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-0500-1 (hardcover), 978-1-5387-0498-1 (ebook)

  E3-20210331-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION: Born on Purpose, with a Purpose

  ONE The Escape

  TWO Master Yusef Salaam

  THREE Before

  FOUR 95A1113

  FIVE Elevate and Decide in the Air

  SIX Love and War

  SEVEN SALAAM BALONEY!

  EIGHT The Safest Man You Could Ever Meet

  NINE The Expendability of a People

  TEN A Mother’s Love

  ELEVEN Ignorance as a Trillion-Dollar Industry

  TWELVE Becoming an Alchemist

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Suggested Reading List

  Reading Group Guide

  For my mother, Sharonne Salaam; my sister, Ace; and my brother, Shaf

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  INTRODUCTION

  Born on Purpose, with a Purpose

  THEY DIDN’T KNOW WHO THEY HAD.

  I say this often, and most people think it is something I figured out after being imprisoned for a crime I did not commit. It is not. From very early on, I innately knew that I had a destiny that existed beyond the one the criminal justice system attempted to assign to me. I just needed to live long enough for that purpose to come to fruition.

  And to be honest, my survival wasn’t the only thing at stake. My physical survival, yes, but also my mental and emotional endurance.

  They didn’t know who they had.

  In 1989, I was run over by the spiked wheels of justice. I was vilified in such a way that I became a pariah, a scourge. Within the first few weeks of the accusations that would turn Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and myself—then known as the Central Park Five—into poster children for Black deviance, a tsunami of media rolled out the proverbial red carpet, leading us to our destruction at the hands of the American justice system.

  On the day I was convicted, my hope died. It would take years before it was resurrected again. I was sixteen years old when I stood in the hallway of the courthouse and someone ran up to me saying, “They have a verdict!” In that moment, I truly believed that we’d be exonerated. Surely they would see that we didn’t do this, I thought. I’d been out on bail up until that point, so although I’d had to endure the questions, the intense media scrutiny, I was still giving my mom a kiss before bed at night. I was still talking to my cousins, talking to my friends.

  Guilty.

  That verdict shattered me. I was a child. But I didn’t get to go home with my mom and turn myself in later. They put the handcuffs on me right there and then. No hugs. No long goodbyes. No letting me change my clothes or shoes. They took us away immediately. I felt a profound sense of powerlessness in that moment, a moment I wouldn’t wish on
my worst enemy. My body shook with fear. I’m still not sure how I found the strength to stand up. What, do you mean right now? I felt like I was being led to the slaughterhouse. Aside from child molestation, rape was the worst crime to go to jail for. They were supposed to send us back to the juvenile detention center, but they didn’t. Instead, they intentionally sent us directly to Rikers Island, a notoriously violent prison from which many men never returned.

  I’m gonna die.

  They tried to kill me.

  They stole years from us. From me.

  But I didn’t die.

  Because I was somehow always clear that I was born on purpose, with a purpose. With that knowledge, I was able to keep my mind free, even when my body was imprisoned.

  When I think about how I was able to survive this thing and why I believe in the power of purpose in a person’s life, I think about the ancient stories of Abraham ()1 found in both the Bible and the Qur’an. Stories I uncovered only after deep-diving into these sacred texts while in prison.

  Abraham () was chosen. He was called to a specific assignment. When they threw him into the fire, all he had to say was “God, help me!” and God told the fire to be cool and safe. That’s what this journey has been like for me. Of course, I’m not Abraham (). I’m no prophet. But I do believe I have a purpose that made it so that despite the things designed to kill me—the racism, the criminal system of injustice, the attempted assault while in prison—it was God who told the prison to be cool and safe for me. So I didn’t suffer the same fate of others accused of and imprisoned for rape. The code didn’t apply to me for some reason. There was, I believe, a light that the guards and other prisoners saw in and around me. A light that made them say, “You don’t belong here.” That doesn’t mean it was easy, not by any means. I had hard and difficult days. But I felt this sense of having a veil, a hedge of protection, following and covering me everywhere I went.

  My story is not your typical “how I’ve overcome” narrative. I’ve been so grateful for the ways in which the story of the now Exonerated Five has been told via documentaries and the recent Netflix limited series. Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us and all the subsequent interviews may have given you a taste of what some of my life was like after that fateful day in April 1989, but my life did not begin or end that day; my life is more than the sum of the worst things that happened to me. Now is the time for me to tell my whole story.

  I not only hope to share who I was then and who I am now, but also what I want to tell you about most is who I was before 1989. I want to tell you about the foundation laid by both my family and my faith, which ensured that I would not only survive this awful injustice but also thrive in the midst of it.

  I also want you to know that no matter where you come from or what circumstances you may find yourself in, you can thrive in the midst of your trials.

  I have a somewhat mystical perspective when it comes to my experience. I firmly believe that when you look at what transpired in my life—between then and now—what you see is the hand of God. You may ask, how is that possible? How can a terrible injustice such as the one I lived with for almost twenty-five years be representative of anything divine at work?

  I believe that everything that’s happening to you is actually happening for you. Everything we experience in life—from our greatest joys to our deepest pain and hardship—is shaping and creating us. It’s preparing us for what we will need later on in our lives. I was ripped out of society and lodged back in the womb of America, what some in America would call “the belly of the beast.” Like many Black men and women, I was in a place where I was forced to be dependent on the system that in its creation is designed to use and harm Black bodies for profit. And it’s a dependence that can become too familiar, that you can feel too accustomed to, if you’re not careful. Far too often men and women are physically released back into society who aren’t mentally, emotionally, or spiritually ready. They experience that rebirth too soon. They aren’t taught how to detach from the incubator, so to speak. They are still dependent on being fed by a deeply dysfunctional system. But when the cell doors shut, I knew—even at such an early age—that if I was not careful to protect my mind and heart, I could become attached to the process of getting my nourishment from a system that didn’t care about me at all. I had to keep reminding myself that this experience was one that God would use to teach me something I would need in the future. I now firmly believe that I was being stretched, broken, and adjusted in a different way in order to be birthed back into society as a person who now is fearless.

  One clear and present example of God’s hand in all this is the fact that the very person who castigated us, the person who—without knowing us—hated us the most and spent $85,000 for ads in national newspapers to bring back the death penalty in order to poison public opinion against us, would ultimately become the forty-fifth president of the United States. God knew I needed to have a backbone that would allow me to not cower in the face of it all. I needed to have a level of strength that would allow me to continue to stand tall in the face of my vilifier and continue to speak truth to power.

  I think every person who has been to jail instinctively responds to the sound of cell doors closing. The steel clanging of bars and the echo that lasts long after the door has shut. That sound is a trigger for me that I still can’t shake, sending shivers and chills through my body. A few years ago I went to Sing Sing to do my TED Talk. I was excited to be able to share my story with men who might have been struggling in the same ways I once had. At first, I tried to bring my laptop, phone, and tablet inside, and the guard was like, “This is jail. Don’t you remember? You can’t bring any of that in here.” But I had forgotten.

  Ultimately, I left everything I’d prepared on my laptop and phone outside the prison and entered with just a few written notes and my mind. But when I heard those cell doors close, the clanging and the echo, it pulled me back to my fifteen- and sixteen- and twenty-one-year-old selves. For a moment, I panicked. My blood ran cold and that familiar sinking feeling lodged itself in my gut. They know I’m just a visitor, right? They are not going to leave me in here, right? The trauma of my past was entwined in me; it had connected itself to my body.

  My experience taught me how to deal with fear. Like many have said, fear is nothing more than false evidence appearing as reality, and I believe that to be true. After all, it was fear of Black and Brown bodies that led America to damn the five of us, for the false evidence linking us to a crime to be taken for fact. When you conquer a fear once, you will find yourself being more courageous the next time you are faced with it. Sometimes fear is allowed to be present for a while; sometimes we should permit ourselves to experience fear in order to grow from it. In doing so, we grow more courageous and we can share those lessons fear taught us as we move toward operating in our purpose. You see, everybody was born on purpose. Even the thief and the murderer. I’ve learned through my own life that, as much as we despise it and wish it weren’t true, there’s a necessity for evil, for difficulties. There is no light without darkness.

  You and I were born on purpose and for a purpose. This idea becomes crystal clear when we realize that when our parents created us, the person we would ultimately become was one of over four hundred million options. We have sperm racing toward an egg, and the odds of us being us are astronomical. Think about it! There was intention there. Part of understanding my story is reconciling the concept that we all have a great thing to do in this world once we realize who we are.

  Haven’t we all, at some point in time, wondered, What am I here for? What am I supposed to be doing? And especially if, like me, you find yourself in a less than favorable circumstance, these questions are often first and foremost in your mind. But the thing is, I’ve found that the answers to those questions lie in what is showing up in my life. The key is to be still long enough to really listen to what your experiences and circumstances are telling you. Once we do that, we just might find ourselves saying, “Oh, I
was supposed to go through this,” or “I was meant to grow through that.” I hope those two perspectives will change your outlook and your movements in life, as they did mine.

  Instead of deciding to believe that their terrible circumstance actually has the hand of God written on it, many people will question God. Some even go as far as cursing God. They want to know, “Why is this happening to me?” And to a certain extent, I understand why we are prone to do this. The Exonerated Five were children. We were fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years old. Why would such a traumatic event be allowed to happen to five innocent kids? A few of my brothers in this experience felt this way. But, personally, I would never have been able to survive if I didn’t allow the experience to deepen my faith. My time in prison became a spiritual awakening that I’m grateful to be able to finally share. It was part of my metamorphosis. And just like the caterpillar that must wrap itself in a chrysalis and endure a season of waiting until its full beauty is realized, I, too, had to be wrapped up for a season in order to be revealed to the world as the person I am today.

  As my mother always says, “Nobody leaves here alive.” The wealthiest place on earth has never been Africa, where there is gold and diamonds; or the Middle East, where there’s oil. The richest place on earth is the graveyard. It’s the place where everyone’s unfulfilled hopes, dreams, and aspirations have been laid to rest. My challenge to you is this: No matter what life has taken you through, try to live full and die empty.

  So it’s important that you don’t just read stories like mine and then go about your life, business as usual. Take a look at the evil that showed up in my life and figure out what your light will be. What will be your purpose in this moment? Whether you’re a child of a former enslaved African or a child of a former slave owner, how do you use your present-day privilege to help the cause of racial injustice? Can I leverage the resources I have and start donating to causes and organizations that help people who have been marginalized and trampled upon? Can I give my time and skills to work with communities and organizations at the grassroots level? Can I take my voice and use it to defend the voiceless, to have the difficult conversations needed to change hearts and minds? These are the questions I hope you ask, even as you unpack what your own purpose is.