Ava DuVernay on “When They See Us,” About the Boys Who Became the Central Park Five

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, Wnyc, David, Arts, Yorker, Society & Culture, Storytelling, Books, New, Remnick, Politics

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2019

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ava DuVernay doesn’t like using the term Central Park Five—a moniker created by the press in the aftermath of the notorious and brutal assault of a twenty-eight-year-old woman, Trisha Meili. “They’re not the Central Park Five,” she tells the New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb. “They’re Korey, Yusef, Antron, Kevin, and Raymond.” They were five teens who were coerced into confessing to a terrible crime by police determined to find a culprit. It was a time when “the police, the district attorney, the prosecutors [wanted] to get a ‘win’ on the board,” DuVernay thinks, “because there were so many losses, so much going wrong.” Cobb wrote in The New Yorker that “The reaction to Meili’s assault came as the nadir of a two-decade-long spiral of racial animosity driven by a fear of crime,” noting that, in that same week, brutal attacks on women of color failed to generate any headlines or perceptible outrage. The story has returned to public consciousness in recent years because of its role in launching Donald Trump’s political career. One of Trump’s first political acts, in 1989, was to take out a newspaper ad calling for the execution of the boys, and he stuck by his view even after they were exonerated. DuVernay’s goal was to tell the story of those five boys and the men they became. “When They See Us” was released on Netflix on May 31st.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:10.5	Ava DuVernay is probably best known for the movie Selma. It's a wrenching but finally triumphant story about the Alabama's Civil Rights March, led by Dr. King in 1965.
0:22.0	But DuVernay's films have not always been so uplifting.
0:26.0	Two years after Selma, she released 13th, named for the 13th Amendment.
0:31.5	She draws a very direct connection between slavery and mass incarceration in our own time.
0:37.1	Her new film also looks at justice and race in a way that can rightfully be called
0:40.8	tragic, a four-part miniseries called When They See Us.
0:45.4	When They See Us is about the five teenagers whose lives were nearly destroyed
0:50.5	after they were accused and convicted of a terrible crime in 1989.
0:55.3	They became known as the Central Park Five.
0:58.6	One of Donald Trump's first political acts, this was 30 years ago,
1:02.5	was to take a newspaper ad out calling for their execution.
1:05.9	And Trump stuck by that view even after New York City admitted that the conviction of the five boys was wrong, exonerated them, and paid them a settlement.
1:15.6	Ava D'Vernay recently sat down to talk about her film with New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb.
1:21.8	So can you just walk us through what happened on the night of April 19, 1989?
1:27.7	Sure. On the night of April 19, 1989. Sure.
1:29.1	On the night of April 19, 1989, five black and brown boys were picked up in and around Central Park,
1:35.0	both that night and the next morning.
1:37.8	The first boys that were picked up were picked up for being boys, will be boys in the park,
1:43.3	hanging out, you know, loitering, you know, unlawful assembly.
1:48.6	Those are some of the things that they were picked up for when you go back and look at the police records.
1:53.0	It was a large group, 30 to 40 boys in the park, who were also messing with bicyclists and harassing and cat-calling bicyclists,
	...

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