Kevin D. Richardson was 14 when he was arrested, ultimately spending seven years incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit.
Throughout that time and after, he and four friends arrested with him were vilified widely as predatory Black teenagers who beat and sexually assaulted a white woman jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989.
More than 30 years after the infamous “Central Park Five” arrests (as they came to be known in the media), Richardson—the speaker at the 2023 Harris School of Public Policy’s George E. Kent Lecture—has transformed his nightmarish experience into activism.
An advocate for criminal justice reform who travels the country in service of that cause, Richardson has partnered with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit working against wrongful convictions and supporting a fair justice system. He contributed to an acclaimed Netflix miniseries, When They See Us, about his ordeal. Syracuse University has established a scholarship in his name for people of color lacking college resources.
Click here to read the full story.
This story was first published by UChicago News.
