Today In Black History
Crispus Attucks, first martyr of the American Revolution
Issue #509 Today In Black History, Thursday, February 22, 2024
Today’s Black History WOW!
Crispus Attucks was born around 1723 in Framingham, Massachusetts, to an African American father and a Native American mother. He was a sailor and dockworker, and his life was marked by a strong sense of justice and a desire for freedom.
His first name reflects the trend in the colonial era of enslavers forcing an Ancient Roman name onto their enslaved people. Attucks shares the name "Crispus" with the son of Emperor Constantine. His last name, "Attucks," is of Indigenous origin, deriving from the Natick word for "deer."
Though he is commonly described as an African American, two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as "black" or as a "Negro," but rather as a mulatto and an Indian.
In March 1770, tensions between the British soldiers and the colonists in Boston reached a boiling point, culminating in what would become known as the Boston Massacre.
On the evening of March 5, 1770, a crowd of colonists began taunting a group of British soldiers stationed in Boston. Attucks, along with several other men, approached the soldiers, and in the chaos that ensued, shots were fired and Crispus Attucks was the first to fall.
In the following days, the people of Boston held a funeral procession for the victims of the massacre. Because Attucks and fellow victim and sailor James Caldwell had no family or home in Boston, their bodies lay in state at Faneuil Hall.
His martyrdom was immortalized in both art and literature, with Paul Revere depicting him in his famous engraving of the Boston Massacre.
In the 1800s, abolitionists in Boston, led by William Cooper Nell, held up the death of Attucks as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Nell's seminal work, The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, fought the erasure of Black people from the story of the American Revolution.
Although Black Bostonians have commemorated the anniversary of Attucks' death since at least the 1850s, it took until the early twentieth century when activists, including William Monroe Trotter, pushed the city of Boston to officially recognize March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day, and it is still a recognized honor to this day.
In 1858, the Crispus Attucks Monument was erected on Boston Common, honoring his memory and recognizing his pivotal role in American history.
Today In Black History
- In 1832, the Female Antislavery Society of Salem was formed with Mary A. Battys as its first president.
- In 1865, Tennessee adopted a new constitution abolishing slavery.
- In 1898, the Black postmaster of Lake City, S.C. was lynched and his wife and three daughters were shot and maimed.
- In 1989, J Jazzy Fresh and the Fresh Prince Will Smith won the first rap Grammy for their hit single “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”
- In 2022, three white men previously convicted of murdering Black jogger Ahmad Arbery were also found guilty of federal hate crimes in Georgia.
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