Who is crispus attucks

Egerton writes in his book Death Or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America , Great Britain paid its soldiers so poorly that many of them found it necessary to take part-time jobs when they were off-duty. Competition from the influx of troops threatened to depress the wages of American workers such as Attucks. Additionally, as an experienced seaman, Attucks faced the danger of being seized by one of the British press gangs that Parliament authorized to forcibly draft sailors into the Royal Navy.

His ire toward the British apparently was intense. Attucks was among the patrons who cursed the soldier and harassed him until he fled the establishment.

His brazen defiance took considerable courage, since he had escaped slavery, he faced the risk of being arrested and returned to servitude. Instead, according to trial testimony, Attucks brandished two wood sticks, one of which he gave to a witness named Patrick Keaton. The jury acquitted the soldiers of murder in the deaths of the five Americans, though two of them—Matthew Kilroy and Hugh Montgomery—were convicted of the lesser crime of manslaughter and branded on their hands as a punishment and then released.

Four coffins bearing a skull and crossbones motif decorate the broadside article, published by American engraver Paul Revere. Though some accounts describe him as being killed instantly, he may have lingered for at least a short time after. Black abolitionist William C. African-Americans continued to commemorate him, fabricating a set of convenient fictions that highlighted his patriotism and burning desire for freedom. At times whites and blacks came together to laud Attucks, as when a monument was erected in Boston in and when Massachusetts designated March 5 as Crispus Attucks Day, an official state holiday, in There is no evidence for any of these assertions.

Thanks to the broadening post-WWII civil rights movement, by the early s, Attucks finally began to reappear in mainstream textbooks, typically as a token acknowledgment of black participation in the Revolution, a pattern that accelerated with the s enthusiasm for all things bicentennial. Historian Thomas A. Sounds like a thug to me. And black lives matter.

Over the past two and a half centuries, Crispus Attucks has been a malleable figure in American memory. Because there is so little evidence about his life, he is a virtual blank slate upon which different people at different times have inscribed a wide variety of meanings. Others made him a rabble-rousing ruffian; some a disreputable outsider; some an Uncle Tom who sold out his race.

Some simply tried to erase or ignore him altogether or trivialize his ostensible contribution. He has been treated as fighter of injustice, a symbol of racial unity, an exemplar of assertive manhood, or a conservative protector of national borders and opponent of government overreach.

Many free African Americans joined the ranks of soldiers, nurses and cooks who fought for a country free of slavery. One such heroines is Harriet Tubman who guided thousand of slaves to freedom and nursed soldiers and slaves to health during the Civil War. The five men brought a preliminary victory to the American Revolution. Crispus Attucks continues to be honored by the American public. In , to commemorate the th anniversary of his birth, the US Mint issued a silver dollar coin in honor of Attucks.

Many schools, children centers, foundations and museums are named after him representing the struggle and heroism of a black man searching for freedom. It appears that Attucks was engaged in the maritime industries of New England and had some experience as a sailor. The lone sentry of the Custom House, was attacked by a vociferous mob who threw stones, snowballs, chunks of ice and wood at the sentinel. Fearing for his life, he called for reinforcements from the nearby garrison for assistance.

Captain Thomas Preston and seven soldiers joined the sentry at the Custom House. The crowd only grew larger.