The set of blazing emotions provoked by Yusef Salaam's memoir, BETTER, NOT BITTER, includes strong doses of disgust, shame, anger --- and inspiration. In 1989, five teenagers, all Black or Hispanic, were convicted in the notorious case of a young white female jogger who had been raped, beaten, tortured and left for dead in Central Park. Salaam was one of those teenagers.

His life until that fateful April day had been relatively carefree and productive. His mother, who had converted to Islam shortly after her marriage, was an extraordinary person, a woman of admirable character who demonstrated her huge love for her three children in every imaginable way. She was protective, affectionate, smart, strong-willed, hardworking and conscientious. And she carefully taught them all the rules and behaviors they would need to protect themselves --- and survive --- on the menacing Harlem streets. Salaam absorbed all that guidance and inherited much of her strength, self-discipline, intelligence, belief in the power of his God, Allah, and in his own determination to overcome every conceivable obstacle no matter how cruel. All those positive traits would be desperately needed and tested in the months and years to come.

"Salaam...managed to survive the conditions of his imprisonment only through several fortunate factors: his incredible combination of fortitude and stubborn sense of self-worth, his innate intelligence, and his unusual and outstanding leadership abilities."

The case against the Central Park Five was woefully weak from the start. The boys were forced into confessions, but each was blatantly contradicted by the others, a sure sign that they were made up out of whole cloth, primarily to avoid beatings and torture at the hands of the police. But due to the fear that had infected New York City in the '80s, law enforcement needed culprits. So the guilty verdicts in the trials were foregone conclusions. And instantly, the entire country willingly and often gleefully accepted those results. The kids were labelled beasts, monsters and wild animals, and in full-page newspaper ads, Donald Trump demanded their executions. All were sentenced to years-long prison terms.

The American justice system had been tested and failed miserably. It was then and remains today a sad example of the cruel systemic racism that plagues this country just as it has since its inception. It's a system whose main goal is to maintain the over-arching beliefs and behaviors of white supremacists, the behaviors they need in order to hold onto their power: Black people and all people of color must accept the fact that they are invisible; that they always have been and always will be inferior; that they are not worthy of "our" justice; that prison is their near-inevitable destiny; that prisons are and should be the cotton fields of the 20th and 21st centuries; and that white supremacy reflects the natural and correct order of things.

Salaam, we learn from his memoir, managed to survive the conditions of his imprisonment only through several fortunate factors: his incredible combination of fortitude and stubborn sense of self-worth, his innate intelligence, and his unusual and outstanding leadership abilities. He became an imam in both the juvenile and adult prisons to which he was assigned, a leader and teacher of the Muslim inmates who, in turn, fiercely protected him from the physical dangers that all prisoners fear and face every minute of every day.

In 1997, Salaam emerged from his imprisonment severely wounded spiritually and emotionally. But with the love of his family and the good people who surrounded him, he survived and eventually prospered. In 2002, the man who had actually committed the crime confessed. Ten years later, Ken Burns directed a jarring documentary film about this tragic event. Later, Ava DuVernay wrote and produced a powerful dramatization of the plight of the Central Park Five, a series called "When They See Us." And today, Salaam is an internationally recognized inspirational speaker.

New York City eventually awarded a $41 million settlement to the Exonerated Five. And perhaps the greatest miracle of all is the fact that Yusef Salaam himself can sincerely proclaim --- to all of us --- that he is Better, Not Bitter.