WS Chronicle

Yusef Salaam is the inspirational speaker and prison reform activist, who at age fourteen was one of the five teenage boys wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison in the Central Park jogger case. In 1997 he left prison as an adult to a world he didn’t fully recognize or understand. In 2002 the sentences for the Central Park Five were overturned and all five were exonerated for the crime they didn’t commit.

Salaam now travels the world as an inspirational speaker, speaking about the effects of incarceration and the devastating impact of disenfranchisement. He is an advocate and educator on issues of mass incarceration, police brutality and misconduct, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in the criminal justice system, especially for men of color.

His memoir, “Better, Not Bitter: Living on Purpose in the Pursuit of Racial Justice,” serves as a call to action that will inspire all to turn personal stories into tools for change. Salaam learned that we’re all “born on purpose, with a purpose.” 

“Better, Not Bitter” is the first time that one of the now Exonerated Five is telling his individual story, in his own words. With his intimate personal insights, Salaam 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 event is presented with support from Wake Forest University’s Slavery, Race, and Memory Project and Wake Law School’s Prosecutor Accountability Project. 

This event will be the inaugural event in Book with Purpose, Bookmarks’ summer community-wide initiative to read, learn, listen, and respond on the theme of antiracism.  This will be a free virtual event held on Crowdcast and will be available for replay following the live airing. 

Copies of “Better, Not Bitter” are available for pre-order from Bookmarks and will be published on the event date of May 18. To purchase the book and register for the event go to: https://www.bookmarksnc.org/DrYusefSalaam.