Yusef Salaam, a city councilman from Harlem, was one of five Black and Latino men exonerated in the rape and assault of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1989. Former President Donald J. Trump, who is white, took out full-page advertisements in four newspapers, including The New York Times, calling for the death penalty to be reinstated because of the case.
Now Mr. Salaam is expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday evening, the last night of the convention, according to three people familiar with the convention planning, because he is seen as an ideal candidate to talk about how dangerous it would be to elect Mr. Trump to a second term.
Not only can he speak to concerns about Mr. Trump’s character, but Mr. Salaam, who is Black, would demonstrate Black men’s backing of Vice President Kamala Harris, as some polls have shown their wavering support for Democrats.
“Something very special is happening in America right now — a Black woman is going to be the president of these United States,” Mr. Salaam said of Ms. Harris as he walked through Central Harlem on Saturday, greeting people during the Harlem Week festival. “It’s also a very dangerous time. Democracy itself is on the ballot.”
The news website Semafor first reported last week that Mr. Salaam had been invited to speak at the convention, but it said that plans had not been locked in. He is expected to be introduced after remarks by the Rev. Al Sharpton and to be joined onstage by three of the four men who were wrongly convicted with him as teenagers and who together came to be known as the Central Park Five — Korey Wise, Raymond Santana and Kevin Richardson, according to the people familiar with the plans.
Before President Biden dropped out of the race last month, some Black voters were feeling disconnected from the Democratic Party. An October poll from The Times and Siena College found that 22 percent of registered Black voters in six battleground states planned to vote for Mr. Trump, who received 8 percent of the Black vote in the 2020 election. A Republican candidate has not received more than 12 percent of the Black vote in nearly 50 years.
Mr. Salaam, who spent nearly seven years in prison for the Central Park case, had previously worked with the Biden campaign to highlight a message that Mr. Trump had “consistently disrespected and dehumanized” Black Americans. Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League, said Mr. Trump had “made his career on racially accusatory comments.”
Ms. Harris’s poll numbers are up among Black voters. She was leading Mr. Trump among registered Black voters 78 percent to 16 percent, according to new polls from The Times and Siena College.
“We’ve been needing someone who can unite us,” Mr. Salaam said.
In Harlem, Mr. Salaam was greeted by images of the vice president on signs and fliers and by vendors selling T-shirts emblazoned with “Harlem for Kamala Harris.”
“There’s not too many people in Harlem that’s not going to vote for her,” said Ethel Hart, 69, a retired department of correction worker who was sitting in front of a sign that read “Harlem Black Women for Kamala Harris” with Geneva Chase, 80, a retired nurse.
“Walk up and down this street,” Ms. Chase chimed in, “and you’ll see that people are excited.”
Keith L.T. Wright, chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party, who recruited Mr. Salaam to run for City Council, said Mr. Salaam and the other men he was convicted with have a “unique perspective” and a story that is “no different than a lot of other Black men” who have faced the destructive consequences of racism.
Ms. Harris, who has been criticized for her background as prosecutor, has spoken about injustice in the criminal system.
Black voters don’t “have a problem a problem with honest law enforcement,” said Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s progressive attorney general, who is Black and has endorsed Mr. Salaam. He said Mr. Salaam’s presence on the convention stage, as an example of the type of person the criminal justice system has been the most unfair to, “clearly communicates that dynamic.”