121. Ben Crump — Speaking Truth to Power: The Fight for Social Justice in America

I know there's nothing that they can do to stop us from overcoming the discrimination, the bias in the racism. That's Ben Crump, renowned civil rights attorney and founder of Ben Crump Law. Based on the precedent of black people in America that whatever the enemies of equality throw at us, we're going to overcome it, we're going to be all right. I'm Michael Mogul, founder and CEO of Crisp, the nation's number one law from growth company. I've built my business through practice, not theory. Crisp started with just $500 to my name and has grown to over 8 figures in revenue over the last few years, earning a spot on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. Our approach has been to take everything we've learned about generating massive growth within our own organization and help the country's most ambitious and committed law firm owners do the same for theirs. In each episode of this podcast, I sit down with innovative market leaders from the legal industry and beyond to learn from those who thrive in the face of adversity, challenge the status quo and define what it means to be a true game changer. I sat down with Ben Crump to discuss why past presidents should not define present and future justice, why great influence comes with great responsibility, and how to find the courage to speak truth to power. I was taught you speak truth to power, even when it's controversial or it's unpopular. Even when it's dangerous, you speak truth to power because we got these legal educations and shame on us if we don't use those educations to try to make the world a better place. That's coming up on the Game Changing Attorney podcast. Before we begin today's episode, I want to remind you that we aren't beholden to any sponsors or run any ads on this podcast. This allows us to present all of our episodes raw and unfiltered. I'm not going to push any made-to-order meal services on you or try to save you any money on your car insurance. That being said, I have one small request. If you receive any value from this podcast, please give it a five-star review. Pay the fee so we can keep this podcast free. Ben Crump is the founder of Ben Crump Law, one of the most prestigious civil litigation firms in the nation. He's represented the victims of many of the most high-profile lawsuits in history and as a result, he's become an influential voice in the legal industry today. Ben has been included on the time 100 times annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He also serves as the president of the National Civil Rights Trial Lawyers Association and was recently featured in the Netflix documentary Civil. My mission is to try to make sure marginalized people, especially people of color, especially black people have an equal opportunity at life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and in fighting for these equal opportunities and equal chance at justice. You understand that you have to sacrifice a lot and they tell me to stop saying this, but I always feel like I'm running out of time. We can't keep up with how many marginalized people of color are unjustly by the people who are supposed to protect and serve them by the people who are supposed to care. And Mike, as you know, you watch the evening news, you see, there's another one every time you think that you make him progress. I mean, are there times where you feel like the more you help, the more, it's sometimes more challenges it creates this nationwide, maybe not because of your hand, but ultimately because of just this problem continues to scale. I always remain optimistic, Michael. It's incremental progress, you know, we've been fighting racism and discrimination in America from the inception of the country being founded. Every day, we're going to continue to hold a mirror to America's face to say, we're better than this America. We're better than the video of George Floyd being tortured to death. We're better than this America where my Aubrey was lynched for jogging while black, not in 1940, not in 1950, but in 2020 in our day. And so, and that's just one year in 2020, but with all that said, we have seen great progress. I mean, the officers who killed George Floyd was prosecuted. The officers who killed my Aubrey was prosecuted. Normally, there's no accountability when they kill black people unjustly, and as long as, you know, the Supreme Court and everybody else says, we're qualified immunity. You don't get civil justice, and then because of session 242, you don't get any criminal accountability. So, it's almost as if the black life didn't matter at all. And that's why we fight to say, black lives do matter because, you know, when you look at the reality of our justice system, it doesn't, based on the outcomes. And I'll ask this, well, it's probably a simple question, maybe a complex answer, but just through all your experience, what do you believe is the root of the issue? Like, or does it really begin? It is a simple question, but a complex answer. We have to make America believe in the Declaration of Independence. When I'm picking a jury at a courtroom, I literally go one by one, and I tell the jury, I know that you can recite the Declaration of Independence. But do you really believe it when you say we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equally, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain and alienable rights, that amongst them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I will ask them, and I will say, you know, do you believe it? And then the other side would object, and the judge would say, well, move on to turn the crowd, and I say, no judge, if they won't agree that this black person who was killed unjustly has the same equal rights as the white police officer or black police officer, it's better police officer who killed them. Then this case is lost before we began, and I make a big deal about it, because really, we don't have a chance if they won't see these black people as equal to these white people in most of the instances, and that's why you see this happening over and over again, and it's not just with police, because police are the low people on the pole. It is the criminal justice system itself, worst than how they kill, trade by Martin, worst than how they kill Michael Brown and Ferguson, when we've talked about hands up, don't shoot. Worst than how they kill 12 year old to mere rights and Cleveland on the playground. Worst than how they kill Eric Gardner, I mean, the list can go on and on, but worst than how they kill George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Mahdabri, is how they kill young people of color, especially black people in every city, in every state, in every courtroom, in every day in America, with these trumped up felony convictions based on bias, racism and discrimination. You can have little white boys and girls who have similar fact patterns to little black boys and girls, and you don't take being crumbs word for it, go sit in the back of any courtroom in America, and you just watch how the young white people get a slap on the wrist, but then you have the young black people never get the benefit of the doubt, the benefit of consideration, the benefit of possibility. They're taking over to the corner of the courtroom, the finger printed, and they are handcuffed and charged with a trumped up felony conviction. It's so bad, Michael, that in my home state of Florida, in states like Tennessee and many of the other states around the country, they say one out of every five black men would be a convicted felon, and they say if that trend continues in the next 25 years, every one out of three black men in America would be a convicted felon. I want you to imagine that you are a parent of a black son, and I want you to imagine that you have a black male nephew, and I want you to imagine that you have a black male cousin, and I want you to imagine that these three little black boys are around the age of six, seven, eight years old. And then your minds are just imagining them at play, like most children do, and as you observe them, try to figure out in the next 10 to 20 years which one of those little boys are going to end up as a convicted felon who has your blood running through their veins, and end up living a life as a second. class citizen because they are forced to wear this convicted felon label like a cross on their back forever. Every time you punch their name into a computer, the first thing that comes up is that they're convicted felon. And so they are forever reminded that you are a person who we have written off in my own family. There are people who have been branded as a convicted felon and I always try to remind them that now we still believe that you have redeeming qualities. We still believe that you can be a constructive citizen in society. We still believe you are one of the best things that your mother and father gave to the world. We still believe that God has a plan for you. We still believe in you and we have to constantly remind them of that because if we don't, I believe that we will have an entire generation of young black people who are racist criminal justice system has written off as being undeserving of equality. I have to ask through your experience, how do you remain optimistic every time you see another situation? And this is behind the cameras. This is when you're sitting with the families. They've lost their son or daughter. You're doing that day after day after day. The reason I do remain optimistic is too full. I grew up in the government housing projects. Single mother raised me and my two little brothers. The statistics said that, "Hey, you're going to end up in a minimum wage job or you're going to end up in prison or you're going to end up dead." That's what the statistics said about me and every other little black boy growing up in Lumberton, North Carolina. It was a very depressed community. But here I am. That tells you, there's always hope. There's always a possibility. I think about that and I think about my daughter and my two nephews who we raise as our own. I look at them and I see all the optimism in their eyes and the hope and I know that we can give them a better world, a better America. That gives me hope. But probably the more honest reason why I have hope is not based on me at all. It is based on what they tried to teach us in first year law school about precedent. That everything must be based on precedent. I'm sure many of the listeners will remember first year law school where they were like, "We don't care what you think you got the basic on precedent." Because we have to have the rulers of today be based on the precedent and connected to the rulers of the past. It can have a lot of logical connection to the rulers that we're going to have for the future. They kept beating us across the head. Everything is precedent. But I didn't accept that now, Michael, because I understood what they said were true. I would still be a slave because the precedent set by the United States Supreme Court was that slavery was legal, but I did understand even though I disagree with them what they were trying to teach us about precedent. That was based on precedent. It's a likely indicator of what is to happen in the future. I think about the precedent of black people in America. I think about how at the founding of this country, we were labor three-fifths of a human being of a citizen. Yet we overcame that. I think about the precedent of the middle passage. Then I think of the precedent of the United States Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott where they said there were no rights that a black man had, that a white man was bound to respect. Well, we overcame that after the Civil War and reconstruction in the copybaggers and the rise of the Klucleot's claim. The Supreme Court decision in Plesson B Ferguson suffered but equal when it was anything but equal. We overcame all of the poll taxes and all the other things and then pediments to equality. We overcame that. Then I think about the precedent of how black people overcame Jim Crow in the early 1900s and then in the mid 1900s and the 40s, 50s all the way up to Dave. What that tells me, Michael, is based on the precedent of black people in America that whatever the enemies of equality, so at us, we're going to overcome it. We're going to be all right. That's what gives me encouragement. And today you're a living, breathing embodiment of what is possible. And I'm curious before you, you know, you believed in you, I learned that there's quite a number of people that did believe in you, that had hope for you with your mother and your grandmother. And I'm curious what led to the decision to go to school? You know, my mother and my grandmother had a profound influence on my life. I don't know if you saw the documentary that Netflix had on me several, but it taught a lot about my grandmother. God bless that woman. She was the wisest person I ever met on the face of this earth, even though she only had an eighth grade education because in North Carolina, you quit going to school and you went to Crop Tobacco. But my grandmother understood the importance of education. She took out a newspaper subscription, even though she could barely read. And I never forget I was going to the second grade. And every day, after I was finished my homework, my grandmother and I would try to read articles in the newspaper and we would try to sound out the words and figure out the context of the articles about people like Mother Teresa and President Jimmy Carter and why she died in the piece of cord. And what was amazing about that is what my grandmother really was doing was showing me that there was a bigger world out there for me than just lumber to North Carolina. And so my mother worked two jobs for as long as I can remember, man. She said life is hard. You make it fair by what you bring to the table. And if you don't bring that into the table, don't expect anybody to let you sit down at the table. She told me education is something to bring to the table because once you have it up here, nobody can take it away from you. And she said, and when you get to the table, you make sure you try to leave room to help others get to the table. When I made the decision to become a lawyer, it was partly watching them. I went to Brown versus Board of Education with our deliberate speed. Finally got to lumber to North Carolina in the late 70s. They bust us a little black children from South Lumberton literally across the tracks to North Lumberton to the affluent white communities and where they have a new school, new technology, new facilities, new books, new everything. And so I remember coming back home one day from school across the tracks and I just observed our neighborhood. You know, you had all the dilapidated buildings. And I just remember thinking, I wonder why people on outside of town have it so challenging and people on the other side of town seem to have it so accommodating and affluent and better. And I remember my mother saying what a reason we got to go to the new school with the new books and new facilities and everything was because of Brown versus Board of Education and an attorney named Thurgood Marsha. And I decided right then at nine years old when I grew up, I'm going to become an attorney like Thurgood Marsha and fight to make a better situation for people who live in my community, for people who look like me to have equal opportunity, a better opportunity at the American dream. And from that day, to this one. That's what I endeavor to do every day I wake up every day. I never doubt what my mission is when I wake up. It's interesting, I mean, that you mentioned some of the trade-offs. You fast forward to present day. I hear that, you know, unfortunately you and your staff, you're getting frequent death threats. You've got critics. I mean, there's all sorts of challenges you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis. You talk about this in the documentary in Civil, that there's critics to say you play the race car for profit. Some say the single most destructive force in America. I mean, it's just amazing. Like, you ever think like just for where you came from, what your life was, the work you're doing today to hear these sort of things and not a deal with these types of challenges. I mean, what's that like for you? I try not to think about it much because I know what my objective is. God bless me with this influence. For a reason, I have to use it to help those who have no influence, who have no voice. Fox News said that I'm the most dangerous man in America. And I scratched my head. I said, wow, all I'm trying to do is help black people get equality. What's so dangerous about that? But we have to deal with the threats and it was hard to greet to do the documentary over that because I understand the choice. I make every day, but I obviously I exposed my wife and family in the documentary. And that was, that was a very methodical decision. I had to think about that a lot. I did it essentially because I understood the global bore horn that Netflix has, you know, almost 300 million people throwing me your homes to be able to speak truth to power is why I did it. But it does come with some risk because people do sick things that right now I'm representing eight of the 10 families who lost their loved ones to a young white supremacist who went in to Buffalo, New York drove three hours from his own home to come to a black community and kill all those innocent people in that supermarket. And in his manifesto in his own words, he said his objective was to kill as many black people as he could. And so I don't take the death threats for granted. We don't take them lightly at the Ben Crump law firm. But we are unafraid in what we do. And if God forbid, something were to happen, I think there could be no more no blow away to sacrifice your life for their fighting for the future of your children. They are worth the fight. And so I get it. My heroes are third good. Life was in constant peril. I mean, I may have it hard, but you know, he had to move every night. When he came to town, all the black people would be excited and happy saying third goodness coming. And I get that because, you know, when I decided to take a case, all the black people get happy. But then you also have these, you know, white supremacist people like with third good, including his clan knew he was coming to town. And they were preparing to kill him literally. And so every night, when they found a way to stay, there was crosses burning outside and so forth. And he would have to move in the dark of night just to survive. But he kept showing up. And what an example for us lawyers, whether black, white, brown, it doesn't matter. You show up for right. I was taught, you speak truth of power. Even when it's controversial or it's unpopular, even when it's dangerous, you speak truth of power because we got these legal educations and shame on us if we don't use those educations to try to make the world a better place. And for the people who are listening to this podcast, whether it's other trial lawyers, their teams and, you know, and beyond, I believe that the majority, if not all, will agree with you. And they want to do more. How do they contribute to this? Because I imagine when you see a black square on Instagram, I don't know how much that's doing. What do you recommend someone does if they, they're on the side, they don't like the police brutality. They want to not just raise awareness for it, but they want to drive a real change. Yeah. You know, Michael, it's like Dr. King said, we all have a role to play in this struggle for equality and justice. And everybody doesn't have to be on the front lines with me and Reverend Al and the Black Lives Matter activists. We all have a role to play. It's trying to do something to make a difference in your community, to take on a mentee, somebody who is totally opposite from you, somebody who has been written off by society, to take them on as a mentee and try to help them be able to achieve their American dream. And to the trial lawyers, you know, you can support scholarship funds to try to make the profession be more diverse. I have at the St. Thomas University College of Law, we have the Ben Crump Social Justice Center where we are focused on giving scholarships to people who will commit to do civil rights work for 10 years after they graduate. And even though you might not do it, contribute to the scholarship fund. And so we have a lot of young people who want to do this type of work. And no, it doesn't pay as much and all this stuff is, you know, a lot of my trial lawyer, lawyer, brotherance. But we can do good and do well at the same time. And so have those young people be able to get through law school to do the civil rights work to fight for wrongfully convicted people, to fight for people who are being overcharged and over convicted. Fight for people in these communities that are being exposed to environmental racism on a regular basis. Because the other thing, you can't be a business too. Now I can help you a lot practice too. I think of these mass torches and such, the people who are often affected the most are marginalized people of color, minority communities. And so when they see you doing these cases of human and civil rights, they say, "Hey, I remember that person. We should go to them. We send all the advertisements for Camp Lejoon and talk on pile. But we remember this law firm in our community. They help represent us." And so it matters. Everybody has a role to play. Just try to do something. Do what Dr. King said in the letter from the Birmingham J.R. He talked about, "You can't call yourself a moral person and see evil and look the way." You know, neutrality in the face of evil is a choice. And for those listening that, let's say, they're maybe in an early part of their career and their legal career, they just start their firm. And today, your national firm, from whatever call you're getting, hundreds of not thousands of calls a day today. But that was not always the case. And I remember watching in the documentary that you and Darryl used to call yourself Rent Lawyers if you could speak to that. Yeah, Michael. You know, we all have a start. And hopefully for the young lawyers listening is not where you start, is where you finish. We did rent law, man. We did anything that would help us pay the rent. And a lot of times that meant doing criminal law. And we got real good at it, gave us real good trial skills, which are very beneficial today as we take on some of the largest corporations in the world. And so never ever think, "Oh, it's just a little criminal case, or it's just a little car accident case." Now, this is the case that's going to help you sharpen your skills to the point where you become habitual. And so you develop hefty habits. So every time you go in a courtroom, you may sure that your ex was very shocked that morning, and that you will prepare for the battle when you go in that courtroom. That's what today is about as a young lawyer. You are everything you do is going to accumulate to something to help you for some controversy, some trial, some case that you're going to have 20 years from now. And you're going to think back to that moment today and say, "I'm glad I went through that journey." Because the real victory is in the journey. And I know people say, "Well, it's easy for you to say once you've made it." But the real victory is in the journey. One of my greatest heroes, Frederick Douglas, the great Negro abolitionist, he said, "Without struggle, they could be no progress. And you think about that just on its own is profound. But when you think about it even in a scientific context, for an engine to move, there has to be friction. There has to be some struggle to get progress. And so what you're going through only is helping you to progress in life. There's a lot of different lawyer awards and recognition and no disrespect to the super lawyers, but in 2021, you were included in the Time Magazine 100, right? The annualists are the 100 most influential people in the world. So what was that like? I mean, what was it like for you, for your team, your family? My mother, who is deeply religious, said, only guy could take a little black boy from the government housing projects and give him the influence that will make him be amongst the most influential people in the entire world. And so to God, all the glory. And then as we come to a close, this being the game changing attorney podcast, what does being a game changer mean to you? I remember reading "Lots of Arabia" by T. S. Elliott, the British soldier. He said, the most dangerous man in the world is the man who dreams with his eyes open. I think that's what it means to be a game changing attorney. You are dreaming of this world of equality and justice fall, liberty and justice fall. It sounds good on paper, but we're the ones who make the rhetoric reality. I want to give a huge thank you to Ben Cromp for taking the time to speak with us today. Well, particularly resonated with me was when Ben said that it is not moral to remain neutral in the face of evil. Regardless of who we are or where we are, we all have the power and the responsibility to speak out against injustice. [MUSIC PLAYING] If you found this episode valuable, here are three free ways that I can help you grow your law firm. Number one, download the first chapter of my book, absolutely free, at GameChangingAttorney.com. Number two, you can shoot me a text at 404-531-7691. And I'll answer any question that you've got for me. And finally, number three, if you can leave this podcast a five-star review, it'll help us gain access to more influential thought leaders and bring their lessons learned here to you. For more information on our interview with Ben Cromp, see the show notes for this episode in your podcast app or visit GameChangingAttorney.com. 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