Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney based in Tallahassee, is best known for representing the family of Trayvon Martin after the unarmed black 16-year-old was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in 2012.
Crump, 44, now represents the family of Michael Brown, 18, whose fatal shooting by a Missouri police officer has ignited violent protests in Ferguson and controversy across the nation.
A partner in the law firm Parks & Crump, Crump has also played a role in prominent civil rights cases including that of Martin Lee Anderson, a black 14-year-old who died in 2006 while incarcerated at a boot-camp-style youth detention center in Panama City, Fla., and Robbie Tolan, now 28, a black man shot by police in 2008 in front of his parents at the family's home in Bellaire, Texas.
Crump has a bachelor's degree and a law degree from Florida State University. He was named one of the National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Lawyers and Ebonymagazine's Power 100 Most Influential African Americans.
He has received the NAACP's Thurgood Marshall Award and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's Martin Luther King Servant Leader Award
Crump and his wife, Genae Angelique Crump, are raising two teen boys who are the biological sons of Crump's cousin.
Contributing: Doug Blackburn, Tallahassee Democrat
