Attucks

Attucks

Boston, MA By: Drew O'Bryan

Crispus Attucks was a dock worker of Wamponoag and African descent. He was the first shot and killed by Redcoats during the Boston Massacre, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the first martyr of the revolution.

Not much is known about Crispus Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died " on the spot " during the shooting. Two huge sources of the eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as a " negro " or ' black man " ; It looks that Bostonians except him as mixed race. Historians argue on whether Crispus was a free man, or slave who escaped slavery; but agree that he was of wampanoag and african descent!