Friday, January 23, 2015

Blacks have been at the forefront since day one, and even before it................get over yourselves........


Crispus Attucks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about Crispus Attucks. For other uses, see Crispus Attucks (disambiguation).
Crispus Attucks
Crispus Attucks.jpg
Speculative 19th-century portrait of Crispus Attucks
BornCrispus Attucks
c.1723
Framingham, Massachusetts,British America
DiedMarch 5, 1770 (age 47)
Boston, Massachusetts, British America
OccupationDockworker[1]
Crispus Attucks (c.1723—March 5, 1770) may have been an American slave or freeman, merchant seaman and dockworker of Wampanoag and African descent. His father was likely a slave and his mother a Natick Indian.[2] He was the first casualty of the Boston Massacre, in Boston, Massachusetts,[3] and is widely considered to be the first American casualty in the American Revolutionary War.
Little is known for certain about Attucks beyond that he, along with Samuel Gray and James Caldwell, died "on the spot" during the incident.[4] Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as a black man or "Negro"; it appeared that Bostonians accepted him as mixed race. Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a free man or an escaped slave; but agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent. He was put into a foster home at a very young age.
While the extent of his participation in events leading to the massacre is unclear, Attucks in the 18th century became an icon of the anti-slavery movement. He was held up as the first martyr of the American Revolution along with the others killed. In the early 19th century, as the abolitionist movement gained momentum in Boston, supporters lauded Attucks as a black American who played a heroic role in the history of the United States [5] Because Attucks had Wampanoag ancestors, his story also holds special significance for many Native Americans.[6]

Early life[edit]

He appears to have been born a slave from Framingham, Massachusetts. His father married a woman who originated from the Natick Tribe during 1723,[7] possibly on Hartford Street. Framingham had a small population of black inhabitants from at least 1716. Attucks was of mixed African and Native American parentage and was descended from John Attucks, of Massachusettswho was hanged during King Philip's War.[8]
In 1750 William Brown, a slave-owner in Framingham, advertised for the return of a runaway slave named Crispus. Attucks's status at the time of the massacre as either a free black or a runaway slave has been a matter of debate for historians. However, his descendants maintain he was a slave and ran away sometime in his late 20s.[citation needed] What is known is that Attucks became a sailor and he spent much of the remainder of his life at sea often working on whalers, which involved long voyages. He may only have been temporarily in Boston in early 1770, having recently returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He was due to leave shortly afterwards on a ship for North Carolina.[9]

Reaction and trials[edit]

Arguing the soldiers fired in self-defense, John Adams successfully defended most of the accused British soldiers against a charge of murder. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter. Faced with the prospect of hanging, the soldiers pled benefit of clergy, and were instead branded on their thumbs. In his arguments, Adams called the crowd "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negros and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs."."[10] In particular, he charged Attucks with having "undertaken to be the hero of the night," and with having precipitated a conflict by his "mad behavior."[11]
Two years later, Samuel Adams, a cousin of John Adams, named the event the "Boston Massacre," and helped assure that it would not be forgotten. Boston artist Henry Pelham (half-brother of the celebrated portrait painter John Singleton Copley) created an image of the event. Paul Revere made a copy from which prints were made and distributed. Some copies of the print show a dark-skinned man with chest wounds, presumably representing Crispus Attucks. Other copies of the print show no difference in the skin tones of the victims.
The five who were killed were buried as heroes in the Granary Burying Ground, which also contains the graves of John Hancock and other notable figures. While custom of the period discouraged the burial of black people and white people together, such a practice was not completely unknown. Prince Hall, for example, was interred in Copp's Hill Burying Ground in the North End of Boston 39.

Legacy and honors[edit]

Crispus Attucks' grave in theGranary Burying Ground

In popular culture[edit]

And to honor Crispus Attucks who was the leader and voice that day: The first to defy, and the first to die, with Maverick, Carr, and Gray. Call it riot or revolution, or mob or crowd as you may, such deaths have been seeds of nations, such lives shall be honored for aye...
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. referred to Crispus Attucks in the introduction of Why We Can't Wait (1964) as an example of a man whose contribution to history provided a potent message of moral courage.
  • In an unsourced, popular book about Attucks, James Neyland wrote his appraisal of the man's significance:
He is one of the most important figures in African-American history, not for what he did for his own race but for what he did for all oppressed people everywhere. He is a reminder that the African-American heritage is not only African but American and it is a heritage that begins with the beginning of America.[14]
  • In the 4th season 30 Rock episode "Winter Madness", character Tracy Jordan accuses a Bostonian John Hancock re-enactor of lying after claiming to have met Attucks at a Sons of Liberty meeting in 1775, five years after his death.
  • In February 2012, Wayne Brady, J. B. Smoove, and Michael Kenneth Williams, as well as Keith David appeared in a satirical rap music video about Crispus Attucks.[15]
  • In Season 2 of Lizzie McGuire it is revealed that Lanny Onasis is a direct descendant of Crispus Attucks.
  • Attucks is mentioned prominently in the book "Rush Revere and the First Patriots" by Rush Limbaugh. The book is second in a series celebrating Exceptional Americans.[16]
  • Nat King Cole mentions Crispus Attucks in the spoken introduction to his Capitol Records recording of "We Are Americans, Too".

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ "Africans in America - Part 2 - Crispus Attucks". Retrieved1 November 2011.
  2. Jump up^ Attucks, Crispus. "Folk Hero". Retrieved 10 December 2014.
  3. Jump up^ Lowery, Malinda Maynor. "African and Native Americans in Colonial and Revolutionary Times." Teachinghistory.org. Accessed 13 July 2011.
  4. Jump up^ "Unhappy Disturbances at Boston". The London Magazine, Or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer (London: R. Baldwin) 39: 251. 1770. Retrieved December 4, 2014.
  5. Jump up^ Margot Minardi, The Inevitable Negro: Making Slavery History in Massachusetts, 1770-1863 (Harvard University: PhD Dissertation, 2007);
  6. Jump up^ W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); David J. Silverman, Faith and Boundaries: Colonists, Christianity, and Community among the Wampanoag Indians of Martha's Vineyard, 1600-1871 (Cambridge University Press, 2005); as well as two histories by Daniel Mandell, Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780-1880 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); and Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996).
  7. Jump up^ "Crispus Attucks." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2014.
  8. Jump up^ Parr & Swope, p. 44.
  9. Jump up^ Parr & Swope, p. 45.
  10. Jump up^ The Murder of Crispus Attucks.
  11. Jump up^ Wikisource-logo.svg One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Wilson, James Grant; Fiske, John, eds. (1900). "Attucks, Crispus". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton.
  12. Jump up^ USmint.gov, United States Mint: "Plinky's Coin of the Month February 2000"
  13. Jump up^ Molefi Kete Asante, 100 Greatest African Americans: A Biographical Encyclopedia (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2002).
  14. Jump up^ James Neyland, Crispus Attucks, Patriot (Holloway House, 1995).
  15. Jump up^ Brady, Wayne. "Crispus Attucks 'Today Was a Good Day' with Wayne Brady, JB Smoove & Michael Kenneth Williams". Retrieved17 February 2012.
  16. Jump up^ "Rush Revere and the First Patriots; Rush Limbaugh, Thresholds Editions 2014

Bibliography[edit]

  • Parr, James L. & Swope, Kevin A. Framingham: Legends and Lore. The History Press, 2009.

External links[edit]

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