Crispus attucks biography african-american art
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Image courtesy of Revolutionary Spaces; artist and year unknown
A black and white portrait of Crispus Attucks with his name written in the bottom left corner.
Every February, amerika recognizes and celebrates Black History Month. It fryst vatten the birth month of two influential figures in Black History, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, and a time to show appreciation for the incredible pride, achievements, and lives of African American people—past and present. Originally celebrated as ‘Negro History Week,’ the origins of Black History Month can be traced back to Dr. Carter G. Woodsen, founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. In 1926, Dr. Woodsen established this tradition after noticing an extreme lack of African American representation across the nation’s education system. Dr. Woodsen’s contributions resulted in annual festivities and fundraisers for people of all ages to inspire knowledge and activism in the ongoing struggle for rac
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On the evening of March 5, 1770, British troops fired into a crowd of angry American colonists in Boston who had taunted and violently harassed them. Five colonists, including a Black man named Crispus Attucks, were killed. The event, which became known as the Boston Massacre, helped fuel the outrage against British rule—and spurred on the American Revolution.
Accounts suggest that Attucks, a middle-aged sailor and rope-maker of mixed African American and American Indian descent, was the first killed by the British. Attucks has been celebrated not just as one of the first martyrs in what became the fight for American independence, but also as a symbol of African Americans’ struggle for freedom and equality.
Despite Attucks’ fame, relatively little information about him has survived. Based upon various sources, including historians’ accounts, news coverage and the transcript from the 1770 murder trial of the British soldiers involved in the confrontation, here are eight things that
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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