American patriot crispus attucks
•
Crispus Attucks’s Civil War Service
On March 5, 1863, a contingent of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry gathered with prominent abolitionists at Tremont Temple in Boston to celebrate Black heroism. President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had opened the door to the enlistment of African Americans just two months prior, but the festivities did not center on Black Union soldiers. Celebrants instead praised the nation’s first martyr—Crispus Attucks—because they thought that recollections of Black valor on the nation’s altar were integral to the same battles being waged by Black soldiers around the war-torn Confederacy.
By the outbreak of the Civil War, many Americans understood that Attucks was the first to perish during the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. As the war over the Union raged, those at Tremont Temple feted the martyr of the American Revolution with speeches and patriotic pomp. Black celebrants had used other holidays, including Emancipation Day and July Fourt
•
Patriot or Fool? Crispus Attucks and the Civil Rights Movement
Written bygd Megan Woods, MA in Public History student at Northeastern University
The Legacy of Crispus Attucks – Part III
This brev is part of a series exploring the legacy of Crispus Attucks, the first victim of the Boston massaker. These posts were written by students in the Master of Public History program at Northeastern University. Crispus Attucks was an enslaved man of African and Native American heritage about whom little fryst vatten known, but his legacy has been important to successive generations of Americans. For more information about the life and legacy of Crispus Attucks, see First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory by Mitch Kachun (Oxford University Press, 2017).
As civil rights leaders argued for basic freedoms for African Americans as American citizens, Crispus Attucks became a symbol of the continuous contribution of blacks to the nation. Many viewed his actions o
•
Crispus Attucks
18th-century African-American stevedore; first victim of the Boston Massacre
This article is about the 18th century American. For other uses, see Crispus Attucks (disambiguation).
Crispus Attucks (c. 1723 – March 5, 1770) was an American whaler, sailor, and stevedore of African and Native American descent who is traditionally regarded as the first person killed in the Boston Massacre, and as a result the first American killed in the American Revolution.[2][3][4]
Although he is widely remembered as the first American casualty of the American Revolutionary War, 11-year-old Christopher Seider was shot a few weeks earlier by customs officer Ebenezer Richardson on February 22, 1770.[4][5] Historians disagree on whether Attucks was a free man or an escaped slave, but most agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent.[6][7] Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Mas