5 March 1770; trial in November–December
Crispus Attucks is killed in the Boston Massacre and racialized in the soldiers’ defense
Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay
British soldiers fired into a Boston crowd, causing five deaths, including sailor Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Indigenous ancestry. Defending the soldiers, John Adams disparaged the crowd by race and class and cast Attucks as a threatening aggressor. Six soldiers were acquitted; two were convicted of manslaughter and branded on their thumbs.
Dates preserve the source’s precision. This entry is part of a selected historical record; its qualifications and sources are retained below.
Context / qualification
Adams’s portrayal was an advocate’s argument, not an impartial finding about Attucks’s actions. Contemporary descriptions support his mixed ancestry but do not establish his precise parentage or legal status in 1770. This entry makes no claim that the soldiers selected him because of his race or that he was the first person killed in the Revolution.
Sources
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, chapter 4, p. 67; supplied print pages, edition/year unidentified
- John Adams, argument for the defense, December 3–4, 1770, especially the crowd description and discussion of Attucks; Founders Online, from the contemporary trial report ↗
- National Park Service, Crispus Attucks, biography and footnotes 1–5, 8–12; ancestry and limits of the surviving life record ↗
- National Park Service, Boston Massacre Trial, soldiers’ trial and verdicts ↗