Suing for peace

How one lawyer is fighting the killings of black people in America

FILES-US-RACISM-POLICE-CRIME The late lamented: Ben Crump with George Floyd’s son Quincy Mason at the site in Minneapolis where George was killed | AFP

Kenosha, Wisconsin, is a small town used to big-time trouble. Just over the Illinois border, it was where Al Capone and his men would hide from Chicago police chases at a time when the police could not cross state lines.

America’s list of racial-event deaths is long. Crump has not represented them all, but he writes about the embedded injustice and systematic racism that kills them.
We are in a time of heightened tension. True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. —Ben Crump, civil rights lawyer

Wisconsin itself has a history of racism dating back to its time as a territory; it is a state that once let non-citizen newcomers vote before it allowed black men near the ballot box. Last month, seven shots in the back of an unarmed black man brought world attention to Kenosha. Into this cloud of infamy, walked in the biggest of the big-gun civil rights lawyers of the day.

At 50, attorney Ben Crump is an imposing figure. Tall, and at once soft-spoken and forceful with his words, he projects kindness, compassion and a deep desire for justice. He is a handsome black man with a velvet quality; reassuringly flawless in his dress and perfect skin, he has perfected the art of putting legalistic language into words everyday folk can relate to. In doing so, he commands a presence that comforts and stabilises emotionally charged situations.

He is everything families dream of —a law graduate from Florida State University, a recipient of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Thurgood Marshall Award, recipient of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Martin Luther King Servant Leader Award, one of the National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Lawyers, and Ebony magazine’s Power 100 Most Influential African Americans.

We have seen him on television next to those collapsing inward at the loss of a family member to a racially tinged event leached of humanity. There is something he understands that others are just beginning to see. We have seen him next to the families of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Jacob Blake, the 29-year-old Kenosha man paralysed from the waist down by the seven, point-blank shots from policemen who followed him to his car after a struggle.

That he was in Kenosha standing next to Jacob Blake’s family to demand justice from the police department and the city, told the world that the town was in big-time trouble. “This seems to be a pattern in this town,” said Crump in a television interview. “Just like it is in America, the police killing an unarmed man unnecessarily and unjustifiably.”

When police shoot black people in America, Crump says they are “told not by word but by action over and over and over again, you won’t be held accountable”.

Crump is there because he understands that these events take place within a larger, more monstrous reality that envelops the everyday life of people of colour, and recognises that the root cause of these actions is embedded into the laws and customs and life in American society.

Seven shots were fired into Philando Castile in eight seconds in 2016 in St Paul, Minnesota. Castile was with his fiancée and her daughter as he attempted to comply after being stopped for a broken tail light. The officer was later acquitted of charges.

In 2005, off-duty detective, father and church deacon Howard Morgan was stopped for driving the wrong way without headlights in Chicago; as a cop, he was permitted to carry a gun. While searching his car, the police found a gun. Morgan was shot at more than 100 times; 21 times in the back. He survived, but is permanently disabled. He was charged with four counts of attempted murder, deadly use of a firearm, assault and battery. After being acquitted of some of the charges and deadlocked on others, he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 40 years in prison, despite having eight years of police service and being an elderly man reduced to using a walker and wearing a colostomy bag because of the shooting.

“It is one of the worst injustices I have witnessed,” said Crump, despite the fact that a governor later commuted Morgan’s sentence. “Because the conviction also prevented him from bringing a civil lawsuit. The police were clearly in the wrong here, yet Morgan was punished. This devastating event shows that black people are being attacked from many fronts. The police are killing us on the streets; we are also being killed by the judges and prosecutors in the courtrooms.”

Crump describes the above in his book Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People (Amistad, 2019). In his television appearances, you can hear him readily recite the names of such victims. It is a long list, but their names roll out of his tongue in quick succession with an emphasis that tells you he can tell you all about the injustices visited upon them. In 2018, he represented the family of Stephon Clark against the city of Sacramento in California. The 22-year-old Clark was shot seven times in his grandmother’s backyard because the officers thought the phone in his hand was a gun. There was no gun.

The names keep adding on. There is context to it all; it is open season genocide, he argues in his book.

America’s list of racial-event deaths is long. He has not represented them all, but he writes about the embedded injustice and systematic racism that kills them: Eric Garner, Philando Castile, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Martin Lee Anderson, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Michelle Cusseaux, Laquan McDoland, George Mann, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, Matthew Ajibade, Frank Smart, Natasha McKenna, Tony Robinson, Anthony Hill, Mya Hall, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scout, William Chapman II, Alexia Christia, Brendon Glenn, Victor Manuel Larosa, Johnathan Sanders, Freddie Blue, Joseph Mann, Salvado Ellswood, Sandra Bland, Albert Joseph Davis, Darrius Stewart, Billy Ray Davis, Samuel Dubose, Michael Sabbie, Brian Keith Day, Christian Taylor, Troy Robinson, Asshams Pharoah Manley, Felix Kumi, Keith Harrison McLeod, Junior Prosper, Lamontez Jones, Patterson Brown, Dominic Hutchinson, Anthony Ashford, Alonzo Smith, Tyree Crawford, India Kager, La’vante Briggs, Michael Lee Marshall, Jamar Clark, Richard Perkins, Nathaniel Harris Pickett, Benni Lee Tignor, Miguel Espinal, Michael Noel, Kevin Matthews, Bettie Jones, Quintonio LeGrier, Keith Childress Jr., Janet Wilson, Randy Nelson, Antronie Scott, Wendell Celestine, David Joseph, Calin Roquemore, Dyzhawn Perkins, Christopher Davis, Marco Loud, Peter Gaines, Torrey Robinson, Darius Robinson, Kevin Hicks, Mary Truxillo, Demarcus Semer, Willie Tillman, Terrill Thomas, Sylville Smooth, Alton Sterling, Terence Crutcher, Paul O’Neal, Alteria Woods, Jordan Edwards, Aaron Bailey, Ronell Foster, Stephon Clark, Antwon Rose II, Botham Jean, Pamela Turner, Dominique Clayton, Atatiana Jefferson, Christopher Whitfield, Christopher McCorvey, Eric Reason, Michael Lorenzo Dean, Breona Taylor, George Floyd.

Hope lives on: Crump listens as Rev Al Sharpton speaks at George Floyd’s funeral on June 4 | AP Hope lives on: Crump listens as Rev Al Sharpton speaks at George Floyd’s funeral on June 4 | AP

“It is not okay for people of colour to be killed by the police or assaulted by the justice system,” wrote Crump. “Absent the privilege of legal protections and designated as a threat to society, people of colour are prime targets for genocide. As we know this pattern of unequal and disproportionate policing of people who have been racialised as well as criminalised and even exterminated based on race has a long history.”

Crump represented the family of Terence Crutcher of Tulsa, Oklahoma, shown on police helicopter and car video walking toward his car with his hands raised, shot and killed in plain daylight.

In 2006, 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson went joyriding in his grandmother’s car and was sent to a Panama City, Florida, boot camp for juvenile offenders. Hours after arriving, he was dead. Due to a blood disorder, said the medical examiner. In a landmark case that prompted the Florida legislature to dismantle the state department of justice’s juvenile boot system and name the act the Martin Lee Anderson Act, Crump used the media masterfully after unearthing CCTV footage that showed white guards forcing him to inhale ammonia after kneeing, kicking, dragging, and hitting him. A second autopsy determined the 14-year-old was suffocated to death. With Crump’s help, the family reached a $5 million settlement with the state of Florida.

But a jury found the seven former boot camp drill instructors and a nurse not guilty of causing the child’s death, and they walked free. Crump stood in front of reporters and thundered: “You kill a dog; you go to jail. You kill a little black boy, and nothing happens.” Those comments were covered by media all over the world.

In today’s America, it is Crump who calls on the conscience of the nation through skilful media appearances and publications. “Today, there is in America a persistent, prevailing, and unhealthy mindset regarding people of colour,” he wrote. “To understand the presence of genocide, we must acknowledge that our society is one that is built on violence and condones arming its people. This genocide is fuelled by police brutality, unfair treatment in the judicial system, and ‘stand your ground and shoot first’ laws which are influenced by the gun lobby.”

These laws are stuff that says “you can shoot black people and we will justify it,” said Crump of the Kenosha shooting. Kenosha is a town of about one lakh people along Lake Michigan. Protesters, many from the large Black Lives Matter movement that sprouted after the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, gathered in downtown Kenosha to protest police violence. The marchers later clashed with the police and the protests deteriorated into arson and destruction of private property. Armed white militia appeared in the streets of Kenosha the following night and television cameras showed police offering water to heavily armed vigilantes and saying, “We sure appreciate you guys here.”

One of those guys turned out to be a 17-year-old white teenager who later killed two people and blew the arm of another. After making a call where he is heard telling someone that he had just killed someone, the boy approaches the police carrying his semi-automatic rifle with crowds pointing out to the police that he had just shot someone. The police drive on, ignoring him. He was then driven home to Antioch, Illinois, by his mother.

White privilege, one might argue, considering the treatment of Blake who carried no weapon and was at the time shackled to his hospital bed. “Black men do not get the benefit of their humanity,” said Crump. “Armed militia can walk freely, but a black guy heading to where he might have a knife is shot in the back.”

He goes further to look at the greater injustice in the system. “Police want the family to talk, but they want to stay quiet. Don’t rush to judgment. But did they not rush to judgement when they shoot? We cannot have a justice system for black America and another for white America,” Crump said.

“Genocide amply describes what transpires between the US judicial system and coloured people,” Crump wrote in his book. “In effect the judicial system in this country targets, whether consciously or not, black and brown people robbing them at every level including, in the end, of their very lives.

“The physical, financial, mental and even spiritual deaths can be evidenced in newspaper articles, numerous studies, in courtrooms, and on the streets of our impoverished neighbourhoods. You can see them in our prison populations, our schools, and our communities in need of healthcare. It is legalised genocide because the system legitimises over and over again these injustices. Technical reasons are often found for their legality.”

There is an undeniable pattern to atrocities perpetrated against people of colour, according to Crump. “Cooperation doesn’t work,” he said. “Polite responses and non-threatening retreat don’t work. So often, too often, no matter how we respond, the police shoot us and the police get off, which sends the message that it is acceptable to kill black people.”

Crump says he is fighting to help transform communities marching and chanting ‘No Justice, No Peace’ into ones proclaiming ‘Know Justice, Know Peace’. He believes that America “can be redeemed and can live up to its promise”.

Looking to the start of his journey for justice, Crumb looks to a time in 1978, when the supreme Court-ordered forced busing began to racially integrate schools. It was also the time the son of a hotel laundry worker who also worked a night job at a shoe factory realised that his white classmate had a weekly allowance greater than what his mother made in a week or two.

When his mother told him that the integration of white and black children was due to the work of a lawyer named Thurgood Marshall (who later became a Supreme Court justice) in a landmark case named Brown vs Board of Education, Crump decided he would become an attorney just like Marshall. He would “fight to make life better for people from my side of the tracks”. “I was going to fight for all people to have a chance for justice and an equal chance of freedom,” Crump wrote.

Fighting for justice: Jacob Blake’s sister Letetra Widman (wearing goggles) and uncle Justin Blake (to her right) at a rally in Kenosha on August 29 | AP Fighting for justice: Jacob Blake’s sister Letetra Widman (wearing goggles) and uncle Justin Blake (to her right) at a rally in Kenosha on August 29 | AP

As a lawyer, he soon learned that it was dangerous to be a coloured person in America. “The police don’t shoot white men in the back,” he said. People of colour are also killed softly, said Crump, quoting Frederick Douglass. “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong that will be imposed on them,” said Crump.

“Thousands of young black and brown people are killed every year, spiritually, if not physically, through racially biased judicial rulings in American courtrooms,” he said. “Police write dishonest probable-cause affidavits, prosecutors justify charging them with felonies, and judges hand down excessive multi-year sentences of prison and probation.”

All of that fits the description of the crime of genocide, Crump points out, as defined in Paragraph C, Article 2, of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

According to Crump, the conditions imposed on black and brown people inflict physical destruction on the members of those communities. “Genocide is not limited to just killing,” he said. “It is also genocide to cause serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group and deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

Laws of this country and their enforcement and adjudication are used to cut into the heart and soul of the people. “Most coloured folk believe that the legal system and nearly every other institution in the United States is out to eliminate black and brown people,” he said.

Crump was in Kenosha to help coloured people know justice and know peace. He has taken the cause of Jacob Blake to the 2020 March on Washington, which commemorates two events—the 65th anniversary of the killing of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old black American lynched in Mississippi in 1955, and the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.

“He is black America’s attorney general,” said the Rev Al Sharpton introducing Crump at George Floyd’s funeral. Crump’s passionate press conferences during the Trayvon Martin trial are the stuff of legend. He has been a fixture on cable news interviews this year, and his pursuit of justice forms the crux of an upcoming, six-part Netflix documentary, Who Killed Tupac?

“We are in a time of heightened tension,” wrote Crump, quoting King to explain his pursuit. “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”

He stood by Jacob Blake’s family in the streets of Kenosha, as they led the crowd in prayer, shared their grief and told their stories. “This is our reality,” he said. “That is why we fight.”

Before television cameras and the world, he has laid bare the human fight; the fight for equality and against what he argues is a slow racist genocide in Kenosha and in every city where racism continues to rise. “We must,” Crump said, “speak truth to power.”