Benjamin Crump
*Benjamin Crump was born on this date in 1969. He is a Black lawyer specializing in civil rights and catastrophic personal injury cases such as wrongful death lawsuits.
Benjamin Lloyd Crump was born near Fort Bragg in Lumberton, North Carolina. The oldest of nine siblings and stepsiblings, Crump grew up in an extended family and was raised by his grandmother. His mother, Helen, worked as a hotel maid in a local Converse shoe factory. His mother sent him to South Plantation High School in Plantation, Florida, where he lived with her second husband, a math teacher, who Crump regards as his father. Crump attended Florida State University and received his bachelor's degree in criminal justice in 1992 and his Juris Doctor in 1995.
He is a life member of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity and considers Thurgood Marshall as his hero. His practice has focused on cases such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, the people poisoned during the Flint water crisis, and the plaintiffs behind the 2019 Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder lawsuit alleging the company's talcum powder product led to ovarian cancer diagnoses. Crump is also the founder of the Tallahassee, Florida-based law firm Ben Crump Law. He feels many other lawyers, activists, filmmakers, television producers and writers, artists, preachers, students, teachers, parents, children, journalists, city administrators, elected officials, gravediggers, urban planners, and just about everyone else has a role.
Some are playing it. Some could but don’t. Crump says his role is not just that of an attorney but also that of a public figure, what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “drum major” for justice and equality. In 2020, Crump became the attorney for the families of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Jacob Blake. Ongoing cases surrounding their killings or injuries led to protests against police brutality in America and internationally.
