Famed attorney Benjamin Crump headlined the 82nd Annual NAACP Freedom Fund Gala on Sept. 16 at the Hilton Carillon Park Hotel. Left, Mayor Ken Welch, St. Pete Branch NAACP President Esther Matthews, Atty. Crump and Senator Darryl Rouson. Photos courtesy of Kelley Collier.
BY FRANK DROUZAS | Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG — Famed attorney Benjamin Crump, who has represented, among others, the families of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, headlined the 82nd Annual NAACP Freedom Fund Gala on Sept. 16. Senator Darryl Rouson served as master of ceremony, and Chantella Moore offered welcoming remarks.
Attorney Benjamin Crump
“Tonight, we come together not only to commemorate the incredible progress we’ve made but also to recognize the journey that lies ahead,” Moore said, adding that the gala is a celebration of our “shared values, our unwavering dedication to breaking down barriers and our belief in the power of unity.”w
Esther Matthews, president of the NAACP St. Petersburg Branch, spoke about the importance of justice and equity and remarked on the state’s recent revised education standards that instruct educators to teach students that slavery sometimes provided benefits to the enslaved.
“When faced with this and other discouraging positions, we know now more than ever that our voice must ring loud and clear in our city,” she said, “and in partnership with other chapters across the state. The NAACP stands at a pivotal time in history…[it] stands ready to challenge efforts to roll back and eliminate policies and programs intended to extend the social safety net to all.”
Pinellas County Commissioner Rene Flowers delivered impassioned greetings touching on topics including disproportionate prison sentences for African Americans, a dearth of adequate public education and healthcare equity.
Mayor Ken Welch thanked the NAACP for “continuing to be a voice for justice and equity in our community.”
“It’s also important that we just don’t talk equity, but we walk equity,” he said, “every day, every aspect of our city operations,” adding that his administration has recently hired a new chief equity officer, who will guide the city in planning policies and operations.
The mayor, who met Crump five years ago, said the attorney has “led the fight for justice in communities throughout our nation for years.” Time and time again, Welch said, when a grieving family and grieving community call Crump, he answers the call.
The mayor then presented the attorney with a key to the city.
A member of Omega Psi Phi, Crump — who reiterated the night’s theme — said we should keep an eye on the past, celebrate the present and prepare for the future — underscored the importance of teaching Black history. He stressed that young people of color must be well-armed to protest issues, including the school-to-prison pipeline, voter suppression, the denial of access to capital, access to quality healthcare and environmental racism.
“We see young Black and Brown children growing up in South Central Los Angeles have but a third of lung capacity as little white children growing up 15, 20 miles down the road in Santa Barbara because they have made it legal for toxic, polluting, poisonous chemical plants to exist in our children’s back yards where they play and go to school and live every day!”
He stated that we must “arm our children” with intellect, noting that we need to make sure that our children are “more intelligent than those who will seek to oppress them.”
“We must teach Black history now more than ever,” Crump exclaimed, “because they have to understand why they will be able to overcome.”
When Crump is asked why he continues to fight the injustices and wrongful deaths, he replies, “Because I know we’re going to win this war based on history!”
Black people have overcome crucibles such as the middle passage, he said, which brought Africans across the ocean to the Americas and Europe — “the most genocidal phenomenon in the history of the world” – starting in slave caves in West Africa, then chained together in ships, enduring defecation, menstruation, disease, malnourishment and rotting corpses.
Then, if you happen to survive, you find yourself enmeshed in a system of chattel slavery, which means that you, your children, and your children’s children will be enslaved.
“And the fact that we were considered three-fifths of a human being,” he said, “and Black people overcame that!”
Black people in this country have overcome the intellectual justification of discrimination by the highest court in the land when, in the Dred Scott decision, the court decided that the Black man “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
He preached how Black people overcame the recanting of the 40 acres and mule order, and in the 1890s, Jim Crow started rearing his ugly head.
He remarked that Black people overcame separate but equal (Plessy v. Ferguson), a legal doctrine used to skit the Fourteenth Amendment.
“All of our parents and grandparents knew that there was nothing equal about segregation in America!” Crump said, adding that Black people faced lynching, torture, Jim Crow threats, and again, they overcame.
He recalled his first year of law school, when they discussed how vital precedent in law was, and quipped that he couldn’t take it too seriously because if everything was truly based on precedent, “most of us in this room would still be slaves!” But judging by the precedent of Black history and the obstacles that African Americans have overcome, he averred, “We’re going to be all right!”
It’s not just Black history under attack, Crump said, but democracy as well.
“I cannot believe, I cannot fathom, that in 2023, in the United States of America, we’re talking about banning books! I mean, think about that!” he said, adding that works from such celebrated Black authors as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Harper Lee, and Alice Walker have come under attack.
He said we must fight back against the enemies of equality because those who don’t want to teach history intend on repeating it.
In paraphrasing the father of Black history, Carter G. Woodson, Crump stated that if a race has no history, if a race has no traditions that are respected enough to be taught to the young people, then that race becomes a negligible thought in the history of the world, and thus becomes endangered of being exterminated from the face of the earth.
“We won’t let no governor of the State of Florida, or any other state, exterminate our Black history, our Black culture or our Black literature!” he boomed.
Young African Americans today need to know about their ancestry and that they are descended from kings and queens. They also need to know the significant historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks.
“They were not mere footnotes of history; they truly were the heroes of American history!”
He asserted that all of our children have to know and understand that all of our history contributed to American History. They must know that all of our cultures contribute to the progress of America.
Black history, which is a part of American history, is crucial for little Black children to know and for little white children too, he averred.
“All of our children have to know that their history and culture contributed to American history, and we have to continue to exalt all of our history,” he said. “And if we try to marginalize their history, then it marginalizes American history.”
He said that as hard as we fought for justice for Markeis McGlockton, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Trayvon Martin and others, we have to fight for Black history.
“Because if we fight for Black history, we get to give all of our children a better world because Black history is American history,” adding that “we have to be proactive in fighting for our history and our culture.”
At the end of the evening, President Matthews gave out awards to honor our homegrown heroes.
- Next-Gen Trailblazers Award — Marcus Brooks, executive director, Center for Health Equity
- Morris Milton Civic Engagement Award — Tamara Felton Howard, Esq.
- Garnell Jenkins Education Award — Arthurene Williams, founder, Kidz World
- President’s Award — Poul Hornsleth, Harry Harvey, Lydia Brown, Mary Johnson, Oretha Pope Jr.
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This is an outstanding account. It is comprehensively well done and illuminating.
Thank you