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, Tyre Nichols, Ahmaud Arbery, Daunte Wright, and Jacob Blake, winning multimillion-dollar settlements, and earning the nickname of “Black America’s attorney general.”
Now the ubiquitous, media-savvy 54-year-old attorney is embarking on a new career: crime novelist. Never one to downplay his ambition, Crump told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that he will create a “whole new genre” through his seven-figure, two-book deal with Bantam Books.
“There were no Black superhero lawyers out there in all these legal thriller books that have been written,” Crump said. “And God said, ‘Well, the reason there is not is because that’s your calling.”
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“Traditionally, you have the legal thrillers that focus on the ‘who did it.’ Well, what I am introducing is the ‘why did it,’” he added in a phone interview. “And that is going to be a riveting thing when you break down society through an entertaining cast of characters to not only understand how the injustice happened but why it is happening and how we overcame it.”
“These books will be what I call the four Es: entertaining, education, engaging, and empowering,” he further explained.
And sexy.
Crump says the legal drama isn’t the only thing bringing the heat in his books. They will also celebrate Black love, in the words of the deal announcement, and delve into main character Beau Lee Cooper’s relationship with his wife.
“It’s very spicy,” he said.
In a description that should sound familiar to anyone who has followed Crump’s three-decade career, Cooper is a Black civil rights attorney from Texas who “tackles heart-wrenching cases of corruption and injustice,” according to the announcement. The narratives will also examine the sometimes-tense interactions between Cooper and his legal partners over cases, his children about what is going on in social media, and his relationship with his mother.
While there are undeniable similarities between Crump and Cooper, he said the thrillers are biomythography—a melange of history, biography, and myth.
The books go “from case to case and some of them will bring a lot of similarities from cases we have all heard of,” he said. “Readers will find it interesting that this superhero, larger-than-life lawyer, Beau Lee Cooper, is very relatable. He is a family man. He is a common person who walks with kings but never loses the common touch and never forgets where he came from.”
This isn’t the first time Crump has branched out beyond the courtroom. The 2022 Netflix documentary Civil: Ben Crump followed him for a year, and he also produced a short film about the landmark 1982 civil case in Chattanooga, where five Black women fought to hold the Ku Klux Klan accountable after a shooting.
You could be forgiven for wondering when Crump had time to crank out a couple of novels. He explained that whenever he had a free moment—often on a flight—he was taking notes, working with editors, and doing research to shape Cooper’s world.
In fact, he said, he’s actually finished four manuscripts, although only two have been bought by Bantam. The goal, he said, is to inspire readers to learn more about the criminal justice system and those trying to change it.
“I am trying to write about a better world. We are fighting to say, ‘This is the world I am trying to give my daughter,’” Crump explained. “I want her to know that there are heroes that look like her, come from her community, have her life experiences, and that they have just as much majesty as the [characters] in the Marvel Universe.”
