(bright patriotic music) [Narrator] Who was the first casualty of the American Revolution?

Crispus Attucks was a leader and patriot, born to an African father and a Native American mother.

He escaped slavery when he was 27 years old and later became a dock worker in Boston.

During the Boston Massacre, he, along with five other men, was killed by British soldiers.

For decades, Black abolitionists fought to honor Attucks, culminating in 1858 with Crispus Attucks's Day, and later, his inclusion in a monument memorializing the massacre.

This was despite organizations, like the Massachusetts Historical Society and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, who opposed this at the time, seeing him as a villain, likely due to race and class.

Today, Attucks continues to be celebrated as the first to defy, the first to die.