Crispus Attucks: circa 1723 - 1770
Series Intro
Author's Note: Courage rarely announces itself when it matters most: It forms quietly, shaped by risk, resistance, and consequence, long before history decides who deserves credit or remembrance.
The Courage They Didn’t Teach tells those stories one life at a time, moving decade by decade from the mid-eighteenth century onward, not to crown heroes but to examine the moments when retreat felt reasonable, and endurance carried a real cost.
Each column in this series centers on a single figure who faced danger, opposition, or erasure and chose to hold ground without certainty of reward. Some acted in public view, absorbing punishment, exile, or violence. Others endured through restraint, patience, silence, or refusal to surrender inwardly when pressure mounted.
Taken together, the series challenges the comfortable idea that courage belongs only to the loud, the victorious, or the celebrated. Instead, courage appears as a discipline learned under weight, shaped by consequence, and practiced long before recognition arrived.
If it arrived at all.
Veteran dockworkers learn quickly where danger hides; shifting loads without warning, flaring tempers when wages begin to thin out, and authority shows up loud, yet leaves quietly.
That's the world Crispus Attucks lived in along the Boston waterfront, where the working hands collided with imperial policy, and patience was growing short.
Attucks was tall, 6 feet and 2 inches; he was physically strong and agile, fitting the desirable characteristics of a whaler. He used the name Michael Johnson as an alias and had no trouble finding an occupation on a whaling ship. Being a whaler was a physically demanding and dangerous job. He would row a small boat, harpoon the whale, and transport it to the vessel. Whaler ships were at sea for about six weeks before they returned to land. It is believed that Crispus left his whaler job sometime during the French and Indian War, between 1754 and 1760, to become a merchant seaman. He never raised suspicion as a runaway slave, as his employers considered him Indian. Between sailings, he would work as a rope maker in Boston Harbor.
Boston grew tight by the late 1760s, when British soldiers filled the streets, jobs dried up, and soldiers competed for dock work meant for civilians, cutting pay and growing resentment.
Arguments arose from routine friction rather than any political theory. For men like Attucks, politics didn't find him using pamphlets; it arrived as lost wages and armed uniforms.
As Douglas R. Egerton writes in his book Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America, Great Britain paid its soldiers so poorly that many of them found it necessary to take part-time jobs when they were off-duty. Competition from the influx of troops threatened to depress wages for American workers, including Attucks's. Additionally, as an experienced seaman, Attucks faced the danger of being seized by one of the British press gangs that Parliament authorized to forcibly draft sailors into the Royal Navy. His ire toward the British apparently was intense.
According to Egerton’s book, on the evening of the massacre, Attucks was drinking at a pub with other seamen at a local tavern when a British soldier wandered in and inquired about part-time employment. Attucks was among the patrons who cursed the soldier and harassed him until he fled the establishment.
Attucks didn't have a title or protection, standing alongside everyday workers, living with decisions made above his standing and enforced at street level.
Tensions finally snapped on the night of March 5, 1770, when a minor dispute pulled others in. Bodies gathered as voices rose, followed by flying snow and ice. The moment built by itself, with nobody leading or following somebody's plans.
The moment was created not by design but by accumulation. The night's cold sharpened tempers, with frustration that carried voices farther than intended.
Men spending their day hauling cargo and fighting for more wages pressed closer, less out of defiance than exhaustion. Soldiers stood stiff and close together. Although they were trained for formation, they were trapped in a street that provided no room.
Nobody was in control; the street filled because that's where the anger took people.
Standing near the front of the crowd, Attucks wasn't claiming leadership, but because people like him always ended up when space collapsed. Dockworkers have always lived close to confrontation, quickly knowing how order broke down after the authorities showed up with weapons, but without answers.
All that is definitely known about him concerns the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. That evening, a crowd of colonists gathered and began taunting a small group of British soldiers. Tension mounted rapidly, and when one of the soldiers was struck, the others fired their muskets, killing three of the Americans instantly and mortally wounding two others. Attucks was the first to fall, thus becoming one of the first men to lose his life in the cause of American independence. His body was carried to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state until March 8, when all five victims were buried in a common grave. Attucks was the only victim of the Boston Massacre whose name was widely remembered. In 1888, the Crispus Attucks monument was unveiled in the Boston Common.
Afterward, witnesses remembered Attucks as being the person standing closest to the soldiers, close enough that words didn't matter. While distance vanished, choices narrowed.
Snow and ice flew through the air as it looked like patience had finally snapped, with overlapping shouts and tangled commands.
Slowly, fear crept in, not noticed until it finally took hold.
Finally, the line between threat and reaction blurred; neither side could say who moved first.
Then, there was a sudden change in the sound.
Heard through the noise was a sharp crack, followed by another. Things stalled for a moment, then Attucks fell, struck down before understanding could catch up with motion.
There wasn't a warning or a chance to do over. Courage showed up without preparation, measured in moments, not years, and the cost of those moments was immediately measured.
Soon, King Street was darkened from blood, while men scattered in every direction, some in panic, others in disbelief. Soldiers froze in place, caught between command and consequence. The city absorbed the shock in silence.
Only later did this incident receive a name.
What began as yet another bitter collision between working people and armed authority hardened into what became known as the Boston Massacre.
The moniker arrived after lives were lost, after the bodies were carried away, after the meaning of what happened settled into place.
The name gave shape to something that became irreversible.
Yet, Attucks never heard it, never saw the courtroom debates, engravings, or speeches that followed. Others argued over the role he played, casting him as either a hero or an instigator, depending on their view.
Lawyers picked his actions apart, and politics reached out and claimed his body. At that moment, none of that mattered; a working man without armor, rank, and protection stood his ground when pressure peaked, and he paid the full price.
Attucks had no plans to ignite a movement; he wasn't expecting remembrance, but his courage lived in presence, not in intention.
He never benefited from what followed; he didn't see resistance harden into revolution or colonies become a nation. The courage he showed didn't bring him safety, yet it promised no reward.
His courage arrived raw, untrained, and final.
In history, courage is praised when it's wrapped in speeches, preparation, and command. Crispus Attucks showed the kind of courage that arrives unannounced, when retreat still seems possible, and when choosing to stand costs everything.
Next Up in This Series: Margaret Corbin
When her husband fell beside a cannon during battle, Margaret Corbin stepped forward and took his place. Wounded, captured, and largely forgotten, she proved that courage on the battlefield did not wait for permission or uniform.
