Black History Month” Crispus Attucks”

The remarkable story of  Crispus Attucks! Happy Black History Month❤️🖤💚!!! 

Crispus Attucks father was likely an enslaved person and his mother a Natick Indian. All that is definitely known about Attucks is that he was the first to fall during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In 1888, the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in Boston Common.

Born into slavery around 1723, Attucks was believed to be the son of Prince Yonger, a enslaved person shipped to America from Africa, and Nancy Attucks, a Natick Indian. Little is known about Attucks' life or his family, who reputedly resided in a town just outside of Boston.

What has been pieced together paints a picture of a young man who showed an early skill for buying and trading goods. He seemed unafraid of the consequences of escaping the bonds of slavery. Historians have theorized that Attucks was the focus of an advertisement in a 1750 edition of the Boston Gazette in which a white landowner offered to pay 10 pounds for the return of a young runaway enslaved person.

Attucks, however, managed to escape for good, spending the next two decades on trading ships and whaling vessels coming in and out of Boston. He also found work as a rope maker. On March 2, 1770, a fight erupted between a group of Boston rope makers and three British soldiers. The conflict was ratcheted up three nights later when a British soldier looking for work reportedly entered a Boston pub, only to be greeted by furious sailors, one of whom was Attucks.

Attucks was one of those at the front of the fight amid dozens of people, and when the British opened fire he was the first of five men killed. His murder made him the first casualty of the American Revolution. Quickly becoming known as the Boston Massacre, the episode further propelled the colonies toward war with the British. 

Attucks became a martyr. His body was transported to Faneuil Hall, where he and the others killed in the attack were laid in state. City leaders waived segregation laws in the case and permitted Attucks to be buried with the others.