The Evolving Legacy of Crispus Attucks, 1770-1863

Background Reading

Historical Context

Written by Ben Remillard, PhD

Crispus Attucks is most often remembered for being the American Revolution’s “first martyr” after he was killed during the Boston Massacre. Since his death, Attucks has become a symbol for Black Americans’ ongoing sacrifices and contributions to American history. But beyond his death the night of the Massacre, we know little about him for certain.

While Attucks is often referred to in colonial reports as a mixed-race “molatto” man (an outdated and racist term describing someone descended from white and Black parents), he was most likely a mixed-race man of African and Indigenous descent. This rationale is based on a few scattered facts. It is likely he was a formerly enslaved man whose enslaver placed an ad for “a Molatto fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispas,” who “ran away from his Master, William Brown, of Framingham.” Historians have generally come to the conclusion that Attucks’s mother was a Native American woman from nearby Natick, which was founded by colonists as a “praying town” for converted Christian Indians. Filling in some of the sparse details of Attucks’s life, we have one source that describes him as a sailor. Perhaps he made his living contributing to Britain’s mercantile empire. His life as a sailor, however, might have brought him into conflict with British soldiers, whose numbers in Boston increased dramatically after the Seven Years’ War. The redcoats’ presence at times caused tensions with the local populace, especially with Boston’s laborers, whom the soldiers sometimes undercut in their search for off-hours work. John Adams noted that the relationship between sailors and soldiers was defined by hostility, “that they fight as naturally when they meet, as the elephant and the Rhinoceros.” One such fight broke out just a few days before the Massacre, where a group of soldiers brawled with workers at a ropewalk (where men wound fibers together to make the ropes needed to sail ships). These ongoing tensions might explain why Attucks and other “jack tars,” a.k.a., sailors, rushed to the conflict the night of the Massacre, though even this is circumstantial speculation.

What we know of Attucks’s involvement in the Boston Massacre comes from witness testimony given during the ensuing trial, where the British soldiers were accused by Boston’s colonists of murder. But this is where things get tricky for historians, as the available primary sources give us multiple vantage points from which we can view the Massacre. While some Bostonians claimed Attucks was removed from the front lines and that he did not do anything to antagonize the soldiers, other witnesses placed the mixed-race man at the head of the conflict.

As a defense lawyer for the accused soldiers, John Adams took advantage of these differing accounts, picking out the testimony that best helped him frame Attucks as one of the key perpetrators of the Massacre. One tactic the lawyer used was to draw attention to Attucks’s status as a stranger, or as an outsider not belonging in Boston. Given that Attucks fled from slavery in nearby Framingham, and because he had not obtained a residence in Boston, it was easy for Adams to alienate Attucks and portray him as a foreign interloper. Adams then drew specific attention to Attucks’s race as a way of further vilifying the slain man in the eyes of Boston’s predominantly white populace.

It is important to remember, however, that Attucks was not the only person of color at the Massacre, and that people of color in Boston experienced the Massacre and the Revolution in different ways. As a vital part of Britain’s trans-Atlantic empire, Boston reflected the multi-ethnic nature of Massachusetts’s busy capital. This included a combination of over 1,500 enslaved and free Black people who comprised about ten percent of the port’s population in the middle of the eighteenth century.[6] Two of these Black men were called by Adams to serve as defense witnesses during the trial. One of them was an emancipated man named Newton Prince. As a free and active member of Boston’s growing community, Prince made his living as a lemon merchant and pastry chef, and was a member of Boston’s Old South Meeting House—a Congregational church that served as an important site for the Patriots in the years prior to the War for Independence. When called to give his testimony at the trial, Prince agreed with other witnesses who described the crowd as aggressive, with some civilians getting close enough “with sticks striking on their [the soldiers] guns.” The colonists, Prince said, taunted the soldiers, saying “fire, fire damn you fire, fire you lobsters, fire, you dare not fire.”

Andrew, an enslaved man, was similarly summoned to give testimony regarding the crowd’s taunts, their encroachment on the soldiers, and the crowd’s throwing of “snow balls, and other things, which then flew pretty thick.” Andrew asserted that Attucks struck at the soldiers, saying that Attucks, “a stout man with a long cord wood stick, threw himself in, and made a blow at the officer.” According to Andrew’s testimony, Attucks “then turned round, and struck the Grenadier's gun at the Captains right hand, and immediately fell in with his club, and knocked his gun away, and struck him over the head,” and cried out, “kill the dogs,” enticing the crowd in closer.[8] Despite the claim by another witness, James Bailey, that “It was not the Mollato [Attucks] that struck Montgomery,” it was Andrew’s account that Adams used to portray Attucks as the malicious instigator of the Massacre.

Detailing Attucks’s supposed role at the head of a group who approached the soldiers, Adams described his defendants as having little choice but to act in self-defense against such an imposing force: “to have this reinforcement coming down under the command of a stout Molatto fellow, whose very looks, was enough to terrify any person, what had not the soldiers then to fear?”  Drawing attention to Attucks’s race and alleged “mad behaviour,” Adams pinned the blame for the Massacre squarely on the self-emancipated man, whom the future president argued, “in all probability, the dreadful carnage of that night, is chiefly to be ascribed.” Adams’s defense worked, and he prevented the soldiers from being sentenced for murder. Although two of the defendants were convicted of manslaughter given the evidence that they fired into the crowd, even those sentences were eventually reduced from hanging to a simple branding on the thumb.

Despite the attention Adams drew to Attucks’s race during the trial, the Patriots quickly obscured the participation of men of color at the Boston Massacre. While the earliest reports told of Attucks as a “mulatto” man, the Whig press soon after stopped mentioning Attucks’s race. Instead, they grouped him in with the rest of the victims by referring to each as “mister.” This, the historian Mitch Kachun argues, would have suggested to contemporary readers that all the dead men “were both respectable and white.” The most well-known example of this racial whitewashing can be seen in Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Massacre, which shows a sea of defenseless white gentlemen being victimized by an organized line of British soldiers. While some later reprints included Attucks with darker physical features than the rest of the crowd, the majority of the surviving images we have depict him as a white man. By portraying the Massacre in this way, Revere and others erased Attucks and other people of color from the evening. Doing so reframed one of the earliest events of the Revolution as an entirely white affair. Similarly, at Boston’s annual commemorations in the years after the Massacre, Attucks’s heritage was never mentioned, creating a tradition whereby his race was obscured from popular memory. This plays into a larger trend during and after the Revolution, when the contributions of Attucks and other people of color were quickly forgotten by many white Americans despite the roles played by roughly 6,000 Patriots of color who took part in the War for Independence. Attucks, however, would not remain in the shadows.

In 1855, eighty-five years after the Massacre, Attucks’s role in the event was brought to new, widespread attention in William Cooper Nell’s The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution. Nell and other Black, Civil War-era abolitionists and activists wanted to show audiences that Black Americans had always been a part of American history, and that they had always been ready to lay down their lives for liberty. One of Nell’s primary sources for his account of the Massacre came from the Italian historian Charles Botta’s History of the War of the Independence of the United States of America. Botta’s work, in turn, took much from Adams’s defense arguments regarding the rowdy crowd “under the command of Attucks,” who the lawyer argued, had “undertaken to be the hero of the night.” Botta—and by extension, Nell and later writers—prioritized the testimony describing how Attucks took an active role in the lead-up to the Massacre. Nell even borrowed directly from Botta’s description of the evening:
 

a band of the populace, led by a mulatto named ATTUCKS, who brandished their clubs, and pelted them [the soldiers] with snowballs […] at length, the mulatto and twelve of his companions, pressing forward, environed the soldiers, and striking their muskets with their clubs, cried to the multitude: 'Be not afraid; they dare not fire: why do you hesitate, why do you not kill them, why not crush them at once?' The mulatto lifted his arm against Capt. Preston, and having turned one of the muskets, he seized the bayonet with his left hand, as if he intended to execute his threat. At this moment, confused cries were heard: 'The wretches dare not fire!' Firing succeeds. ATTUCKS is slain.

While Adams’s account of the Massacre vilified Attucks, whose ‘mad behavior’ was to blame for the deaths of the five men during the Massacre, Botta and Nell interpreted the slain man’s actions differently. Although Nell also argued that Attucks led the protest against the British soldiers, he describes Attucks as a hero who was “of and with the people” in their act of rebellion against oppressive British rule. In so doing, Nell highlighted Attucks as the first in a long, documented line of patriotic Black Americans. With Attucks’s martyrdom at the forefront of these new histories, Black writers hoped to show the nation that Black Americans were deserving not only of freedom from slavery, but also of equal rights. Another one of these Black, Civil War-era activists, William Wells Brown, asserted that “Whenever the rights of the nation have been assailed, the negro has always responded to his country’s call, at once, and with every pulsation of his heart beating for freedom.”

These lessons were built upon in public events that highlighted the lives and deaths of men like Attucks. This included, for example, during the Civil War, when a Boston Massacre commemoration was held on March 5, 1863, highlighting the “Martyrdom of the Colored American Crispus Attucks.” The event promised to feature the white Colonel, Robert Gould Shaw, and members of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, which had become famous for being the first Union regiment to include Black recruits.

So while the earliest commemorations of the Massacre in the 1770s overlooked Attucks and his race, nineteenth century audiences and commentators were more than willing to highlight his life and death. In doing so, they connected his sacrifice with their own contemporary struggles to better the lives of Black Americans.

These calls for equality were repeated following America’s participation in the World Wars, when Black Americans argued that equal rights were deserved given their ongoing service and sacrifices in the nation’s wars. Attucks was frequently cited in these discussions, serving once more as a beacon for Black American patriotism. These writers and activists were rebuffed along the way by whites who denounced and mocked Attucks during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as “a rowdyish person,” “a drunken and disreputable half-caste,” and as a “transient visitor” who was “itching for a fight” and was “not a very useful member of society.” Despite these insults, Attucks’s legacy continued to grow. As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the middle of the twentieth century, Attucks appeared more often in popular publications like books and magazines, where his story was shared with wider audiences. Today, Attucks’s memorialization on everything from a bridge in Framingham to schools across the country testify that he has not been forgotten, and serve as public reminders that people of color have always been important contributors to America’s history.

Close Reading Questions

Source 1: Newspaper Account of the Boston Massacre, 12 March 1770

1. What language / phrasing does this source use when referring to the victims of the Boston Massacre as a collective group? How does this language reflect the way the authors see this event?
2. What language / phrasing does this source use when addressing Crispus Attucks? How does this language reflect the way the authors see him as a person?

View Source.

Source 2: James Bailey discusses Crispus Attucks in his trial testimony (benefitting the Defense)

1. If you were the defense lawyer representing the British soldiers (as John Adams was), what words / phrases in Bailey’s testimony would have been most helpful in proving that the soldiers acted in self-defense? Why?
2. Based on Bailey’s testimony of the events of 5 March 1770, how would you summarize Crispus Attucks’ role that night?

View Source (full testimony: image #24-28).

Source 3: James Brewer discusses Crispus Attucks in his trial testimony (benefitting the Prosecution)

1. If you were the prosecution lawyer looking for evidence that the British soldiers were the aggressors the night of the Boston Massacre, what words / phrases in Brewer’s testimony would have been most helpful in proving your argument? Why?
2. Based on Brewer’s testimony of the events of 5 March 1770, how would you summarize Crispus Attucks’ role that night?

View Source (full testimony: image #20 - #24).

Source 4: John Adams’ Blames Crispus Attucks for the Boston Massacre in his Closing Argument for the Defense

1. According to Adams’ closing argument, why should the jury find the British soldiers not guilty of murder?
2. How does Adams characterize Attucks? Which witness testimony does Adams rely on to make his closing argument?
   1. Why might Adams have chosen to frame Attucks’ role in the event in this way?
3. On the third anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Attucks wrote in his diary that his defense of the British soldiers was “one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently.” (View diary entry: 1773. March 5th. Fryday.) Based on the sources you have read, do you agree or disagree with Adams’ assessment of his defense?

View Source (Adams’ full closing argument spans image #148 - #178).

Source 5: John Hancock Remembers the Boston Massacre, 5 March 1774

1. The highlighted quote from John Hancock’s oration is directed both toward those who planned the placement of British troops in Boston and the soldiers who carried out the Boston Massacre itself. What do you think Hancock is asking of these individuals with his rhetorical question?
2. Why might Hancock have utilized the specific names of those who died in the Boston Massacre at this point in his oration? Do you think it makes the point more or less effective in critiquing the parties it is addressed to?

View Source.

Source 6: Historian William C. Nell describes Crispus Attucks’ role in the Boston Massacre, 1855 :

1. How would you summarize how William Nell felt about the denial of his petition for a statue to honor Crispus Attucks?
2. Considering the excerpts on Crispus Attucks and the greater context of Nell’s 1855 book The colored patriots of the American Revolution: with sketches of several distinguished colored persons: to which is added a brief survey of the condition and prospects of colored Americans, what do you think his main purpose was in publishing this text at this particular time in American history?

View The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution (1855), digitized by Documenting the American South, UNC.

Source 7: 1856 Artist Depiction of the Boston Massacre

1. Upon examining this depiction of the Boston Massacre, what words do you think best capture the mood or energy of the scene?
2. What role does this artist believe Crispus Attucks played in the Boston Massacre? (Consider his placement of Crispus Attucks in the scene.) Does Nell’s quote support or oppose the depiction of Attucks in the image?
3. Compare this image to Paul Revere’s original 1770 engraving. How are the two images different? How is Crispus Attucks depicted? What does each image say about the time in which it was created?
   1. Note for teachers: Revere depicts all of the victims as white men, whitewashing Attucks and his participation, and death, that night.

View Source.

Source 8: “Martyrdom of the colored American Crispus Attucks!” Broadside

1. How does this poster characterize Crispus Attucks and his role in the Boston Massacre?
2. How does this broadside connect the legacy of Crispus Attucks to events occurring in the 1860s in America?
3. Do you think Crispus Attucks was a martyr? Why/why not?

View Source.

Use these slides as a key to identify all of the references in this broadside for close reading (Google Slides). 

Suggested Activities – Elementary

Comparing and Analyzing Images

Materials:

Paul Revere’s 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre 

Bufford’s 1856 engraving of the Boston Massacre

Boston Massacre Image Analysis Worksheet

Activity Overview: Students look closely at two depictions of the Boston Massacre made 85 years apart, and read a quote that supports each image. Then, they work to identify similarities in and differences between the two images. This activity prepares students to participate in a flash debate.

Flash Debate: Using Evidence to Support a Claim

Materials:

Flash Debate worksheet and teacher directions 

Paul Revere’s 1770 engraving of the Boston Massacre 

Bufford’s 1856 engraving of the Boston Massacre

Prior Knowledge:

For a successful debate, students should already have completed one or more of the previous activities so that they have a better understanding of different descriptions of what happened on the night of March 5, 1770:

Boston Massacre Witness Testimony Gallery Walk

Boston Massacre Image Analysis and Comparison

Boston Massacre Close Reading: Primary Source

Activity Overview: A Flash Debate provides an opportunity for students to make a well-constructed argument, while developing speaking and listening skills. Using the prompt, “Which of the two images provides the most accurate account of the events of March 5, 1770?” students choose a side, caucus with peers on their side to discuss relevant evidence, and then face-off against peers on the other side of the debate.

Suggested Activities – Grades 8-12

Hook

Materials: 

Crispus Attucks: Hook Activities Document

Activity Overview: Choose one of four different warm-up activities to begin a whole class discussion about who we remember from the past, and why. This will prepare students to dive into this source set on Crispus Attucks, and the different ways in which he was publicly remembered between 1770 and 1863.

Comparing Depictions of the Boston Massacre

Prior knowledge:

Historical context essay

Materials:

The Bloody Massacre, 1770, Paul Revere

Boston Massacre, March 5th 1770, 1856, William Champey

“Comparing Depictions of the Boston Massacre” Handout

Activity Overview: Students use an Observe-Interpret-Question graphic organizer and Purpose/Point of View Questions to help them answer an analysis writing prompt. The analysis can be completed independently, or students can work in small groups or pairs to complete the analysis before writing independently.

John Adams & Shaping the Immediate Narrative Around Crispus Attucks

Prior Knowledge:

Historical Context essay 

Materials:

Sources 2 and 3: Trial Testimony excerpts: Brewer and Bailey

Source 4: John Adams’ Blames Crispus Attucks for the Boston Massacre in his Closing Argument for the Defense. 

“John Adams & Shaping the Narrative Around Crispus Attucks” Handout

Activity Overview: Students use what they have learned from trial testimony and Adams’ closing argument to assess Adams’ own analysis of his role in the trial in a diary entry from March 5, 1773. This can be done independently, in pairs, or in small groups.

Visual Analysis of the “Martyrdom of Crispus Attucks” broadside

Materials:

“Martyrdom of Crispus Attucks,” 1863 broadside

Visual Analysis of the “Martyrdom of Crispus Attucks” Google Slides

Teacher’s Guide: Notes to the Google Slides

Activity Overview: As a class, students do a close reading of the broadside, with the teacher providing context and background information as needed (provided in teacher guide and slide deck “notes”). Students then respond to questions on the final three slides in discussion with a partner, or independent writing. This visual analysis helps students to better understand the role of abolitionists in reinterpreting Crispus’ Attucks legacy, and the role of commemorative events in changing public perceptions of the past.

Design a Memorial

Prior knowledge:

Historical Context essay

Materials:

Source Set

Monument Design Handout

Activity Overview:
Using their knowledge of the sources in this source set, students work independently or in small groups to:

• Write a request to the Massachusetts state government for a monument to Crispus Attucks
• Provide a sketch of a design for the monument
• Write a caption for the monument’s plaque

Critical thinking questions guide students to consider their purpose, audience, and more in their monument design.

Applicable Standards

MA History/Social Science and ELA Frameworks

H/SS Skill Standards
Demonstrate civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions.
Organize information and data from multiple primary and secondary sources.
Argue or explain conclusions, using valid reasoning and evidence.

H/SS Content Standards

Grade 3, Topic 6. Massachusetts in the 18th century through the American Revolution
Analyze the connection between events, locations, and individuals in Massachusetts in the early 1770s and the beginning of the American Revolution, using sources such as historical maps, paintings, and texts of the period; the Boston Massacre (1770), including the role of the British Army soldiers, Crispus Attucks, Paul Revere, and John Adams

Grade 5, Topic 2. Reasons for revolution, the Revolutionary War, and the formation of government
On a historic map of the Boston area in the 1770s, locate important sites in the preRevolutionary and Revolutionary period and analyze the role and the significance of Massachusetts people such Samuel Adams, Crispus Attucks, John Hancock, James Otis, Paul Revere, John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Phillis Wheatley, Peter Salem.

USH.1. Topic 1. Origins of the Revolution and the Constitution
Describe Patriots’ responses to increased British taxation (e.g., the slogan, “no taxation without representation,” the actions of the Stamp Act Congress, the Sons of Liberty, the Boston Tea Party, the Suffolk Resolves) and the role of Massachusetts people (e.g., Samuel Adams, Crispus Attucks, John Hancock, James Otis, Paul Revere, John and Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Judith Sargent Murray, Phillis Wheatley, Peter Salem, Prince Estabrook

ELA Core Anchor Standards

Reading

• Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take

Writing

• Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation

Speaking and Listening 

• Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
• Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.

C3 Frameworks

D1.1.9-12. Explain how a question reflects an enduring issue in the field.

D1.5.9-12. Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources.

D2.His.3.9-12. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context.

D2.His.5.9-12. Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.

D2.His.12.9-12. Use questions generated about multiple historical sources to pursue further inquiry and investigate additional sources.