MARCH 5, 1770
Crispus Attucks, who had escaped slavery, became the first of five killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre, a precursor to the American Revolution.
His ancestry included Black and Native American roots, and he made his way to Boston at age 27 after escaping slavery. He worked on whaling ships and was also a rope-maker. At 6-foot-2, he was an imposing man, six inches taller than the average American man, and future U.S. president John Adams described him as someone “whose very looks was enough to terrify any person.”
Attucks and others faced the danger of being seized by the British and forced to join the Royal Navy. On that wintry night, Attucks led the crowd that confronted the British soldiers, “the first to defy, the first to die,” the famous poem declared.
An estimated 10,000 people — more than half of Boston’s population — joined in the procession of the five caskets to Granary Burying Ground, where Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and John Hancock were later buried. A Boston monument honoring Attucks bears John Adams’ words: “On that night, the foundation of American independence was laid.”
Martin Luther King Jr. called him one of the most important figures in Black history, “not for what he did for his own race, but for what he did for all oppressed people everywhere.” Schools, museums and foundations throughout the U.S. now bear Attucks’ name. In 1998, the U.S. Mint issued a silver dollar to honor him.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
For digital publications:
- Look for the “Republish This Story” button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the “Republish This Story” button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
For print publications:
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
If you have any other questions, contact Audience Development Director Lauchlin Fields.
1
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Read original article by clicking here.