Crispus Attucks, a sailor of African and Indigenous ancestry, died in Boston on March 5, 1770 when British soldiers fired two musket balls into his chest. His death was that of the first American to be killed by British soldiers in the growing resistance of the colonists to the rule of the British crown.His death along with that of four other men at the hands of the British regiment became known as the “Boston Massacre”. Attucks’ death transformed him from an anonymous sailor into a martyr for the burgeoning revolutionary cause.
Crispus Attucks was born into slavery in 1723 in Framingham, Massachusetts. At 16 he was sold by his parents’ slave master, Colonel Buckminster, to Deacon William Brown. Tired of living under enslavement, at 25 he escaped from Brown’s ownership eventually finding his way to New Providence in the Bahamas which became his official residence. There he became a sailor on whaling and cargo ships. Though Britain had outlawed slavery, as British citizens, sailors were often pressed into service by the British Navy. Perhaps he viewed this practice as another form of enslavement and he was sympathetic to the American cause for independence. On his last voyage he came to New Bedford and from there traveled to Boston where he was to board a ship on its way with cargo to South Carolina.
In the fall of 1768, British troops were sent to Boston to maintain order amid growing colonial unrest following the passage of the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts. These were forms of tariffs passed by the British Parliament on goods purchased by and necessary to the American colonies. They gave rise to the revolutionary expression, “Taxation without representation”. With its bustling port, Boston was becoming a center of growing revolutionary zeal and resistance to British colonial authority. Soldiers, sent to keep law and order in the city, only increased tension between the people and British rule..
On March 5, 1770, a wig-maker’s apprentice accused a British officer of not paying a bill. The boy began to attack the officer with verbal insults. A crowd began to gather as a result of the commotion.. In response, a few soldiers of the British 29th regiment were called in to quiet the growing mob. The colonists began to throw stones and even snowballs at the soldiers. A group of men including Crispus Attucks armed with sticks moved in to confront the soldiers on the street in front of the Old State House. Shots were fired and 5 American colonists were killed. Crispus Attucks was the first to die with 2 bullets found in his chest. Attucks body was taken to Fanuel Hall where it lay in state until March 8 when the caskets of the dead were carried through the streets of Boston where crowds gathered to pay tribute. They were taken to the Granary Burial Ground and buried together in the same grave sight. It was unusual for Blacks and whites to be buried in the same section of a cemetery. It was a sign of Attuck’s martyrdom to the Revolutionary cause that he was given equal burial rights.
Though the Revolutionary War did not begin for another five years until April 18, 1775 with battles of Lexington and Concord, and the birth of the nation did not take place until July 4, 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Boston Massacre has long been considered the beginning of the American Revolution and Crispus Attucks its 1st martyr.