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Little is known for certain about Crispus Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died "on the spot" during the incident.<ref>I. Kimber, ''The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer,'' Vol. 39 p. 251.</ref> Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as a "Negro," or "black" man; it appeared that Bostonians accepted him as [[mixed race]]. Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a free man or an escaped [[slave]]; but agree that he was of [[Wampanoag]] and [[African]] descent.
Little is known for certain about Crispus Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died "on the spot" during the incident.<ref>I. Kimber, ''The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer,'' Vol. 39 p. 251.</ref> Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as a "Negro," or "black" man; it appeared that Bostonians accepted him as [[mixed race]]. Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a free man or an escaped [[slave]]; but agree that he was of [[Wampanoag]] and [[African]] descent.


While the extent of his participation in events leading to the massacre is unclear, Attucks in the 19th century became an icon of the [[anti-slavery]] movement. He was held up as the first martyr of the American Revolution along with other victims of the shootings. In the early nineteenth century, as the [[Abolitionism|Abolitionist]] movement gained momentum in Boston, supporters lauded Attucks as a [[African American|black American]] who played a heroic role in the history of the [[United States]] <ref name=Minardi1>Margot Minardi, ''The Inevitable Negro: Making Slavery History in Massachusetts, 1770-1863'' ([[Harvard University]]: PhD Dissertation, 2007);</ref> Because Attucks had [[Wampanoag people|Wampanoag]] ancestors, his story also holds special significance for many [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]].<ref name=Bolsters1>W. Jeffrey Bolster, ''Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail'' (Cambridge: [[Harvard University Press]], 1997); David J. Silverman, ''Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871'' (Cambridge University Press, 2005); as well as two histories by Daniel Mandell, ''Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and ''Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts'' (Lincoln: [[University of Nebraska Press]], 1996).</ref>
While the extent of his participation in events leading to the massacre is unclear, Attucks in the Hood became an icon of the [[anti-slavery]] movement. He was held up as the first martyr of the American Revolution along with other victims of the shootings. In the early nineteenth century, as the [[Abolitionism|Abolitionist]] movement gained momentum in Boston, supporters lauded Attucks as a [[African American|black American]] who played a heroic role in the history of the [[United States]] <ref name=Minardi1>Margot Minardi, ''The Inevitable Negro: Making Slavery History in Massachusetts, 1770-1863'' ([[Harvard University]]: PhD Dissertation, 2007);</ref> Because Attucks had [[Wampanoag people|Wampanoag]] ancestors, his story also holds special significance for many [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]].<ref name=Bolsters1>W. Jeffrey Bolster, ''Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail'' (Cambridge: [[Harvard University Press]], 1997); David J. Silverman, ''Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871'' (Cambridge University Press, 2005); as well as two histories by Daniel Mandell, ''Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880'' (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and ''Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts'' (Lincoln: [[University of Nebraska Press]], 1996).</ref>


==Early life==
==Early life==

Revision as of 14:36, 14 November 2012

This article is about Crispus Attucks. For other uses, see Crispus Attucks (disambiguation).
Crispus Attucks
Portrait of Crispus Attucks
Bornc. 1723
Framingham, Massachusetts, British America
DiedMarch 5, 1770 (aged ca. 48)
Boston, Massachusetts, British America
OccupationDockworker [1]

Crispus Attucks (c. 1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American slave, merchant seaman and dockworker of Wampanoag and African descent. He was the first person shot to death by British redcoats during the Boston Massacre, in Boston, Massachusetts.[2]

Little is known for certain about Crispus Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died "on the spot" during the incident.[3] Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as a "Negro," or "black" man; it appeared that Bostonians accepted him as mixed race. Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a free man or an escaped slave; but agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent.

While the extent of his participation in events leading to the massacre is unclear, Attucks in the Hood became an icon of the anti-slavery movement. He was held up as the first martyr of the American Revolution along with other victims of the shootings. In the early nineteenth century, as the Abolitionist movement gained momentum in Boston, supporters lauded Attucks as a black American who played a heroic role in the history of the United States [4] Because Attucks had Wampanoag ancestors, his story also holds special significance for many Native Americans.[5]

Early life

Considerable uncertainty still remains about Attucks' origins and early life. He appears to have been born a slave in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1722 possibly on Hartford Street. Framingham had a small population of black inhabitants from at least 1716. Attucks was of mixed African and Native American parentage and was descended from John Auttuck, a Natick who was hanged during King Philip's War.[6]

In 1750 William Brown, a slave-owner in Framingham, advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispus. Attucks' status at the time of the massacre as either a free black or a runaway slave has been a matter of debate for historians. What is known is that Attucks became a sailor and he spent much of the remainder of his life at sea often working on whalers which involved long voyages. He may only have been temporarily in Boston in early 1770, having recently returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He was due to leave shortly afterwards on a ship for North Carolina.[7]

Boston Massacre

Main article: Boston Massacre
This 19th-century lithograph is a variation of the famous engraving of the Boston Massacre by Paul Revere. Produced soon before the American Revolutionary War, this image emphasizes Crispus Attucks, who had become a symbol for Abolitionists. (John Bufford after William L. Champey, ca. 1856)[8]

In the fall of 1768, British soldiers were sent to Boston in an attempt to control growing colonial unrest, which had led to a spate of attacks on local officials following the introduction of the Stamp Act and the subsequent Townshend Acts. Radical Whigs had co-ordinated waterfront mobs against the authorities. The presence of troops, instead of reducing tensions, served to further inflame them.

After dusk on March 5, 1770, a crowd of colonists confronted a sentry who had chastised a boy for complaining that an officer was late in paying a barber bill. Both townspeople and a company of British soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot gathered. The colonists threw snowballs and debris at the soldiers. Attucks and a group of men led by Attucks approached the Old State House armed with clubs. A soldier was struck with a piece of wood, an act some witnesses claimed was done by Attucks. Other witnesses stated that Attucks was "leaning upon a stick" when the soldiers opened fire.[9]

Five colonists were killed and six were wounded. Attucks took two bullets in the chest and was the first to die.[10] County coroners Robert Pierpoint and Thomas Crafts Jr. conducted an autopsy on Attucks.[11] Attucks' body was carried to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state until Thursday, March 8, when he and the other victims were buried together in the same grave site in Boston's Granary Burying Ground.

Reaction and trials

Arguing the soldiers fired in self-defense, John Adams successfully defended most of the accused British soldiers against a charge of murder. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. Faced with the prospect of hanging, the soldiers pled benefit of clergy, and were instead branded on their thumbs. In his arguments, Adams called the crowd "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs."[12] In particular, he charged Attucks with having "undertaken to be the hero of the night," and with having precipitated a conflict by his "mad behavior."[13]

Two years later, Samuel Adams, a cousin of John Adams, named the event the "Boston Massacre," and helped assure that it would not be forgotten. Boston artist Henry Pelham (half-brother of the celebrated portrait painter John Singleton Copley) created an image of the event. Paul Revere made a copy from which prints were made and distributed. Some copies of the print show a dark-skinned man with chest wounds, presumably representing Crispus Attucks. Other copies of the print show no difference in the skin tones of the victims.

The five who were killed were buried as heroes in the Granary Burying Ground, which also contains the graves of John Hancock and other notable figures. While custom of the period discouraged the burial of black people and white people together, such a practice was not completely unknown. Prince Hall, for example, was interred in Copp's Hill Burying Ground in the North End of Boston 35 years later.

Legacy and honors

Crispus Attucks' grave in the Granary Burying Ground
  • ‘First man to die for the flag we now hold high was a black man’ is a line from Stevie Wonder’s song Black Man
  • 'Crispus Attucks, the first blasted' is a line from Nas' song "You Can't Stop Me Now"
  • The poet John Boyle O'Reilly wrote the following poem when the monument was finally unveiled:

And to honor Crispus Attucks who was the leader and voice that day: The first to defy, and the first to die, with Maverick, Carr, and Gray. Call it riot or revolution, or mob or crowd as you may, such deaths have been seeds of nations, such lives shall be honored for aye...

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Crispus Attucks in the introduction of Why We Can't Wait (1964) as an example of a man whose contribution to history provided a potent message of moral courage.
  • In an unsourced, popular book about Attucks, James Neyland wrote his appraisal of the man's significance:

He is one of the most important figures in African-American history, not for what he did for his own race but for what he did for all oppressed people everywhere. He is a reminder that the African-American heritage is not only African but American and it is a heritage that begins with the beginning of America.[16]

References

  1. ^ "Africans in America - Part 2 - Crispus Attucks". Retrieved 1 November 2011.
  2. ^ Lowery, Malinda Maynor. "African and Native Americans in Colonial and Revolutionary Times." Teachinghistory.org. Accessed 13 July 2011.
  3. ^ I. Kimber, The London Magazine, or Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer, Vol. 39 p. 251.
  4. ^ Margot Minardi, The Inevitable Negro: Making Slavery History in Massachusetts, 1770-1863 (Harvard University: PhD Dissertation, 2007);
  5. ^ W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871 (Cambridge University Press, 2005); as well as two histories by Daniel Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996).
  6. ^ Parr & Swope p.44
  7. ^ Parr & Swope p.45
  8. ^ Thomas H. O'Connor, The Hub: Boston Past and Present (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001), p. 56.
  9. ^ The Trial of William Wemms, James Hartegan, William M'Cauley, Hugh White, Matthew Killroy, William Warren, John Carrol, and Hugh Montgomery, soldiers in His Majesty's 29th Regiment of Foot, for the murder of Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, and Patrick Carr, on Monday-evening, the 5th of March, 1770 at the Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize, and General Goal Delivery, held at Boston, the 27th day of November, 1770, by adjournment, before the Hon. Benjamin Lynde, John Cushing, Peter Oliver, and Chris Metzler, Esquires, justices of said court (Boston: J. Fleeming, 1770); and A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston. (New York: John Doggett, Jr., 1849).
  10. ^ The Trial of William Wemms; and A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston.
  11. ^ Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston Massacre. (W.W. Norton and Company, 1970)
  12. ^ The Murder of Crispus Attucks
  13. ^ public domain This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  14. ^ USmint.gov, United States Mint: "Plinky's Coin of the Month February 2000"
  15. ^ Molefi Kete Asante, 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002).
  16. ^ James Neyland, Crispus Attucks, Patriot (Holloway House, 1995)
  17. ^ Brady, Wayne. "Crispus Attucks 'Today Was a Good Day' with Wayne Brady, JB Smoove & Michael Kenneth Williams". Retrieved 17 February 2012.

Bibliography

  • Parr, James L. & Swope, Kevin A. Framingham: Legends and Lore. The History Press, 2009.

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