Greene County Democrat

Tag: Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump

  • Newswire : A Question of Lynching in Mississippi

    Trey Reed

    By April Ryan, NNPA White House Correspondent

     

    The autopsy for Trey Reed is underway. The 21-year-old student at Delta State University was found dead hanging from a tree on the campus. There are questions about whether it was foul play or suicide.
    The state’s report will be completed in 24 hours. However, Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump confirms the parents of Reed will perform an independent autopsy in Mississippi after the current procedure is complete. It has yet to be determined if the family will use someone from Mississippi or outside of the state to perform the independent postmortem examination.
    Delta State’s initial contact with the family about Reed’s death was that he was found dead in his dorm room. Reed’s grandfather contradicts the information, saying the family found the truth from social media that he was dead, hanging from a tree. Crump is on the ground in Mississippi, working in collaboration with civil rights groups, including the Equal Justice Initiative, NAACP, and Southern Poverty Law Center, “trying to get to the truth,” as he confirms, “the rumors are rampant.”
    Compounding the issue, another man, 36-year-old Corey Zukatis, was found hanging from a tree in a wooded area in Vicksburg, Mississippi, near a casino. The family of Zukatis confirms he was homeless at the time of his hanging death. Both cases are under investigation.
    Democratic Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, is calling for a full federal investigation following the hanging deaths of two black men in Mississippi, long considered the most racist state in the nation. Brian Fair, Interim President and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), is also calling for a thorough investigation into the circumstances that led to the deaths, saying, “the tremendous outcry from the local community over concerns surrounding the loss of these two should not go unaddressed.”
    Fair also says the optics “of these two deaths immediately evokes the collective consciousness of those who are deeply aware of Mississippi’s troubled past. These events remind us how inequity continues to endanger lives.” According to the Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America documents more than 4400 racial terror lynchings in the United States during the period between Reconstruction and World War II.
    Also, according to their website, EJI researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950.

    On March 29, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law. The federal law says any act where someone conspires to commit a hate crime that results in death, serious bodily injury, or significant harm can be prosecuted as a federal crime. The law carries up to 30 years in prison plus fines.
    The question now is, will this Trump administration recognize and/or utilize this law if there is a lynching conviction in these cases?

  • Newswire : ‘The work that remains’: Ben Crump commemorates Michael Brown’s life 10 years later with call to action

    Brown family attorney, Benjamin L. Crump, speaks to the media along with Lesley McSpadden (L) and Michael Brown Sr. (R) during a press conference outside the St. Louis County Court Building on April 23, 2015. in Clayton, Missouri. Family members announced a civil lawsuit over the death of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri. | Source: Michael B. Thomas / Getty

    By: Editor at NewsOne

     

    Civil rights attorney Ben Crump commemorated the life and death of Michael Brown Jr. on Friday — 10 years since the tragic police shooting death of the 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri — with a call to action in the name of social justice and reforming law enforcement.
    Crump was the attorney representing Brown’s family — Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden — and their fight for justice after now-former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson gunned down their loved one with six fatal shots on Aug. 9, 2014. The shooting led to what’s been called the Ferguson Uprising, a series of protests that began the day after Brown Jr.’s death and also contributed to the rise of the national, powerful and highly influential Black Lives Matter movement.
    Crump, a longtime advocate for consequences for police misconduct who has been retained to work on some of the biggest social justice cases in modern history — including Trayvon Martin’s brutal shooting death by a vigilante in Florida in 2013 and George Floyd’s police murder in Minneapolis in 2020 — on Friday marked the somber anniversary in part by recalling the effect that Brown Jr.’s death had not on just Black America, but also the U.S. at large.
    “Ten years after the tragic death of Michael Brown, we are reminded of the profound impact his loss has had on the fight for justice and the movement for Black lives,” Crump said in a statement that was shared with NewsOne. “Michael’s death was a catalyst for a racial reckoning in our society, particularly relating to law enforcement and their treatment of people of color. His memory compels us to keep fighting against the injustices that have plagued our communities for far too long.”
    Still, Crump added, while much progress has been made, there is still quite a ways to go to ensure that Brown Jr. didn’t die in vain.
    “But while we reflect on the progress made, we must also acknowledge the work that remains,” Crump continued. “Michael’s death, like the deaths of so many others, is a painful reminder of the urgent need for comprehensive reforms that ensure no other family has to endure the heartbreak of losing a loved one to police violence.”
    Crump concluded his statement: “Today, we honor Michael Brown’s legacy by renewing our commitment to justice, equality, and the relentless pursuit of change. His life mattered, and his memory continues to fuel our resolve to build a world where Black lives are valued and protected.”

  • Newswire: After changing the way medicine is practiced, Henrietta Lacks’ family finally got their money

    Henrietta Lacks

    Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from BlackMansStreet.Today

    (TriceEdneyWire.com) – The descendants of Henrietta Lacks on Tuesday said they reached an agreement with Thermo Fisher Scientific, a company that sold HeLa Cells, taken from Lacks’ body, that was cloned and sold in aggregate for billions of dollars.
    The settlement’s details remain confidential, but Lacks’ grandchildren, who were part of the suit, seemed pleased with the agreement. The settlement was announced on what would have been Lacks’ 103rd birthday. She was born on August 2, 1920, and died on October 4, 1951. Lacks was initially buried in an unmarked grave.
    “There couldn’t have been a more fitting day for her to have justice, for her family to have relief,” her grandson Alfred Lacks Carter Jr. said. “It was a long fight — over 70 years — and Henrietta Lacks gets her day.”
    The settlement was reached after daylong negotiations in a federal court in Baltimore. The lawsuit stems from the Lacks family’s allegations that the cells collected from Lacks’ body following her death were taken and used for medical research without her permission. Astonishingly, her cells are still in use for research purposes today.
    The family claimed HeLa Cells were used by Thermo Fisher to enrich their profits. Last year, the company reported second-quarter earnings of $10.60 billion.
    The Lacks family sued Thermo Fisher in 2021 for profiting from what they called a racist medical system.
    The cells taken from Lacks became the HeLa cell line, the first human cells to be successfully cloned. They represented a critical development in medical research.
    HeLa cells went on to become a cornerstone of modern medicine, enabling countless scientific and medical innovations, including the development of the polio vaccine, genetic mapping, HIV AIDS medications, treatment of cancer, and COVID-19 vaccines. About 55 million tons of the cells have been used in over 75,000 scientific studies worldwide.
    Lacks or her family never knew about HeLa cells, and they were never compensated. At the time the cells were first collected in 1951, no permission was required to take the cells.
    “The exploitation of Henrietta Lacks represents the unfortunately common struggle experienced by Black people throughout history,” the complaint from her descendants read. “Too often, the history of medical experimentation in the United States has been the history of medical racism.”T
    Another incident of medical exploitation occurred in the Tuskegee Study which examined untreated syphilis among Black men between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 400 Black men were relegated to control groups in the study and suffered from the ravages of syphilis although an effective treatment for the disease became available.
    Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represented the Lacks family during the lawsuit, said Lacks was racked with pain until the end of her life as a repercussion of the procedures employed by John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. He blasted Johns Hopkins for using Lacks – and other Black women – as ‘lab rats,’ and said the experience was something many Black Americans could relate to. 
    Though Johns Hopkins has never profited from HeLa cells, according to Crump Thermo Fisher knowingly sought the rights to products that use Lacks’ cells despite her never giving consent for the cells to be taken.
    Thermo Fisher attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed when it was filed, arguing the statute of limitations had expired, but the family countered that the company has been profiting from the cells all this time.
    Lacks’ story gained attention in 2010 when Rebecca Skloot published “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” In 2017, Oprah Winfrey starred in an HBO movie of the same name based on the book.

  • Newswire : Senators fail to reach deal on George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

    Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), Sen Tim Scott (R-SC) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) who were the main negotiators working on this legislation


    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Talks to enact the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act were halted on Wednesday after a bipartisan Senate negotiations team announced it failed to reach a deal. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) called off the talks. No further discussions are in the works.
    “Unfortunately, even with this law enforcement support and further compromises we offered, there was still too wide a gulf with our negotiating partners, and we faced significant obstacles to securing a bipartisan deal,” Sen. Booker stated.
    “The effort from the very beginning was to get police reform that would raise professional standards, police reform that would create a lot more transparency, and then police reform that would create accountability, and we’re not able to come to agreements on those three big areas,” the senator remarked.
    Lawmakers had worked toward a measure following the police murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Optimism about a deal peaked in April when a jury convicted former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin of Floyd’s murder.
    Floyd’s killing led to global protests and corporate awareness of the call that Black lives matter.
    Introduced by California Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act addressed a range of policies and issues surrounding police practices and accountability.
    The bill sought to lower the criminal intent standard to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution. In addition, the measure would limit qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against an officer, and it would grant administrative subpoena power to the Department of Justice in pattern-or-practice investigations.
    Notably, the measure establishes a framework to prevent and cure racial profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state, and local levels.
    It restricts the use of no-knock warrants, chokeholds, and carotid holds.
    “On behalf of the families of George Floyd and so many others who have been impacted by police violence, we express our extreme disappointment in Senate leaders’ inability to reach a reasonable solution for federal police reform,” Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump wrote in a statement.
    “In the last year and a half, we have witnessed hundreds of thousands of Americans urging lawmakers to bring desperately needed change to policing in this country so there can be greater accountability, transparency, and ultimately trust in policing,” Crump continued.
    “People – including many police leaders – have raised their voices for something to change, and partisan politics once again prevents common-sense reform. We cannot let this be a tragic, lost opportunity to regain trust between citizens and police.
    “We strongly urge Democratic senators to bring the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to the floor for a vote so Americans can see who is looking out for their communities’ best interests and who is ready to listen to their constituents so we can together put the country on a better, more equitable path for all.”