The guardian. [volume] (Boston, Mass.) 1901-1960, 1940-08-03
FIRST MARTYR To- INDIE.
TENDANCE OF U. S.A.
(By Lillian Lewis Feurtado)

WIN small plantations, when Amerl-
can settlers held slaves in Massachu-
sets, commotion was raised one day
late in September upon the discovery
that one of the slaves of Deacon
Brown had asserted his manhood and
his liberty loving rights and had de-
serted his master. They styled this
right to freedom a crime, and adver-
tised the slave as having "ran away.
Now nobody who has a good mental
portrait of Crispus Attacks will accuse
him of running away" from anything
or anybody. He was, in the first place
an intelligent young man, about OF
years of age who had good business
ability and who drove many good
trades in cattle for his master, who
left much of this to the Judgment of
Crispus. In the second place, he be-
lieved in liberty and made up his mind
to take his without his masters leave.
Clad in a light beaver skin coat, brown
fustian jacket, new buck skin breaches.
blue yarn stockings and checked
wooden shirt, TALL heavy set fellow
with knock-knees turned his back upon
the Deacon's plantation and its cattle.
and the old cellar in which he and his
relations lived, and followed where his
fancy led. He was a mulatto in COM
pleXion, he stood six feet, two inches
in height; his hair was short and curly
and he was of huge bodily proportions
and brave to recklessness. This was
Crispus Attucks, a descendant of John
Attacks, an Indian who was conspicu-
GUS in the events of 1876, whose
family naturally intermarried with
Colored people who We're slaves, thus
making the offspring also slaves.
In the History of birmingham by
J. H. Temple, he writes in full detail
about the Boston Massacre that hap
pened twenty miles from that town,
but he gives as his reason for doing
so that "the principal character in the
bloody affair was a birmingham
man." Crispus Attacks was born in
birmingham and birmingham in its
authentic history proudly claims him
as a birmingham man.
For twenty years Crispus Attacks
wandered where he pleased. He was
a lover of the sea, and no doubt he
sailed about with masters of vessels,
until he happened to reach Boston, for,
on the day of the Boston Massacre, his
companions were sailors.
Boston was the town selected by the
English in which to make themselves
obnoxious to the Colonists. The New
England spirit Of liberty was too fast
asserting itself, petitions to the
Governor, petitions to the Legislature,
Conventions, Speeches, Mass Meetings,
Committees to present petitions, and
the same lot Of persistent efforts that
we the Colored people of America, are
carrying on at the present time, were
carried on by the oppressed colonists
at that period, in their fight for justice
and civil rights.
General Gage, commander-in-chie
of the British forces in New England,
was man who did not conceal his dis
like for Colored people. He encouraged
his soldiers in the disrespectful atti-
tude they assumed toward the Bos-
tonians, when they marched into the
city on a Sunday encamped on Boston
Common, took possession of the State
House, of Faneuil Hall, set up bar
racks at Brattle Street and Water
Street, planted their cannon and chal-
lenged the residents wherever and
whenever they pleased. On the Fri
day before the Massacre the soldiers
had beaten several citizens and indig-
nation was growing and an outbreak
seemed imminent. Their speeches,
their protestations, petitions-every-
thing-had been ignored, just as most
of ours are ignored in a similar fight
for fair play and cessation of injustice,
and the last resort became the first
bold stroke.
On Monday, March 5, ITO, in the
evening, about 9 o'clock, when the
streets were covered with snow, and
the sky was clear, and the pale cold
moon shone over all, the soldiers were
attacking and insulting passers-by,
striking them with sticks or sheathed
cutlasses and in every conceivable way
annoying and threatening them.
Several clashes took place, and in
Brattle Street, at the corner of the
alley, there was a big fracas. 1t
drew big crowd, excitement ran high,
bells were rung, people ran from all
quarters, and armed with billets of
wood, with snow balls and cakes of ice
threw them at the soldiers and dared
them to tlre, although they aimed their
guns.
Just eight minutes before the big
tragedy that was to set the seal upon
Americas independence, Crispus At
tucks, then Al years of age, whose big
frame and determined face were
enough to terrify anybody, as John
Adams afterwards said, was in Corn
hill at the head of 20 or 30 sailors, with
a large cord-wood stick in his hand.
The crowd moved to Dock Square and
when the bells at the head of King
Street rang he was there shouting
"The way to get rid of these soldiers
is to attack the main guard; strike at
the root; this is the nest" The sol
diers were brandishing their arms with
insolence. Captain Preston who was
officer of the day, came on the scene.
Bells were yet ringing, the din was
becoming tumultuous and amid the