Ben Crump has nightmares. In his dreams, the famed attorney sees his clients’ relatives as they’re about to die. He somehow knows what’s about to happen, but he can’t stop it. “My recurring nightmare is I’m running out of time,” Crump said one evening last week, his voice uncharacteristically low and halting. “And I can’t get to Trayvon quick enough to save him. I can’t get to Breonna quick enough to save her. I can’t get to George quick enough to save him.” It was the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder and Crump, who for years has sought civil claims—and public attention—for the relatives of those who have been killed by police, had spent the day accompanying Floyd’s family to the Oval Office for a more than hour-long meeting with President Joe Biden.
Crump, 51, is known as “Black America’s attorney general,” and over the years he has taken on more than 200 cases of police violence, advocating for relatives in courtrooms and in front of TV cameras, helping to fuel a shift in consciousness in the country at large as it comes to grips with the systematic nature of police killings of Black people. He has met Biden several times, during his more high-profile cases, and the two have had several private phone conversations in the past year. With the ear of the president and a frequent spot on cable-news broadcasts, Crump has become a new breed of Washington power player for this activist era.
On Tuesday, entering the Oval Office to mark the anniversary of Floyd’s murder, the president, Crump said, greeted him warmly. “My friend,” Crump recalled Biden telling him. “It’s hard to believe it’s been a year.” Biden told reporters he gave the Floyd family a White House tour and “little mementos” from the visit, paying particular attention to Floyd’s young daughter, Gianna, who captivated the country when she was filmed days after her father’s murder declaring, “Daddy changed the world.” He gave her snacks from the White House kitchen. “My wife would kill me,” Biden said. “We gave her some ice cream. She had some Cheetos. And I think she had a chocolate milk.”
The president’s own life has famously been defined by grief, and Biden tapped into that when he met with Floyd’s family members. “It was like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Crump said that evening, sitting in the sleek and cavernous lobby of the Marriott Marquis in Washington, all but deserted because of the pandemic. “He truly wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to talking about the dynamics of death and dying, and dealing with a tremendous loss of a life taken unexpectedly.”
Crump described his relationship with Biden as “very sincere” and frank. “He tells me how he feels. I tell him how I feel,” Crump said. “We have tremendous respect for one another because I think what he’s doing we didn’t always see with other administrations.” Not that they don’t have their disagreements. Crump has publicly said he felt that Biden, who left it to Congress to come up with a bipartisan police reform compromise, initially didn’t do enough to engage with the push.
Biden has told the family he wants to sign the police-reform law that bears Floyd’s name. Initially, the president gave Congress a deadline of May 25, the anniversary, to deliver him legislation. As the president met with Floyd’s family, that date came and went. While negotiations are ongoing, qualified immunity, a legal doctrine introduced by the Supreme Court in 1967 that protects government employees from facing lawsuits due to their conduct on the job, remains a sticking point. Police-reform proponents argue qualified immunity prevents officers from facing consequences for alleged brutality. Meanwhile law enforcement advocates—and particularly influential police unions—believe that some form of protection from liability is vital for frontline workers.
While in Washington, Crump and Floyd’s family also met with Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the trio of senators leading efforts to hash out a bipartisan compromise bill, New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and the South Carolina Republicans, Tim Scott and Lindsey Graham. None of the senators’ offices responded to requests for comment. A White House source, who requested anonymity to discuss the ongoing negotiations, said Vice President Kamala Harris is in regular contact with Booker and is closely watching the issue. Harris also has a friendship with Crump, who is frequently in touch with members of her staff.
As he works the White House and Capitol Hill, Crump is keenly aware of the power of storytelling and imagery. He openly talks about his cases in strategic terms, and places himself in the long tradition of political activism to which he belongs, invoking Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis and how they turned the death of a Black man named Jimmie Lee Jackson into “the impetus” for the 1965 protest march between Selma and Montgomery that was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act that year. “I am trying to do everything in my power to make sure we can use this emotional outrage and apply strategy and diplomacy to get groundbreaking, constructive legislation that hopefully will change this paradigm of policing in America forever,” Crump said that evening.
The pack of reporters waiting to see Crump and Floyd’s family on Tuesday was one of the largest to assemble at the White House since before the pandemic. Crump guided Floyd’s relatives and some of their allies through a tightly choreographed series of remarks. It culminated with a final flourish, Crump bringing Floyd’s daughter, Gianna, to the front of the group as they raised their fists in the air and repeated her father’s name.
“To me, the fist means strength and solidarity. We are together. And we are stronger together than we will ever be divided,” he said that night at the hotel. “It’s a beautiful, nonverbal communication that takes on such psychological meaning.” For him, it’s important to set an example for the younger generation and, particularly, Gianna, who will be confronted with the footage of her father’s passing. “She’s a child,” Crump said. “She doesn’t grasp the concept of death, fully, but one day she will. And she’ll see that video through adult eyes and she will want to know, well, what did you all do?”
For Crump, the White House meeting—and particularly the dramatic gesture he staged at the end of it—is a clear signal. “It is something that I don’t know if we can fully grasp it ourselves today,” he said. “But that image will relay for future generations yet unborn, on the White House lawn, raising that fist, saying, ‘George Floyd.’”
It was late, and Crump’s shaved head was beginning to nod. It had been a long day, starting at just after six in the morning when a black car came to the hotel to take him and Floyd’s brother, Philonise, to an appearance on CNN. Now Crump sat, his suit rumpled and his bright green tie hanging loose around his neck, kneading his legs and struggling to keep his eyes open. Eventually, he got up, paced, and shadowboxed in an effort to stay awake. “I look at it as a day of purpose, not as a day where we pat ourselves on the back of whatever progress we’ve made,” Crump said, punctuating his words with soft jabs. “I look at it as we have more work to do, because since George Floyd was killed, I think about all the other Black people who were unjustly killed.”
Crump’s work has predictably earned him enemies—and death threats. But some activists—particularly the young people who took to the streets en masse following Floyd’s murder last summer—take issue with Crump’s approach and marquee status.
Seun Babalola, a 23-year-old organizer with a protest group called Concerned Citizens D.C., said many of his fellow activists are wary of Crump, whom he characterized as “somebody who’s moving in a world-tour sort of way when it comes to Black death.” “Nothing I say about him is on a personal aspect because I don’t know him…but I will say that a lot of folks again feel the sense of, this is somebody who’s everywhere whenever there’s a death,” Babalola said, adding, “I’m also…weary of anybody that’s immediately trying to go in the national spotlight.” Ty Hobson-Powell, 25, another organizer with Concerned Citizens D.C., said, “Ben Crump’s prominence in a lot of the national cases” raises certain questions. “At what point does it become conflict entrepreneurship to build a brand off of what inevitably is Black trauma on a continual basis?” he asked, adding that he doesn’t know Crump personally.
Crump is aware of the concerns surrounding his prominence. His retort is that his work is effective. He pointed to the fact there were critics of the media appearances he did throughout the local criminal trial of Derek Chauvin, the ex-cop who kneeled on Floyd’s neck. While Crump’s detractors worried about his public relations blitz, that case ended in a rare guilty verdict—on all counts—last month.
While Crump says he appreciates “constructive criticism,” he argues that anyone questioning his work needs to demonstrate a superior approach. “Tell me something to do better and I’ll shut up. Show us a better way, I’ll follow you, you know?” Crump said. “But if you’re just criticizing and you don’t have another option for us, then sit down on the bus and follow our lead as we try to forge a new path.”
A robust media presence has always been a core part of Crump’s approach. He fights his legal battles on two fronts—in lawsuits and through the press. For Crump, that includes sharing details of the lives left behind in an effort to assert their humanity. His work is part of how we know George Floyd was a former high school football star. Breonna Taylor was an EMT and loved scary movies. And Trayvon Martin, who was only 17 when he was shot by a neighbor, wanted to be a pilot or airplane mechanic.
It makes sense that Crump would have skeptics among activists. Many of the new wave of young progressives who have reshaped the political landscape in recent years favor direct democracy movements that eschew individual leadership. And Crump doesn’t necessarily shy away from being identified as one of the new movement’s foremost leaders. He describes it as a “kind” sentiment and insists he’s simply focused on the task at hand. “I just believe we all have a role to play in the struggle for equality and justice for all our children,” he said. “I’m an attorney, so I try to use the courts and the law as a sword and a shield to fight against systematic racism and oppression.”
The organizers who staged last summer’s protests also have a strong anti-capitalist streak, and the money Crump has made from his cases has raised eyebrows. Crump represents the families of victims in civil cases where he seeks large monetary settlements. This is separate from criminal cases where police officers most often are not convicted of any crime. For Crump, securing settlements to the families of Black people who have been killed is an effort to “make America respect the value of Black life..… We’re trying to make it financially unsustainable for them to keep killing Black people unjustly.”
But it’s also helped make him a wealthy man. Crump’s eponymous firm—where nine other attorneys work with him—takes no money unless they win a civil rights case. After a victory, Crump takes a third of any sum awarded. Babalola, the organizer in Washington, said financial gains made by some leaders during the Black Lives Matter movement have set off a “big debate” in activist circles. “People are profiting off of Black death,” Babalola said, adding, “If Black people weren’t dying, they would be jobless.”
Crump insists he’s eager to see the day he can shut down his police-brutality division. He also claims it’s the least profitable part of his firm, which has multiple practice areas including personal injury, medical malpractice, and class action suits. “I am motivated not by money doing this work, certainly not by popularity, arrogance, or anything. I am motivated by my heart to do this work,” Crump said. “Let’s face it, for every Breonna Taylor, every George Floyd, there’s a hundred similar cases where you don’t make a dime.”
Crump has his own disagreements with the approach of the younger activists. While he consistently credits them with contributing momentum to the movement, he has cautioned against street protests to prevent youth—particularly people of color—spending time in jail. “These felony convictions follow you throughout your whole life,” Crump said. “Even though they don’t want to get white people felony convictions for protesting, they give Black Lives Matter activists felony convictions so quick it’ll make your head spin.”
Much of the differences feel generational—and age-old with echoes of the divides between more militant Black activists of the 1960s and the nonviolent resistance of Martin Luther King Jr. or the legal work of Crump’s “personal hero” Thurgood Marshall. Today, with a new movement flourishing, Crump wants to work within the system, the protesters want to disrupt it. Crump wants to reform the police, protesters want to defund it and, in some cases, abolish it altogether.
While Crump doesn’t join the calls to defund police departments entirely, he also doesn’t adopt the language popular among moderate reformers who argue police departments need to be refocused toward de-escalation and nonviolent resolution. Instead, he believes “the issue really is implicit bias and racism.”
“People say, ‘Oh, it’s about policing and we’ve got to train them and it’s de-escalation and, you know, professionalism.’ It ain’t none of that. The police can be professional when they want to. They can de-escalate when they want to,” Crump said. “We know that because we see examples of it over and over again. And never was this more apparent than on January 6, 2021, when they de-escalated just fine.”
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