For greater than twenty years, lawyer Ben Crump has stood on the entrance traces of the nation’s ongoing civil rights battles.
Known as “Black America’s Attorney General,” Crump has been acknowledged as one of many Most Influential People of 2021 by Time, one among Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 Most Influential African Americans, and is listed among the many National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Lawyers.
As the founder and principal proprietor of Ben Crump Law, he’s taken on a few of the most high-profile and landmark circumstances tied to social and environmental justice for Black communities. He represented the households of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, in addition to the residents of Flint, Michigan, affected by town’s contaminated water crisis. Through his courtroom advocacy, Crump has helped form the nationwide dialog round accountability, policing and systemic inequity. In 2019, he penned Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People, a strong reflection on a few of his most consequential authorized fights.
Now, Crump is channeling that very same courtroom perception and depth into fiction together with his new authorized thriller, Worse Than a Lie.
The novel follows Beau Lee Cooper, a civil rights lawyer whose relentless pursuit of reality and justice echoes Crump’s profession. Grounded in acquainted social tensions, the story paints a vivid portrait of the authorized and systemic challenges — and hard-won victories — that usually outline the Black expertise in America.
Set on the historic night time of Barack Obama’s presidential election, the novel opens with a former Black police officer, Hollis Montrose, shot by 4 white officers and left clinging to life. From that second, Cooper is pulled into a fancy authorized and ethical battle to uncover what actually occurred. The story serves as a sobering reminder that irrespective of how fiercely reality and justice are pursued, the system usually resists accountability when Black lives are at stake.
Blavity spoke with Crump about how Worse Than a Lie serves as a inventive extension of his lifelong mission to problem America’s conscience and push the nation towards a extra equitable imaginative and prescient of justice.
You’ve been probably the most constant voices for justice in a few of the most defining circumstances in trendy historical past. What impressed you to channel that very same pursuit of reality into a piece of fiction?
My private hero, Thurgood Marshall, as soon as mentioned, “Most folks won’t ever get to see what goes on in a courtroom,” and wrote his authorized briefs to be very participating and instructive. So, I started penning this novel to interact readers by telling a unique sort of story, a civil rights authorized thriller based mostly on my work. My purpose with this novel is to entertain and educate.
How did your concept of desirous to create a “Black superhero within the authorized world” form Beau Lee Cooper, and what qualities make him your model of a hero?
When I used to be a child, I watched Perry Mason with my grandmother. Later, I learn John Grisham novels, James Patterson’s Alex Cross collection, and Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. Those tales mattered to me, however the legal professionals and heroes have been at all times white. I feel it’s time for a Black authorized hero to return from a novel like this and for audiences to see justice via the lens of Black and brown heroes.
Beau Lee Cooper and his companions type a dynamic staff. Were they impressed by actual folks you’ve labored with or experiences out of your profession?
Like Beau Lee Cooper, my staff at Ben Crump Law is made up of a few of the most zealous attorneys and advocates, fiercely devoted to the work we do each day.
The e-book opens on the night time of Barack Obama’s historic election. Why did you select to start the e-book on that night time, and the way does it body the story?
I deliberately created the allegory wherein symbolic characters set in occasions would characterize summary beliefs and ethical ideas, such because the election of the primary Black president of the U.S. and the assumption that we might have a post-racial America. It wasn’t true then, and it’s actually not true as we speak. In the e-book, at one level, somebody primarily tells Beau Lee that he’s going to exit of enterprise as a civil rights lawyer as a result of racism is over now that America has a Black president. I needed to point out the juxtaposition of these emotions of hope related to President Obama’s election with the truth of what Black folks have been experiencing.
How did your real-life courtroom experiences affect the best way you approached writing the novel?
Great legal professionals are masterful storytellers. We have to border our shoppers’ circumstances by telling their tales in a method that appeals to the jury’s hearts and minds. We additionally focus a lot of our advocacy on telling our shoppers’ tales within the court docket of public opinion to get forward of narratives that attempt to dehumanize them. So, it’s solely a pure development that I take advantage of my real-life expertise as inspiration to inform a masterful civil rights authorized thriller wrapped in tradition.
What have been your largest challenges when it got here to balancing fiction with courtroom/authorized information and actuality? I
I don’t recall having an excessive amount of of a problem. Honestly, the true problem could also be having so many experiences to drag from. By that, I imply we don’t have a scarcity of tales to inform.
The novel tackles police violence and systemic injustice — points you’ve confronted all through your profession. How did writing about these subjects via fiction really feel totally different from arguing them in court docket?
It was therapeutic for me. I drew on the concept books at all times encourage readers. Even as I used to be writing and re-reading the e-book, I turned much more impressed and energized to proceed the combat. I hopeWorse Than a Lie has the identical affect on the reader.
In what methods do you see this story contributing to the dialog round legal justice and reality in media narratives?
I endeavored to write down a gripping authorized thriller that pays homage to Black tradition and Black liberty to the best diploma. We attempt to expose how a damaged legal justice system makes an attempt to oppress the reality. The e-book grapples with biased investigations, extreme bail and false arrest, which lots of our folks cope with every day. The e-book demonstrates, in a really entertaining method, how stacked the percentages are towards you and the way justice can nonetheless prevail.
Worse Than a Lie is the primary novel in a collection. Can you give us a glimpse of what’s subsequent for Beau Lee Cooper?
Worse Than a Lie is a novel with a unique sort of taste, one not seen within the authorized thriller style. This is the primary time you see a brother with a really various forged of social justice warriors utilizing their brilliance, sources and group engagement to defy a biased authorized system by no means meant to make sure marginalized folks obtain equal justice below the regulation.
What message do you hope readers, particularly younger Black readers, might take from Beau Lee’s combat for justice?
wish to encourage the following era of civil rights legal professionals and social justice advocates, identical to books like To Kill a Mockingbird and Native Son impressed me to change into a civil rights lawyer.
About The Author
