NAACP Hosts Film Screening

ONEONTA—A free showing of “The Central Park Five,” a film by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, sponsored by the Oneonta Area NAACP, will be held on Thursday, November 21 at 7 p.m. at Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center, 24 Market Street.

In 1989, five Black and Latino teenagers were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City’s Central Park. They spent between 6-13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed to the crime, and their convictions were overturned.

Set against a backdrop of a city beset by violence and racial tension, this film tells the story of that crime, the rush to judgement by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories, an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.