Members of the Central Park Five and their supporters rallied in New York City on Tuesday to pressure local officials to settle their case. The five black and Latino men were convicted as teenagers for the 1989 beating and rape of a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. Media coverage at the time portrayed the teens as guilty and used racially coded terms to describe them. But their convictions were vacated in 2002 when the real rapist came forward and confessed to the crime, after the five had already served jail terms of up to 13 years. Speaking at City Hall, Yusef Salaam urged Mayor Bill de Blasio to keep his promise to settle the Central Park Five’s case.

Yusef Salaam: “They said 'never again' with the Scottsboro Boys, but we’re the modern-day Scottsboro Boys. And here we are, still standing and still strong. But we’re standing strong because of the support that we’ve been receiving over the years. If the law enforcement oversteps the bounds of the laws just to get a conviction — and I mean, they never thought that the Central Park Five, the truth of the story would come out. People to this day think that we had some kind of involvement with something that happened in Central Park. We were innocent witnesses.”