Celebrating Black History Month: Crispus Attucks, first casualty of the Revolutionary War

Crispus Attucks, born in 1723 in Framingham, Massachusetts, which was then still part of the British Empire, is considered to be the first American killed in the American Revolutionary War.  Although born a slave, he managed to escape, and his owner at the time Deacon William Brown advertised for a runaway slave Crispas.  Attucks spent time on the sea and working around the docks on the Atlantic seaboard. 

Colonial unrest had been growing since the Stamp Act imposed by Great Britain, which significantly raised taxes.  On March 5, 1770, a scuffle between the townspeople and the 29th Regiment of Foot, after a British officer was accused of theft.  The colonialists threw snowballs and debris at the soldiers.  A group of men including Attucks approached with clubs and sticks.  

The soldiers panicked and opened fire.  Attucks was the first to die.  Four other colonists were killed and six were wounded, in what was to become known as the Boston Massacre.  John Adams defended the soldiers and although two were found guilty of manslaughter, none of the soldiers were put to death.  Adams described the colonial mob as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tars". 

The colonists regarded Attucks and the others as heroes and buried as such in the Granary Burying Ground. Attucks' actions that night helped galvanize the colonists against the British.  It was the beginning of the Revolutionary War.