Often referred to as “Black America’s Attorney General,” Ben Crump is a civil rights attorney and personal injury lawyer. He uses his passionate speeches to garner attention from the media and the American public when there is a case that isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
Born and raised by his mother and grandmother in Lumberton, North Carolina, Crump experienced hardships at a very early age.
Lumberton was a small factory city of about 21,000 people, with poor neighborhoods and wealthy neighborhoods separated by train tracks.
Crump was the oldest of nine siblings and grew up in a public housing project.
He candidly shares stories from his childhood that shaped his worldview and opened his eyes to the hazards of the world.
His mother, Helen, worked two jobs at once: one at a hotel, one at a Converse shoe factory. “My mother was smart,” he said in 2015. “She instilled in us early on that education was the way out.”
At 12 he left town.
His mother sent him south to Plantation, Florida, to live with his stepfather, and there he stayed clear of drug dealers who wanted younger kids as lookouts, studied hard and won a scholarship to FSU, per the same Super Lawyers piece.
His mother was fired from her job at the shoe factory because her supervisor denied her request for the day off to attend a school ceremony for her son.
From these experiences in his life, he decided he wanted to be a lawyer ”to make sure that marginalized people have their constitutional rights,” as Crump told Ben Jerry.
Career Path
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His hard work in high school earned him a scholarship to Florida State University, where he became the President of the Black Student Union and created a mentoring program for poor students at the school.
He stayed at FSU to get his law degree, then became a practicing lawyer in the South.
Crump met Daryl Parks at FSU, and in 1996 the two opened Parks & Crump, a personal injury firm in Tallahassee.
Money arrived fast enough for a promise kids in the projects love to make. “I was blessed: Within the first 12 months of our practice, we did pretty good and I bought my mother a house,” he told Super Lawyers.
Crump started as a personal injury lawyer in Tallahassee, Florida.
In 2006, a desperate mother whose son died in a Panama City boot camp turned to Crump for help.
Crump wasn’t her first-choice pick, but he did his best with the case.
He uncovered security footage of guards beating her 14-year-old son, Martin Lee Anderson, and the video drew public outcry, which in turn, brought about a second autopsy.
The second autopsy then determined that the boy died due to the guard’s actions.
Brooke Cluse, Benjamin Crump, and guest attend the National Urban League Conference Legacy Leadership Luncheon & Awards – @Getty
The family reached a $5 million settlement, and the state ordered the closure of juvenile boot camps.
That $5 million came from state. Bay County, where the sheriff ran the camp, agreed to pay another $2.4 million, and Crump told NBC News in 2007 the deal brought the total to $7.4 million (the family had sued for $40 million).
On the criminal side, his line was blunt: “You kill a dog; you go to jail. You kill a little black boy, and nothing happens.”
This case catapulted Crump’s career as one of the most successful and well-known civil rights and personal injury attorneys in the US.
He began to lead high-profile civil rights cases such as the Trayvon Martin case in 2012, the Michael Brown case in 2014, and the George F. case in 2020.
In 2017, Crump partnered with Morgan & Morgan to open his law firm, Ben Crump Law, a civil rights and personal injury firm based in Tallahassee.
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Notable Cases
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Crump has led the defense on most of the major civil rights cases the public knows about. Still, he has led many more cases, often working pro-bono or only taking any money once a settlement is successfully reached.
”I’m fully focused on what my mission is,” Ben said in an interview with CBS.
Some of his most notable cases are as follows:
- Trayvon Martin
In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old, walked through a gated community with Skittles and iced tea.
He was killed by a neighborhood crime watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, who told police he was acting in self-defense when he killed Trayvon.
Police let him go until Crump started a campaign to have Zimmerman arrested. While he was eventually acquitted, Martin’s family did reach a $1 million settlement with Zimmerman’s homeowners’ association.
This is the case that gave Crump the reputation he has today.
- Breonna Taylor
Breonna Taylor was killed by officers serving a “no-knock” warrant.
They entered her apartment and shot her in the middle of the night; she was unarmed. Crump took on the defense of this case and helped the family reach a $12 million settlement with the city of Louisville.
- George F.
George F. was killed by officers in Minneapolis when officer Derek C. knelt on his neck for an extended period of time.
The officers were charged in this case, with much of the media attention and public outcry thanks to Crump’s word on the case and with the media.
- Ahmaud Arbery
Ahmaud was an unarmed black man who was shot to death by two men chasing him in a truck.
The murderers claimed they thought Arbery was the culprit for a string of neighborhood burglaries, though that was false.
With Crump’s support in the case, the two men were arrested on charges of murder and aggravated assault.
Randy Cox and a $45 million check
June 2022, New Haven.
Richard “Randy” Cox was handcuffed in the back of a police van without a seat belt, the driver braked hard, and Cox was left paralyzed from the chest down.
A year later the city agreed to pay $45 million, $30 million of it from insurance and $15 million from city funds.
Crump signed a statement with co-counsel Louis Rubano and R.J. Weber, quoted by CBS News: “As the largest settlement in a police misconduct case in our nation’s history, this settlement sends a message to the country that we know we must be better than this.”
$411 million over Zoom
On October 2, 2020, a jury in Florida’s Second Circuit returned a $411,726,608 verdict for Duane Washington, a former career Army sergeant partially paralyzed in a 45-vehicle pileup on Interstate 10 near Tallahassee in July 2018, in what his lawyers called the first virtual jury trial in that circuit.
Top Auto Express, the truck company on the other side, had refused a $1 million settlement offer.
Crump’s take after the verdict: “God chooses his best soldiers for his toughest assignments.”
Lewis Butler, $779 million
A Gadsden County jury awarded $779,389,024.37 to the family of Lewis Butler, 51, a security guard shot in a 2023 robbery at an internet café in Havana, Florida.
Insurance Journal broke it into $550 million for pain and suffering and $225 million for loss of companionship, with no punitive damages considered.
“Lewis Butler is a hero who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect others,” Crump said.
In June 2022, Benjamin joined the case of Ebony Crocket.
Also in 2022, Ben was featured in the Netflix documentary “Civil: Ben Crump.” It was produced by Kenya Barris.
In early 2023, Ben started to represent the family of Earl Moore Jr.
On February 8, 2023, St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens renamed its law school the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law, the first in the country named after a Black attorney still in practice. Will Smith came to the dedication.
Novelist at 56
“My grandmother, when I was a little boy, she would say, what’s worse than a lie? And that is to tell the truth and nobody believe you,” Crump told NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe in February 2026, two days before Worse Than a Lie came out on February 17.
It is a legal thriller.
Hero Beau Lee Cooper is a Black civil rights attorney, and his case starts when Hollis Montrose, a Black ex-police officer, is shot 10 times by white officers in Chicago.
Wife
Ben Crump is married to Genae Angelique Crump. She has a Ph.D. degree from Florida State University and works as a doctor in Tallahassee.
Ben Crump and Genae Angelique Crump attend the 94th Annual Academy Awards – @Getty
They have a daughter, Brooklyn.
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Ben Crump – Net Worth
So, how much is Ben Crump worth? Crump does not take any money from a case until a settlement is reached. Due to the intense nature of his cases and the large settlements, he does well financially. Therefore, American attorney Ben Crump has an estimated net worth of $15 million.
How much he keeps depends of the fee deal in each case, and the percentages stay private.
In 2020 he declined to tell Florida Trend his annual revenue, and offered only a rough tally: more than $40 million won in personal injury and wrongful death cases, and at least $10 million in civil rights cases (that is client money). His summary would fit on a coffee mug.
“We can do well by doing good, and I’m doing well.”
“As many cases as I have, we turn down probably 95% of the calls we get,” he said to Bloomberg Law in September 2020.
His residence in Tallahassee is a custom-built home in a historic part of town.
His mother lives in a house nearby, and he spends his days with his wife, Genae, and his daughter.
Big case results by year
| Year | Case result | Amount for the client |
|---|---|---|
| 2007 | Martin Lee Anderson, state and county | $7.4 million |
| 2020 | Breonna Taylor, Louisville settlement | $12 million |
| 2020 | Duane Washington, Zoom jury verdict | $411.7 million |
| 2021 | George Floyd, Minneapolis settlement | $27 million |
| 2023 | Randy Cox, New Haven | $45 million |
| 2023 | Henrietta Lacks, Thermo Fisher | “Confidential” |
| 2025 | Lewis Butler, Gadsden County verdict | $779.4 million |
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I am Bulgarea Candin Stefan, and I founded FamousPeopleToday.com in 2018. I’m using my bachelor’s degree in economics and 9 years of experience in blogging to guide millions of people through the incredibly complex world of celebrity net worths.