july 8–21, 2019 | new york 73for a moment. “This was home,” he says.
He takes out his phone: “Hey, Ma, guess
where we at? 107 Holly Street.”
She asks about their old church. Are they
rebuilding yet?
“Our church is never coming back,” he
tells her.
“They’re tearing down all the history,”
she says.
“We’re going to represent them, Mama,”
he promises.
He stops by Uncle Jesse’s fema house, a
two-story condo in a planned development
that could be Anywhere, U.S.A. Uncle Jesse
sits in an easy chair, round and smiling. “It’s
our way to take the Lord with you every
day,” he tells me. “That’s what I tell all my
nephews and nieces—learn your Scripture
and take a little time out with the Lord.”
Crump sits on the edge of an armchair
with a loving gaze. “Every time I go to trial,
I call him and we go through the Scriptures
I need to say seven times a day.”
Uncle Jesse gives a satisfied nod, his eyes
down and his thoughts inward. “When you
really serve God and stay in that book,” he
tells me, “you come to the conclusion that
everything we do, he loves it.”
We drive to a small white church. Inside,
every pew is full. The men are wearing blaz-
ers and business shirts, the women dresses.
Crump thanks the pastor for the use of his
church and tells them he’s here to fight for
them. He talks about Uncle Jesse crying out-
side his house, saying he lost everything.
“And by everything,” Crump says, “he meant
the pictures of his wedding and their new-
born babies, the family Bibles passed down
from his great-great-grandmother with
birth dates and death dates of their ances-
tors written in the back.” Indignation rises in
his voice. “Now, the CSX lawyers are going
to say that house wasn’t worth more than
$35,000 or $40,000, but man, that claim is
worth so much more. Uncle Jesse worked
his whole life to make those mortgage pay-
ments. He was going to leave those Bibles
for his children.”
In the pews, heads nod.
Crump spots a familiar face in the audi-
ence. “Ms. Bensie, you’ve been to his house
many times.” She nods again, and others
nod with her. This is why he went to law
school, he says. A multibillion- dollar corpo-
ration could have done the right thing, but
instead they decided that this community
didn’t matter, that our lives don’t matter,
that those black and brown people from
South Lumberton weren’t going to amount
to anything anyway. “But we’re not gonna let
them devalue or trivialize our community
and our houses and our family legacies,” he
promises. “We’re not going to let them say
our lives don’t matter.” He paraphrases a
famous quote from Marshall. “The basis ofthe American Constitution is simply this—
that a black baby born to the most impover-
ished black mother, like my mama from
Turner’s Terrace, has the same exact rights
as the most affluent white mother, by simply
drawing its first breath as an American.”
That’s not the case in America today, he says,
but it’s a goal worth fighting for. By standing
up for Lumberton, he says, they can make
America live up to its ideals and finally
become the shining city that the Founders
promised—they can make America be
America for all Americans.
When he finishes, hands shoot up all
over the room. Will they pay off the loan
you took to fix your house? Will they pay
the doctor’s bills you ran up because of the
stress? What about the computers at the
community center? What about the
insurance bills that keep going up and
up? And what about the PTSD—every
time it rains, people get crazy. He tells
them to gather all the documents they
can, every bill and receipt. He tells them
that God is looking down on the injustice
they suffered and that God will smile on
them because he loves justice. “Y’all from
Lumberton,” he says. “You know the say-
ing: ‘A closed mouth won’t get fed.’ Well,
we ain’t gonna be closed-mouthed. We’re
going to try to make them see there’s a
heaven above and a hell below.”
In the months that followed, the attor-
ney general of Alabama announced his
decision: The officer who shot E.J. Brad-
ford followed procedure. The prosecutor
in Sacramento also declined to press
charges against the officers who shot Ste-
phon Clark. The executive in the “Bank-
ing While Black” case decided to pass on
his Rosa Parks moment—he couldn’t face
the public glare—and traded a nondisclo-
sure agreement for a settlement. The
heirs of the racist Harvard professor
joined Crump’s cause, asking Harvard to
give the family the photos, but Harvard is
still mulling it over. “It’s kind of funny
when you think about it,” Crump says.
“Black people in America are like domes-
tic-violence victims—no matter how
many times we’re bruised, no matter how
many times America breaks our heart, we
still want to believe there’s going to be jus-
tice and equality for all.”
He pauses. “But that’s why we fight. You
have to properly diagnose the problem
before you can cure a problem. So I believe
we’re gonna cure this disease of racism.
Just like we’re in a battle against cancer,
we’re in a battle against racism, and I
believe we’re gonna win that battle and
find the cure for cancer, and I believe we’re
gonna somehow find a cure for racism.
You’ve gotta believe it. It’s the only thing
that can make you keep going.” ■He wants to take the case. He really does.
But he doesn’t know whom to sue. The kill-
er’s parents? The University? America?
Whom do you sue to make this stop?
His phone rings. It’s Carruthers calling
about the Stephon Clark case. “Let me
grab this real quick,” he says.
He’s still saying hello when the phone
rings again. It’s another call from his agent.
“One sec,” he tells Carruthers. “That’s out-
standing,” Crump says. “We’ll pull the trig-
ger in the morning.”
Back to Carruthers. “Okay, I’m ready,
let’s talk strategy.”C
rump scrambles his schedule
again on Tuesday. The rain canceled
his trip to Little Rock, and the “Bank-
ing While Black” executive is waver-
ing again. That afternoon, he meets a legal
consultant at the Commerce Club in Atlanta
to talk over some cases. He stayed up until
three in the morning studying case law, but
his shirt is freshly ironed and his suit doesn’t
have a single wrinkle. The Eagle of Justice is
pinned to its left lapel. Everyone seems to
know him. A man who owns a security firm
comes over to give him a business card, telling
him to call if he ever needs a bodyguard.
He spends Wednesday largely in his
hotel room, preparing his cases and mak-
ing phone calls. He meets with the woman
who can’t get the murder conviction off her
record. On Thursday, he flies down to Tal-
lahassee to get a fresh suit and give a speech
on the steps of the state capital. One in
every five black men in Florida is a felon, he
tells the crowd. He calls it “killing them
softly,” because then nobody will question
anything the police want to do to you.
“Once you get a felony conviction, you’re
the walking dead. You just haven’t gotten
your death certificate yet.”
On Friday, he heads to Memphis to give
his speech to the black law students. When
that’s over, he finally catches the plane to
North Carolina. Twelve more hours and
he’ll be back in Lumberton. But first he has
to make a quick stop in Virginia, where
he’ll meet with Richard Collins’s parents in
the airport and get right back on the plane.L
umberton looks like any other
small town, with its library, court-
house, and few grand homes, the
others more modest but mostly
well tended. “This is the north side,”
Crump says.
Then we cross the railroad tracks. A clus-
ter of squat brick buildings with the insti-
tutional look of a low-security prison is the
first thing we see. We pass a sign that says
turner terrace and park in one of the
driveways. Crump gets out of the car and
stares up at a second-floor window, silent