Crispus Attucks
c. 1723 - 1770
"The first to defy, the first to die" - John Boyle O'Reilly

Crispus Attucks was the first American colonist to die in the conflict against the British which developed into the Revolutionary War.

The year was 1770, and tensions were running high between American colonists in Boston and the red-coated British soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The British government had imposed various taxes and laws affecting colonists' efforts to conduct business and govern themselves, and the colonists were becoming increasingly frustrated with the government's failure to bring them into the decision-making processes. The Townshend Acts placed tariffs on imported goods such as tea. The Stamp Act called for taxation of the colonists to pay for the presence of the British military. Colonists were frequently forced to serve on British naval ships, and the British government was requiring that colonists open their homes to soldiers for food and shelter. On the docks in Boston, British soldiers sometimes moonlighted as dockworkers, driving down wages and demand for full-time workers.

On Friday, March 2, 1770, a fight had broken out between three British soldiers and some Boston rope-makers. This incident set the tone for another incident on March 5, 1770, when a British soldier entered a pub looking for work, and was confronted by angry Boston sailors and dockworkers. Included in this group at the pub was a merchant marine sailor, a member of the crew of a whaling ship, named Crispus Attucks.

Twenty years before, a notice had been placed in the Boston Gazette for "A mulatto fellow, about twenty-seven years of age, named Crispus. 6 feet two inches high, short curled hair, his knees nearer together than common…" A slave owner, one William Brown of Framingham, had placed the notice in the newspaper to advertise a ten pound reward for the return of the individual described. The notice prohibited "masters of vessels", or ship captains, from carrying him off, yet by 1770, Crispus Attucks had never been captured and had made a living working on ships and as a ropemaker in Boston. Attucks was considered a "mulatto" because his father was said to have been an African and his mother a Natick Indian.

In the early evening of March 5, 1770, after the incident at the pub, a group described by John Adams (who became the second president of the United States) as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes and mulattoes, Irish Teagues and outlandish jack tarrs," had gathered outside the customs house and was heckling a British sentry. The sentry called for help, but the soldiers who came to help were driven back into the customs house. Seven other soldiers joined him. The crowd of "rabble" had already grown to about thirty people, and more colonists, armed with sticks and clubs, continued to gather until there were about fifty of them. More angry words were exchanged (some of the young boys were calling the soldiers "lobsters") and the soldiers threatened to fire on the crowd. At this, the colonists began to throw snowballs, rocks, and debris from the street. Crispus Attucks was in the front of the crowd, and was shouting that the way to get rid of the soldiers was to attack the main guard. The soldiers opened fire, downing Attucks first, then killing four others, (Samuel Gray, who came forward to assist Attucks when he went down; James Caldwell, a sailor; Samuel Maverick, a youth of seventeen; and Patrick Carr). Several more colonists were injured. This incident came to be known as the Boston Massacre; it was commemorated yearly until the Revolutionary War began. A few days later, on March 12, Paul Revere published a poem and a drawing of the incident in the Boston Gazette.

Samuel Adams (not to be confused with John Adams, who defended the soldiers in their murder trial) used the Boston Massacre to illustrate the oppression and abuse of colonists by the British government, and to encourage further revolutionary activity which culminated in our country's war for independence from Britain. The soldiers were either acquitted of murder or convicted of manslaughter and let off easily.

Historians debated the role of Crispus Attucks for a hundred years: was he a hooligan, or a patriot? Opinions differ. In any case, Crispus Attucks is generally acknowledged as the first casualty of the American struggle for independence. In 1858 African American abolitionists commemorated him with a "Crispus Attucks Day," and a monument erected to him in 1888 by the city of Boston stands on Boston Common to this day. []
Susan Robinson