Netflix documentary produced by Kenya Barris in the works on civil rights attorney Ben Crump
A new Netflix documentary underway on Ben Crump will be an intimate look behind the scenes of the civil rights attorney’s pursuit of racial justice.
The yearlong project includes interviews from Crump’s law partners, investigators, family and community leaders in Tallahassee, Florida, where he’s headquartered. On June 9, cameras began rolling at George Floyd’s funeral.
Crump and his team orchestrated logistics as thousands, including celebrities, mourned the death of 46-year-old Floyd, whose controversial death in May while under arrest for passing a counterfeit bill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, sparked countless protests in the U.S. and a global end to police brutality. Floyd was killed on Memorial Day.
The film produced by #BlackAF and “Blackish” creator Kenya Barris is slated to debut sometime next year. It will be directed by Nadia Hallgren, who also netted two Emmy nominations for directing former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Netflix “Becoming” documentary released in May.
As camera crews roll into the capital city, Crump, 50, told the Tallahassee Democrat he feels like he’s running out of time to prevent the next Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old paramedic fatally shot by police in Louisville, Kentucky, while in her home in March, and Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old fatally shot by neighborhood watch man George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, in 2012.
“That’s my fight. That’s my struggle,” Crump said. “I take it very personal that we can’t make a great enough impact for them to stop killing our children.”
And he rattles off a string of other names. He and his team sit with the mourning families, living in the pain.
Adner Marcelin, an attorney in Crump’s law firm, said he and others didn’t notice the Netflix camera crew after a while because of their ceaseless workload. Marcelin was part of the team in Houston for Floyd’s historic farewell funeral.
Marcelin also serves as president of the Tallahassee Branch of the NAACP. He’s worked with Crump for 10 years, including as the communications manager at the former Parks and Crump Law firm.
The documentary, Marcelin said, will shed light on long hours devoted to fighting for clients.
“There are a lot of things that people don’t see,” Marcelin said. “They don’t see the days when Mr. Crump is sleeping on a window, because that’s the only little bit of time he gets to sleep. The constant 24 hours and being up all day, running around with staff, just to be able to get justice for a particular person.”
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Marcelin said the documentary offers a glimpse into Crump’s sacrifice and being away from his wife and daughter, Brooklyn, and the weight of the world in every high-profile case.
“You can try to explain it to somebody, but it really takes a special person to kind of understand what it is that we do and how important this work is to the upcoming generation,” said Marcelin, adding that’s the documentary’s purpose. “It’s not for notoriety. It’s not for fame.”
