Benjamin Crump knew he wanted to be a lawyer starting in the fourth grade.
“Thurgood Marshall is my personal hero,” he said. “In the fourth grade the schools were integrated in my small town of Lumberton, North Carolina, and I got to see how good they had it on the other side of town, across the tracks, with the new school books and the new technology, and how challenging we had it on the south side of the tracks.”
Marshall helped to change that.
“And I remember my mother telling me that the reason why we got to go to the new white school with all the new equipment and books was because of Thurgood Marshall and the Brown vs. the Board of Education case,” Crump said.
“And I said, from that day, ‘I want to be like Thurgood Marshall,’ because I want to try to make it better for people in my community, people who look like me.”
Crump rose to national prominence over the past several years as he took on a series of high-profile civil rights cases, including those of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown Jr. Now he’s taking his work one step farther by establishing a national law firm. Staffed by a team of “approximately 400 lawyers” and supported by the Morgan and Morgan law firm, Ben Crump Law “will focus on civil rights, employment law, personal injury, workers’ compensation, medical malpractice and wrongful death cases, as well as mass torts and class action,” according to a press release.
Crump is optimistic about this opportunity to create change on a larger scale.
“I think that certainly I will be able to affect more people, be able to try to address more cries for justice from so many people who I have traditionally served, but have been limited by the amount of manpower and resources,” he said.
“This will give me the scale to help individuals on a much greater level, to be able to affect the critical issues that I think are so germane to minority communities, that I haven’t been able to do so far.”
He established Ben Crump Law, he said, because “We really want to try to even the playing field, really want to try to help the–as my mother would call them, in the Bible, the least of these, the people who are most often marginalized.”
His new offices will be in Washington, D.C., Tallahassee, Florida, and Los Angeles, because the legal injustices he hopes to fight are “everywhere in America.”
“When I would travel to different cities all across America, you would hear a lot of the similar stories of injustice,” Crump said. “And they all needed help. They all needed somebody to be a voice for them, somebody to take a stand for them. And so what occurred to me is, I’ve got to find a way to be able to do more to help. What good is having influence if you don’t use it where it matters most?”
The cases he takes on are numerous, and they are emotional – often involving a grieving family and a court system that refuses to give them the justice they deserve. To keep himself going throughout it all, Crump focuses on his own family.
“The thing that keeps my compass focused is that I have two adopted cousins that I’ve raised,” he said. Chancellor is 19, and Marcus is 23.
“They were the same age as Trayvon Martin, and Michael Brown, and you know, I remember looking at my own boys and saying, ‘But by the grace of God, there go I,’” Crump said.
“Every person of color in America can understand and connect with what these parents go through, because every time my children leave the house, we pray that they make it home safe, and that they’re not killed or hurt by the very people who are supposed to protect and serve them. Because we see it happen so frequently in our community that we know none of our children are safe.”
Along with his two adopted cousins, Crump is raising a daughter, Brooklyn, who is four (“though she would tell you she’s four and a half”).
“She helps me focus on what’s important. And I think about these cases, and they are all gut-wrenching,” he said.
“But I look at my family, and I think about the future I want for them, and I say, ‘It would be selfish of me to just say I want a bright future for my children.’ I want a bright future for everybody’s children! Black, white, Hispanic, Asian – that’s what keeps me focused, even when I go in courtrooms, and I’m fighting for the civil rights of some black or brown person, and the only thing black in the courtroom is me, my client, and the judge’s robe.”
Crump believes the lessons learned in Ferguson will continue to carry forward into the future.
“One of the biggest things about the Michael Brown tragic killing and the Ferguson uprising, certainly, was the response of the young people, who refuse to remain silent – the birth of Black Lives Matter,” he said.
“And you can see that, since Michael Brown, all over America, no matter what happens, the young people are replicating in a large degree, some in an even more productive and effective manner, these large-scale demonstrations and protests as to the obvious injustice that they believe has occurred.”
He equates these millennial youths to civil rights figures from an earlier generation, like John Lewis and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“I believe so greatly in those young people,” Crump said. “Those young people who are marching, and protesting, and so forth. The battle is not necessarily for me to battle, it’s for them.”
In creating Ben Crump Law, he hopes to help with that struggle that he sees young people engaged in, and use his national influence to assist all over the country.
This law firm is “not just about law,” Crump said.
“It really is about the struggle for, the perseverance of people who have been downtrodden, have been oppressed, have been persecuted falsely – but, yet, we continue to go forward.” he said.
“And so this national law firm takes on a larger scope, it takes on a larger mission. And that’s why it has to be national, because it’s happening everywhere in America. Everybody is getting these consequences.”
