Civil rights attorney Ben Crump accepted keys to the city of Miami Gardens from Mayor Rodney Harris in front of thousands of spectators who attended the 2024 Jazz in the Gardens (JITG) Music Festival on the evening of March 10.
Between an all-star set that featured DJ Cassidy, Uncle Luke, Too Short, Lil’ Kim, T.I., and Maxwell, the festival’s closing artist, Crump joined Mayor Harris and Vice Mayor Katrina Wilson onstage to receive the unexpected honor.
“Thank you, Mr. Mayor,” Crump said.
“Thank you to the leadership, thank you Black people!”
Crump continued and pumped up the crowd: “Because like I told the mayor, ‘This is not just beautiful for Miami Gardens. This is beautiful for Black America’”
The famed civil rights attorney has ties with the Miami Gardens community. On Feb. 8, St. Thomas University College of Law became the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law, also becoming the first law school bearing the name of a practicing lawyer and the second in the nation named after an African American. The first was Crump’s hero, the honorable Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Attorney Crump told St. Thomas University, “It is a privilege to be a part of the St. Thomas University legacy through the Benjamin L. Crump College of Law. We have come such a long way in the journey to equality, but we are not there yet.”
He said that students who matriculated from the institution would be the next generation of “change makers” and “be passed the torch from today’s civil rights icons.”
Crump is currently taking on the prison front by representing the families of Jerome Stevenson and Ramon McGhee who died while incarcerated.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Crump humbly thanked his supporters at Jazz in the Garden before leaving the stage and making way for Maxwell.
Jazz in the Gardens is an annual music festival that has been running for 17 years. For 2024, the city of Miami Gardens partnered with the Black Promoters Collective to present the two-day event and bring a strong lineup of global and regional artists, including Uncle Luke DJ Nasty, Ball Greezy, Trick Daddy and Trina, Rick Ross, Jeezy, Fantasia, Kirk Franklin, Summer Walker, Scarface, and many more.
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