Attucks, Crispus

(born 1723?—died March 5, 1770, Boston, Mass.) American patriot and martyr of the Boston Massacre. His early life is unclear, but he was probably a runaway slave of African and Natick Indian ancestry, and he may have served on whaling ships. He is the only one of the massacre's five victims who is widely remembered. In 1888 the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in the Boston Common.

Attucks, Crispus (?1723–70) Revolutionary figure; birthplace unknown. Little or nothing is known for sure of his exact origins, but it is generally believed that he was a mulatto and that he was either an escaped or freed slave. (In 1750 a notice for a runaway slave named "Crispus" appeared in a Boston newspaper.) He may well have been a sailor on a whaling ship or at least he worked around the Boston wharves. He was later described as a large man "whose looks was enough to terrify any person," but that may have been the perception of someone uncomfortable with African-Americans. In any case, on March 5, 1770, he evidently joined a group of Boston men and youths who—annoyed at the British authorities trying to enforce new tax laws—had begun to throw snowballs at a lone British soldier guarding the State House. Fearing that the situation was getting out of control, a captain called out a small unit of the guard. As the crowd began to throw stones along with their taunts and push came to shove, the threatened soldiers fired, hitting 11 colonists; five died on the spot or later, and among them was Attucks. Exactly what his role had been is not known but he was quickly made into a hero; he is the only participant in the so-called Boston Massacre whose name has passed into popular legend. In 1888 a statue of Attucks, by the famed Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was dedicated on Boston Common.