CRISPUS ATTUCKS

c.1723 - 1770

Name: Crispus Attucks

Birthplace:

Occupation/Training: Whaleship Crewman

Abolitionist Involvement: Crispus Attucks was the first man to fall in the historic Boston Massacre. Little is known of the personal life of this first American patriot. He is said to have had an Indian mother, and an African father, and is believed that he was a slave of William Brown of Framingham Massachusetts. It is believed that he was later freed, for he lived his young life as a free man, working on the whaleships in the early days out of the Boston Harbor.

The confrontation in which Attucks fell, occurred in downtown Boston. Along King's street, not far from Kings Chapel, Attucks was part of a crowd that confronted a party of British soldiers that were stationed at the Custom House. Tensions had been steadily growing and members of the crowd of civilians began to cast balls of snow and ice at the soldiers. One member of the crowd struck at one of the soldiers, and the solders then began firing into the crowd. Five of the civilians were killed. The confrontation was brief as the crown scattered. Among the five killed was the first to fall from the hands of the British. He would become the martyr of the revolution of the emerging America. He lies buried in one of the oldest cemeteries in downtown Boston, not far from the spot where he was killed.

After the revolution, during the antebellum period of the 19th century various colored military companies were formed, calling themselves Attucks Guards. From the late 1850's to the 1870's the black population annually held a Crispus Attucks Day, and in 1888 a monument to Attucks was erected on the Boston Commons.

Place of Death: Boston

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