Yusef Salaam Quotes

When you find yourself in dark places, there's always a light somewhere in that darkness, and even if that light is inside of you, you can illuminate your own darkness by shedding that light on the world.

And maybe there are small cracks in our walls and we start to see a sliver of light shine through in each other

I struggle with calling my mother a superhero, not because she isn't one, but after all that she's lived through, she deserves to be able to rest. Black women are often saddled with the "strong Black woman" trope, and it can undermine their humanity. We have tasked Black women with the pressure to play this part of the superwoman, a protective measure in order to cope with the constant stressors of racial discrimination. Yes, they are resilient. Yes, they seem to come to the aid of the whole world. But Black women cry. They feel. They grieve. They hurt. They deserve their own healing. My mother deserves her healing.

There will never be a moment when you say, “Okay, fine, that was good. I’m finished. All healed.” No, tomorrow you might need to talk about it again, to heal a little more. Be okay with the time it takes. There’s no need to rush it. What’s for you is for you.

No matter what life has taken you through...try to live full and die empty.

Years ago, if a white woman said a Black man looked at her lustfully, he could be hung higher than a magnolia tree in bloom, while a white mob watched joyfully sipping tea and eating cookies,” Yusef Salaam’s mother reminded readers of the Amsterdam News.

If what he was doing during the 2016 campaign hadn’t worked, he would have kept doing it anyway, because lying, playing to the lowest common denominator, cheating, and sowing division are all he knows. He is as incapable of adjusting to changing circumstances as he is of becoming “presidential.” He did tap into a certain bigotry and inchoate rage, which he’s always been good at doing. The full-page screed he paid to publish in the New York Times in 1989 calling for the Central Park Five to be put to death wasn’t about his deep concern for the rule of law; it was an easy opportunity for him to take on a deeply serious topic that was very important to the city while sounding like an authority in the influential and prestigious pages of the Gray Lady. It was unvarnished racism meant to stir up racial animosity in a city already seething with it. All five boys, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, and Yusef Salaam, were subsequently cleared, proven innocent via incontrovertible DNA evidence. To this day, however, Donald insists that they were guilty—yet another example of his inability to drop a preferred narrative even when it’s contradicted by established fact.

It's not a matter of whether you fall in life, because you will fall. When you fall try to land on your back, because if you can look up you can get up.