Crispus Attucks

This article is about the 18th century American. For other uses, see Crispus Attucks (disambiguation).

Crispus Attucks
Speculative portrait of what Attucks might have looked like
Born
Crispus Attucks

c. 1723
Framingham, Massachusetts Bay, British America
DiedMarch 5, 1770 (approximately aged 47)
Boston, Massachusetts Bay, British America
Occupation(s)Whaler, sailor, stevedore[1]
Known forDeath in the Boston Massacre

Crispus Attucks (c. 1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result the first American killed in the American Revolution.[2][3][4]

While he is widely remembered as the first American casualty of the American Revolutionary War, 11-year-old Christopher Seider was shot a few weeks earlier by customs officer Ebenezer Richardson on February 22, 1770.[4][5] Historians disagree on whether Attucks was a free man or an escaped slave, but most agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent.[6][7] Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre published in 1770 did not refer to him as black or as a Negro; it appears he was instead viewed by Bostonians as being of mixed ethnicity. According to a contemporaneous account in the Pennsylvania Gazette, he was a "Mulattoe man, named Crispus Attucks, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonged to New Providence, and was here in order to go for North Carolina."[8]

Attucks became an icon of the anti-slavery movement in the mid-19th century. Supporters of the abolition movement lauded him for playing a heroic role in the history of the United States.[9][10]

  1. ^ "Africans in America – Part 2 – Crispus Attucks". PBS. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
  2. ^ "Africans in America: Crispus Attucks". PBS. Retrieved 18 May 2022. In 1770, Crispus Attucks, a black man, became the first casualty of the American Revolution when he was shot and killed in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Although Attucks was credited as the leader and instigator of the event, debate raged for over as century as to whether he was a hero and a patriot, or a rabble-rousing villain.
  3. ^ "Crispus Attucks". Biography.com. 26 March 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2022. Crispus Attucks was an African American man killed during the Boston Massacre and believed to be the first casualty of the American Revolution.
  4. ^ a b Dixon, Chris (2018). African Americans and the Pacific War, 1941–1945: Race, Nationality, and the Fight for Freedom. Cambridge University Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-1108577434. While Attucks is widely remembered as the first American casualty of the Revolutionary War, eleven-year-old Christopher Seider had been shot a few weeks earlier by the British.
  5. ^ "Christopher Seider: The First Casualty in the American Revolutionary Cause". New England Historical Society. 2015-07-31. Retrieved 2019-02-05.
  6. ^ Kachun, Mitchell (2017). First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0190092498.[page needed]
  7. ^ "Crispus Attucks Family". Crispus Attucks. The Crispus Attucks Museum. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  8. ^ "Boston, March 12". Pennsylvania Gazette. March 22, 1770. p. 2.
  9. ^ Kachun, Mitch (Summer 2009). "From Forgotten Founder to Indispensable Icon: Crispus Attucks, Black Citizenship, and Collective Memory". Journal of the Early Republic. 29 (2): 249–286. doi:10.1353/jer.0.0072. S2CID 144216986.
  10. ^ Kachun, Mitch (2017). First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199910861.[page needed]