Crispus Attucks

Born 1723 · Joined the Ancestors 1770

Fact

First person killed in the Boston Massacre

Fact

Escaped slavery approximately 20 years before his death

Fact

Monument on Boston Common honors his sacrifice

On the cold night of March 5, 1770, Crispus Attucks became the first person killed in the Boston Massacre — and by extension, the first casualty of the American Revolution. A man of African and Wampanoag descent who had escaped slavery two decades earlier, Attucks led a group of colonists in confronting British soldiers on King Street. When the smoke cleared, Attucks lay dead, his blood staining the cobblestones of a nation that did not yet exist.

Little is known about Attucks's early life with certainty. Born around 1723, likely enslaved in Framingham, Massachusetts, he fled bondage around 1750. For the next twenty years, he worked as a sailor and ropemaker around Boston's wharves — occupations that placed him at the center of colonial resentment toward British economic control.

Attucks's sacrifice became a rallying symbol for the Revolution. Samuel Adams and other patriots invoked his name to stoke resistance against British rule. Centuries later, the Crispus Attucks monument on Boston Common stands as testament to a man who gave his life for a freedom he himself had never fully known.