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1770

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Crispus Attucks Killed at the Boston Massacre — First to Die in Revolution

On March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks — a man of African and Wampanoag descent who had escaped slavery twenty years earlier — was the first person killed when British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street, Boston. He became the first martyr of the American Revolution. John Adams, defending the soldiers at trial, described Attucks as a rabble-rouser. Abolitionists later celebrated him as proof that Black Americans had invested blood in the nation's founding from its first moment.

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January 1770
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March 1770
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Key events

  1. January 1770
    Crispus Attucks Killed at the Boston Massacre — First to Die in Revolution

    On March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks — a man of African and Wampanoag descent who had escaped slavery twenty years earlier — was the first person killed when British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street, Boston. He became the first martyr of the American Revolution. John Adams, defending the soldiers at trial, described Attucks as a rabble-rouser. Abolitionists later celebrated him as proof that Black Americans had invested blood in the nation's founding from its first moment.

  2. March 5, 1770
    Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre

    Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent, is among the first killed in the Revolution.

Resources from this period

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Crispus Attucks and the Boston Massacre
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