-old man, in front of the crowd, threatening the soldiers with a big stick was an African-American. He was the first to be killed (Lester, 14). Attucks' death made the colonists even angrier.
Like other blacks of the time, Attucks was familiar with oppression. He was born a slave, and when he was 27, he ran away from his master in Massachusetts and worked for a merchant ship. After twenty years at sea he settled in Boston, but the oppression of the British government was almost as bad as his experience as a slave (Lester, 15). The mob was unruly the day of Attuck's death, but statesman Samuel Adams thought the crowd was rightfully protesting, and that Attuck's death was needless. After he died, 10,000 mourners followed Attucks' coffin to Granary Burying Ground, and more than a century later Boston honored the men who died that day in March of 1770 with the Crispus Attucks Monument (Lester, 15). On that day, five men gave their lives for American freedom, and at least one of them was black.
There was tremendous ambiguity in treatment of blacks at the time. Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but he was a slave owner and did not support the black claims for freedom (Hine, 77). Benjamin Franklin de
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