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FILE -
In this
Monday,
April
19, 2021
file
photo,
Ben
Crump,
left,
attorney
representing
George
Floyd's
family,
walks
with the
Rev. Al
Sharpton,
center,
and
Floyd's
brothers
Terrence
Floyd,
center
left,
and
Rodney
Floyd,
center
right,
outside
of the
Hennepin
County
Government
Center
in
Minneapolis,
before
the
murder
trial
against
former
Minneapolis
police
officer
Derek
Chauvin
advances
to jury
deliberations.
(AP
Photo/Julio
Cortez)
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'Black
America’s
attorney
general'
seems to
be
everywhere
By
AARON
MORRISON
and
JOHN
SEEWER
apnews.com
Ben
Crump,
the Rev.
Al
Sharpton
says, is
“Black
America’s
attorney
general.”
In
less
than a
decade,
the
Florida-based
attorney
has
become
the
voice
for the
families
of
Trayvon
Martin,
Michael
Brown,
Breonna
Taylor
and
George
Floyd --
Black
people
whose
deaths
at the
hands of
police
and
vigilantes
sparked
a
movement.
He
has won
multimillion-dollar
settlements
in
police
brutality
cases.
He’s
pushed
cities
to ban
no-knock
warrants.
He has
told a
congressional
committee
that
reform
is
needed
because
“it’s
become
painfully
obvious
we have
two
systems
of
justice;
one for
white
Americans
and one
for
Black
Americans.”
And
he’s
stood
with
Black
farmers
taking
on an
agribusiness
giant,
and
families
exposed
to
lead-contaminated
water in
Flint,
Michigan.
“He’s a
real
believer
in what
he’s
doing.
He has
taken
the
attacks.
He has
taken
the
cases
that
others
wouldn’t
take,”
Sharpton
said,
adding,
“People
can go
to him.
The
reason I
trust
him is
because
he has
never
misled
me. Good
or bad,
he’ll
tell me
the
truth
about a
client.”
These
days, he
seems to
be
everywhere.
In
April,
he
joined
with
George
Floyd’s
family
in
celebrating
the
conviction
of
ex-cop
Derek
Chauvin.
Then he
was
among
the
mourners
at the
funeral
for
Daunte
Wright,
who was
shot
during a
traffic
stop in
suburban
Minneapolis
in the
week
leading
up to
Chauvin’s
verdict
— a
juxtaposition
he finds
incredible.
“If
ever
there
was a
time for
police
to be on
their
best
behavior,
if ever
there
was a
time for
them to
use the
greatest
standard
of care,
if ever
there
was a
time for
them to
de-escalate,
it was
during
this
trial,
which I
believe
was one
of the
most
consequential
police
(and)
civil
rights
cases in
our
history,”
Crump
told The
Associated
Press.
After
Wright’s
funeral,
he was
back in
Florida
to call
for a
federal
investigation
of a
deputy
who
fatally
shot two
Black
teenagers.
And he
began
this
past
week
demanding
that
police
in North
Carolina
be more
transparent
after
deputies
fatally
shot a
Black
man
outside
of his
house.
Critics
see him
as an
opportunist
who
never
fails to
show up
amid
another
tragedy.
But
those
who know
Crump
say he’s
been
fighting
for
fairness
long
before
his name
was in
headlines.
“Where
there’s
injustice,
that’s
where he
wants to
be,”
said
Ronald
Haley, a
Louisiana
attorney,
who’s
among a
wide
network
of
lawyers
Crump
works
with on
lawsuits.
“He
understands
he’s
needed
everywhere,
but he
also
understands
he can’t
be
everywhere.”
Crump,
51, is a
tireless
worker
who
mixes
Southern
charm, a
talent
for
attracting
media
attention
to his
cases
and a
firm
belief
that
racism
afflicts
the
nation,
and the
courts
are the
place to
take it
on.
He
has an
uncanny
way of
making
his
clients
feel
like
kin,
they
say.
“He
has
never
missed a
Thanksgiving
to check
in on
me, he
calls on
Christmas,”
said
Allisa
Findley,
who
first
met
Crump
three
days
after
her
brother,
Botham
Jean,
was
fatally
shot in
his
apartment
by a
white
Dallas
police
officer
who
mistook
the
Black
man’s
apartment
for her
own.
“Even
the
little
things,
he makes
time for
it, when
there
are no
cameras
rolling,”
she
said.
“He does
feel
like
family.
I
consider
Ben
family.”
Terrence
Floyd,
the
42-year-old
brother
of
George
Floyd,
said
Crump’s
attention
and care
for his
family
over the
last
year has
bonded
them
beyond
the
attorney-client
relationship.
“It
feels
like
it’s
more
family-based
than
business,”
he said.
“After a
while, I
went
from
calling
him ‘Mr.
Crump’
to
calling
him
‘Unc,’
like he
was one
of my
uncles.”
Crump
keeps up
a
dizzying
schedule
that
takes
him all
over,
but he
makes
sure
he’s
home for
Sunday
services
at
Bethel
Missionary
Baptist
Church.
He lives
in
Tallahassee
with his
wife and
their
8-year-old
daughter,
Brooklyn;
he also
helped
raise
two
cousins
and
became
their
legal
guardian.
“I
look at
my
daughter,”
Crump
said, “I
look in
her
eyes,
and then
I look
in the
eyes of
my
nieces
and
nephews,
and my
little
cousins
— all
these
little
Black
and
brown
children.
You see
so much
hope, so
much
optimism
in their
eyes.
We’ve
got to
give
them a
better
world.”
He
added:
“What
I’m
trying
to do,
as much
as I
can,
even
sometimes
singlehandedly,
is
increase
the
value of
Black
life.”
Crump’s
path to
becoming
a lawyer
and
advocate
began
while
growing
up in
Lumberton,
North
Carolina,
where he
was the
oldest
of nine
siblings
and
step-siblings.
In
his book
“Open
Season:
Legalized
Genocide
of
Colored
People,”
he
described
learning
in
elementary
school
that a
white
classmate’s
weekly
allowance
was as
much as
what his
mother
made in
a week
working
two jobs
at a
shoe
factory
and a
hotel
laundry.
“I
wanted
to
understand
why
people
on the
white
side of
the
tracks
had it
so good
and
Black
people
on our
side of
the
tracks
had it
so bad,”
he
wrote.
He
often
recounts
how he
learned
about
the
world by
reading
the
newspaper
to his
grandmother
and how
his
mother
taught
him the
story of
famed
civil
rights
lawyer
Thurgood
Marshall,
who
became
his
hero.
“He
has
always
gravitated
toward
leadership
and
being
the
answer
to
injustice,”
said
Sean
Pittman,
an
attorney
who has
been his
friend
for 30
years,
since
they met
at
Florida
State
University.
There,
Crump
was
president
of the
Black
Student
Union
and led
protests
to bring
attention
to how
the
school
recruited
and
treated
Black
students.
But
his rise
from
personal
injury
attorney
to a
voice of
Black
America
began in
2013
when he
represented
the
family
of
Trayvon
Martin,
a
teenager
killed
by a
neighborhood
watch
volunteer
in
Florida.
He then
took on
the case
for the
family
of
Michael
Brown
who was
fatally
shot by
a white
officer
near St.
Louis.
Crump
organized
marches
and
brought
media
attention
to both
of their
deaths —
each
happening
during
the rise
of the
Black
Lives
Matter
movement.
He
has gone
on to
win
financial
settlements
in about
200
police
brutality
cases.
In
March,
the city
of
Minneapolis
agreed
to pay
$27
million
to
settle a
civil
lawsuit
from
George
Floyd’s
family,
which
Crump
said is
the
largest
pretrial
civil
rights
lawsuit
settlement
ever.
“I
keep
hoping
and
believing,
if we
can make
them pay
multimillions
of
dollars
every
time
they
shoot a
Black
person
in the
back,
that
there
will be
less
Black
people
shot in
the
back,”
Crump
said.
“That’s
my
theory,
but it
remains
unanswered
because
they
keep
killing
us.”
In
recent
years he
has
produced
and
hosted
an A&E
documentary
“Who
Killed
Tupac?”
and
launched
a
production
company
to make
shows
about
injustice
and
civil
rights.
Crump
even had
a brief
role in
the 2017
film
“Marshall,”
which
tells of
the
early
life of
his
hero,
who
became
the
first
Black
U.S.
Supreme
Court
justice.
His
higher
profile
has
brought
more
scrutiny
and
turned
him into
a
frequent
target.
Conservative
author
Candace
Owens in
April
accused
Crump of
trying
to
profit
from
police
shootings
and
encouraging
violent
protests.
“Keeping
racial
issues
alive
has
become a
business
in
America,”
she told
Fox News
Channel’s
Laura
Ingraham.
“It’s Al
Sharpton
yesterday,
Jesse
Jackson
tomorrow,
Ben
Crump
today.”
It
doesn’t
really
bother
Crump:
“You
can’t
care
what the
enemies
of
equality
think of
you,” he
said.
“It
would be
the
height
of
arrogance
to think
that
everybody
is going
to love
you.
It’s not
a
popularity
contest.”
It’s
fitting
that he
is now
mentioned
among
the
giants
of civil
rights,
said
John
Bowman,
who has
known
him
since
Michael
Brown’s
killing
and is
now
president
of the
St.
Louis
County
NAACP.
“I
can’t
get in
his head
and say
he
charted
out this
course,
and
said,
‘I’m
going to
be the
next
strongest
voice
for
injustice,’”
Bowman
said. “I
do know
that
when the
call was
made, he
didn’t
shy away
or step
back
from
it.”
But
Crump
says he
eventually
would
like to
step
back
from it
all.
“I
literally
pray for
the day
when I
can
close
down the
police
brutality
division
of my
law
firm,”
he said,
“because
I am so
tired of
seeing
Black
people
killed
by the
police
unjustifiably.
I’d like
to tell
my staff
that we
no
longer
have to
fight in
the
courts,
or be
counselors
to so
many
grieving
mothers
and
fathers.”
____
Morrison
reported
from New
York
City.
Seewer
reported
from
Toledo,
Ohio.
____
Morrison
is a
member
of AP’s
Race and
Ethnicity
team.
Follow
him on
Twitter:
https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.
Also,
follow
Seewer
on
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/jseewerap.
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