Crispus Attucks Memorial

Crispus Attucks – formerly enslaved sailor of African and Native descent who was the first to die at the “incident on King Street”(Boston Massacre) He eventually became known as the first martyr of American Revolution as people forgot about Christopher Seider who had died in a riot 11 days prior (see Granary Burying Ground).

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Crispus Attucks’ life is far less documented than his death. He had an alias of Michael Johnson and was a sailor born in Framingham, Mass. His first name reflects the trend in the colonial era of enslavers forcing an Ancient Roman name onto their enslaved people. His first name derived from Crispus the son of Emperor Constantine. Attucks’ was of Indigenous origin, derived from the Natick word for ‘deer’ and he was described as mulatto or Indian in witness testimony. He was also in a 1750 advertisement in the Boston Gazette as an escaped slave. How and when he received his freedom is unknown, but it is possible that he used the name Michael Johnson to protect himself from a return to slavery. While he was in Boston on the infamous night, he was residing in New Providence in the Bahamas.

On March 5, 1770, witnesses placed Attucks at the head of a group of sailors brandishing clubs and marching toward King Street. A crowd formed around a small group of British soldiers, hurling snowballs, ice balls, and insults at the men. Observers noted Attucks leaned his tall frame on his cordwood club. Amid the chaos, Private Montgomery and the rest of the soldiers fired into the crowd. Two musket balls ripped through Attucks chest, killing him instantly. 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 during the trial.

Defending the soldiers in the subsequent trial, John Adams painted Attucks and the rest of those killed as aggressors to justify the killing. He played to the jury's prejudices about race and class, describing those in the crowd as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, Negroes, and mulattos, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars." In other words, those in the crowd were young, lower-class, Black, Irish, or sailors from out of town. Adams' argument led to an acquittal for the Captain and all but two of the soldiers.

Town officials buried the victims of the Massacre in the Granary Burying Ground. Today, they share a headstone facing toward Tremont Street.

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.

As a man of African descent, Attucks became an icon of the anti-slavery movement in the early nineteenth century as a hero who stood up and died defending his freedom and rights.

The second picture is the coroner’s report.

-Source Links-

https://www.nps.gov/people/crispus-attucks.htm

https://www.boston-discovery-guide.com/granary-burying-ground.html