Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump on his “sharp” new crime novels

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has worked on hundreds of police brutality cases – representing the families of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Tire Nichols, Ahmaud Arbery, Daunte Wright and Jacob Blake, winning multimillion-dollar settlements and… He was nicknamed the “Attorney General of Black Americans.”

Now the omnipresent, media-savvy 54-year-old lawyer is starting a new career: crime novelist. Crump, never one to downplay his ambitions, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that he will create an “entirely new genre” through his seven-figure, two-book deal with Bantam Books.

“In all of these legal thriller books that were written, there were no black superhero lawyers,” Crump said. “And God said, ‘Well, the reason that’s not the case is because that’s your calling.”

“Traditionally there are legal thrillers where the question is who did it. Now, what I present is the 'why did it,'” he added in a telephone interview. “And that will be an exciting thing, breaking down society through an entertaining cast of characters to understand not just how the injustice happened, but why it happens and how we overcame it.”

“These books will be what I call the four Es: entertaining, educational, engaging and empowering,” he continued.

And sexy.

Crump says legal drama isn't the only thing stirring up excitement in his books. They will also celebrate black love, as stated in the contract announcement, and delve into lead character Beau Lee Cooper's relationship with his wife.

“It’s very spicy,” he said.

In a description that will be familiar to anyone who has followed Crump's three-decade career, Cooper is a black civil rights attorney from Texas who, according to the announcement, “deals with heartbreaking cases of corruption and injustice.” The narratives will also explore the sometimes tense interactions between Cooper and his legal partners on cases, his children's thoughts on what's going on on social media and his relationship with his mother.

Although there are undeniable similarities between Crump and Cooper, he said the thrillers are biomythography – a mix of history, biography and myth.

The books will be “case by case and some of them will have a lot of similarities to cases we've all heard about,” he said. “Readers will find it interesting that this superhero and larger-than-life lawyer, Beau Lee Cooper, is very likeable. He is a family man. He is an ordinary person who walks with kings but never loses commonality and never forgets where he comes from.”

This isn't the first time Crump has gone beyond the courtroom. The Netflix documentary 2022 Civilian: Ben Crump followed it for a year and also produced a short film about the groundbreaking 1982 Chattanooga civil trial in which five black women fought to hold the Ku Klux Klan accountable after a shooting.

One might wonder when Crump had time to get a few novels out. He explained that whenever he had a free moment – often on a flight – he took notes, collaborated with editors and did research to shape Cooper's world.

In fact, he said, he actually completed four manuscripts, although only two were purchased by Bantam. The goal, he said, is to inspire readers to learn more about the criminal justice system and those who want to change it.

“I'm trying to write about a better world. We're struggling to say, 'This is the world I'm trying to give my daughter,'” Crump explained. “I want her to know that there are heroes who look like her, come from her community, have her life experiences and are just as majestic as she is [characters] in the Marvel Universe.”