Who is crispus attucks and what did he do

Crispus Attucks was among those gathered at that contentious moment. A formerly enslaved man of African and American Indian descent from Framingham, Massachusetts, Attucks found work in Boston as a sailor. While the exact details of what happened during the Boston Massacre are still being debated, by many accounts Attucks himself was an active participant in the crowd that jeered the British soldiers, frustrated by their occupation of the city.

The situation intensified and perhaps out of fear or confusion, the soldiers fired into the close crowd of civilians — Attucks was struck in the chest. He, along with two other men, lost their lives on the night of March 5, and two others would perish in the following days. Attucks is not mentioned in the first published history of the Revolution, written by David Ramsay in As the crowd threw chunks of ice and clubs at the soldiers, one found its mark and knocked a British soldier to the ground.

He stood back up, yelled and fired his musket into the crowd. Immediately all the other British soldiers opened fire in a ragged volley. Five men immediately fell dead, the first among them was Attucks with two musket balls in his chest. In the 19th century, Attucks became a symbol of the abolitionist movement and his image and story were seen and told to demonstrate his patriotic virtues.

Abolitionists like William C. Nell and Frederick Douglass extolled Crispus Attucks as the first martyr in the cause of American liberty and used his memory to garner support to end slavery in America and attain equal rights for African Americans. Today, they share a headstone facing toward Tremont Street.

In the 19 th century, abolitionists in Boston, led by William Cooper Nell , held up the death of Attucks as the first martyr of the American Revolution. Nell led this work with the story of Crispus Attucks, highlighting his death as the first in the cause for liberty.

Explore This Park. Library of Congress. African-Indigenous sailor and the first victim of the Boston Massacre. Place of Birth:. Date of Birth:. Place of Death:. Date of Death:. Place of Burial:.