Quiz: Mayor Wu just proclaimed March 5 as Crispus Attucks Commemoration Day. How much do you know about him?
Attucks, the son of an African father and a Wampanoag mother, was the first to fall on March 5, 1770.
Most schoolchildren hopefully have at least an idea that the first victim of the Boston Massacre — the March 5, 1770 incident between British soldiers and an angry Boston crowd that was one of the first sparks of the American Revolution — was a Black man named Crispus Attucks.
But there’s plenty more to know, says Mayor Michelle Wu.
During a press conference Wednesday proclaiming March 5, the anniversary of the event, to be Crispus Attucks Commemoration Day in Boston, Wu noted that many have historically overlooked Attucks’s heritage as the son of an African father and a Wampanoag mother, “erasing the fact that a formerly enslaved man faced down British muskets for our nation’s freedom, and erasing the historical fact that it was the courage of a person of color that stoked the flames of this revolution.”
As we mark the 253rd anniversary of the Boston Massacre — and 165 years since Black abolitionists in Massachusetts first marked March 5 as “Crispus Attucks Day” in 1858 — how much do you know about Attucks and the incident that made him famous? Take the Boston.com quiz below to test your knowledge.
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