For some time now, Ben Crump has become an almost constant presence in the United States for everything related to racial inequality and police brutality.
In the last decade, this attorney for 65 years has been involved in the most notorious cases of African Americans killed or seriously injured at the hands of the police.
We are talking about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Jacob Blake, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd or, more recently, Daunte Wright and Andrew Brown, each with a different story , but whose common destiny served to give shape and momentum to the movement Black Lives Matter .
Crump hardly has time to celebrate a Court victory, such as the guilty verdict of former police officer Derek Chauvin last 20 April by the aces innate of George Floyd in May 2020.
Pending cases or new orders accumulate.
One day he is celebrating a ruling in court with the relatives of a victim and the next day he is at a funeral for another young man shot to death.
Who is he this lawyer who seems to be everywhere?
“Until hell freezes over”
After Chauvin’s conviction, the lawyer born in Lumberton, North Carolina, and based in Florida, appeared proud before the cameras.
Surrounded by relatives of Floyd, Crump described the verdict as a victory for all.
“Justice is not justice if it does not include each one of us,” he exclaimed. “ It is a victory for every man, woman and child who longed for and fought for justice , but did not live to see it.”
Crump no led the criminal prosecution against the former police officer, but represented Floyd’s family in their civil lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis and secured the largest financial compensation in U.S. history in a pre-trial civil lawsuit : $ 27 millions of dollars.
“I keep hoping and trusting that if we can make them pay millions of dollars every time they shoot a black man in the back, there will be fewer black people who are shoots them in the back, “Crump explained to the media.
” That’s my theory. I am still unconfirmed because they keep killing us. We must fight until hell freezes over. ”
He has dedicated his professional life as a lawyer to that fight, even before becoming such a public and media figure.
Awareness since childhood
“I have been a civil rights attorney for my entire professional life, but I have been black all my life. ”
This sentence summarizes Crump’s thinking and determination to fight against racial injustice and to defend himself against critical voices, which also there are, who are branded as opportunistic and as having a desire for prominence.
He grew up near Fort Bragg, a major military base that who was a pioneer in the integration of blacks and whites in the US.
The oldest of 9 brothers and stepbrothers, his transfer to a school that had previously been only for whites made him realize the racial differences since childhood.
In his book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People (“Open season: genocide Black Law ”), Crump describes how in elementary school he learned that a white classmate’s weekly allowance was the same as his mother’s weekly salary from two jobs in a shoe factory and a man’s laundry. hotel.
In this autobiographical work, Crump evokes how his mother told him the story of the famous civil rights lawyer Thurgood Marshall , the first judge African American to reach the US Supreme Court, who became his hero.
Law Studies
He studied high school in Tallahassee, Florida, where he lived co n her mother and her second husband, the man Crump considers her father.
He obtained a scholarship to Florida State University (FSU), where he studied Law and he was president of the Black Students Union.
“ He has always fought for these issues , and at that time it was not so different. He fought any injustice that he perceived as such, ”Sean Pittman, an FSU graduate and lawyer who has known Crump for more than , tells Time magazine years.
For Pittman, the cases that Crump now defends are bigger and more important, but the man is the same.
Of profound religious beliefs, Crump carries 22 years married to his wife, with whom he has an 8-year-old daughter, Brooklyn.
Trayvon Martin
Crump assumed from the beginning of his career, civil lawsuits involving African-Americans, with which he shaped his current profile.
He obtained high financial compensation in several litigation that made his name become known in Florida.
Until the case of Trayvon Martin , which was the one that gave Crump not national origin as a civil rights attorney.
Trayvon was a young man from 17 years that, one night in February of 2012, was walking down a street in Sanford, Florida, toward the house of his father.
It was night and the boy was unarmed, but George Zimmerman, a volunteer vigilante who patrolled the area, attacked and killed him . He alleged that he had done so in self-defense.
Trayvon’s father contacted Crump to represent the family and that is how the name and image of the lawyer began to be associated with these types of cases.
“Attorney General of the blacks”
After Trayvon Martin’s other cases came, such as Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, a young man from 18 years than in 2014 was shot dead by the white police officer Darren Wilson.
Or that of Breonna Taylor , a woman from 26 years of Louisville, Kentucky, who died in a shooting at his own home in a police raid.
All these processes have earned him nicknames, among which stands out that of “ attorney general of the Black United States ”given by the Reverend Al Sharpton.
When that nickname is mentioned, Crump simply shrugs his shoulders.
Subject of criticism
Cameras follow Crump wherever he goes, people stop him To take pictures with him, he has appeared in documentaries and even briefly in a movie, “Marshall,” about his admired Thurgood Marshall, and Netflix is preparing a film about his fight.
Conservative author Candace Owens accused him in April of attempting to profit from police shootings and stimulating violent protests.
“Keep them Living race issues have become a business in America, ”Owens said in an interview on the conservative Fox News channel.
“It was Al Sharpton yesterday, Jesse Jackson tomorrow, Ben Crump today.”
This does not bother Crump: “It would be the height of arrogance to think that everything the world is going to adore you. This is not a popularity contest “.
A large signature
Contrary to what I could Apparently, the Crump rate is the standard for cases where the agreement is that the client does not pay anything until there is a resolution.
Those who win in court or receive compensation usually pay their lawyers between 33% and the 40%.
Crump, whose elegant legal signature based in Tallahassee employs 110 people, explains that he earns most of his money and pays his staff with earned income in less visible cases.
It does not feel unique or essential.
“I hope to do everything humanly possible, for as long as I can, and when I can’t, it will be perfect for me to pass the baton on to the next generation “.
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