My am director of outreach at the american antiquarian society. I want to welcome you to this talk. You can find out up a brochure at the desk. You can also join our mailing list by filling out the information on your sheet. You can also pick one up at the front desk. As many of you know, we are a National Research library Whose Mission is to collect, preserve and share the printed record of the United States, portions of canada and the British West Indies before the 20th century. Collect anything and everything printed within these parameters from graphic princeton newspapers and periodicals. We use these collections as the basis for all of our programs which bring scholars, artists, writers and teachers and students at all levels together to participate in the workshop, seminars, performances and a variety of other programs. Tonights lecture is part of a series of programs we are offering connected to an exhibition called beyond midnight paul revere. It is currently on display in message news is through june 7. One part is that the western art museum down the street and the other one in concord. This exhibition will have concluded at the crystal bridges museum of american art in museum. It will be on display from july 4 until october 26. If you didnt get a chance to see it while it is here, i highly encourage you to do so. Curator and the Andrew Mellon curator of national arts. The director of fellowship and the center for historic american visual culture. Its ancillary and programming offers a fresh perspective on the legendary midnight writers by showcasing paul reveres many skills as a craftsman and entrepreneur. Although we know him for his revolutionary activities, he was maker and thenon First American producer of copper sheets. We would like to thank the major sponsors of this exhibition. The most complete collection of on paper. The most famous of these is the bloody massacre. It was reveres rendering of the event they came to be known as the boston massacre, which marked the 250th anniversary last week. Tonights speaker will tell us about the shifting role Crispus Attucks has played in the story of the American Revolution and the story of the nation he is the professor of history at Western University specializing in africanAmerican History, collective memory and historical writing. He is a fulbright specialist in american studies and has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the humanities, the study of the united state history and the United States department of education among others. His publications include, first martyr of liberty, Crispus Attucks in american memory, on which todays talk is based. Festivals of freedom, memory and meaning in africanamerican celebrations 1808 through 1915, and, as a coeditor the curse of cast by the slave bride, a rediscovered novel, which was named an outstanding academic novel for 2007. He has published numerous articles and book chapters such as 19thcentury black transnationalism, africanamerican response to the haitian revolution among others. Please join me in welcoming mitch kachun. [applause] professor kachun thank you. Good evening, everyone. I want to thank you all for coming out tonight. Braving whatever we might have to face in this interesting time we are living in. I am pleased and honored to talk to you this evening about my book. I want to thank kayla and all of the staff and Board Members at the american antiquarian society. I am truly honored to be invited to make this presentation at one of the premier cultural and historical institutions in the nation. It is worth noting over the next several years, we are all going to be hearing a lot about various events commemorating the American Revolution. Perhaps especially here in massachusetts were so many of those events took place. The boston massacre is considered by many to be one of the earliest events linked to the beginning of true revolutionary thinking in the colonies. I have been in the area for a week now. Participating in some of the commemorations around boston. I put in a plug for what i was consulted for, called reflecting Crispus Attucks. Which deals with Crispus Attucks american memory quite effectively. Please check it out. Is that better . Sorry about that. A lot of feedback, though. As the commemorations move forward, we will ponder where the american experiment have brought us after a quarter millennium. We are going to be hearing of a lot of different versions of the events like the massacre, the tea party, the writing of the declaration and the intent of the founders and so on. Part of what has intrigued me as a historian are the ways in which different versions of our shared history are constructed to serve disparate political, cultural or ideological agendas. Everyone seems to have their own take on events as different narratives resonate with different people at different times. We all have our favorite stories. Every nation needs a story, something that tells members of that nation and others who they are as people. The story americans like to tell themselves about their nation is one of freedom loving people coming from england seeking religious liberty. They prospered and grew and extended their quest for freedom by throwing off the chains of british rule to establish the nation based on the ideas of individualism, equality and upward mobility. Where a persons status is based solely on ability and efforts. Rather on being born into an aristocracy. The american nation is a unique nation, and exceptional nation in this narrative whose prosperity grew, attracting immigrants from across the globe who wanted to participate in the american dream. The american nation has become a great world power and melting pot where all who share the ideals and abide by the rules of the nation are welcome to share in that dream. While there is some truth to that story, it also leaves a lot out. It has been especially important for africanamericans to create their own story as a people because the mainstream american story has always ignored them and excluded them. Understanding how africanamericans over the past two and a half centuries have developed who they are and how they fit in the larger american story is one of the central questions that interest me as a historian. One of the main things ive been trying to understand over my career and is certainly one of the main themes of first martyr of liberty. Im interested in collective memory. How members arrive at a shared understanding. How do stories of the past get constructed . Who does the constructing . And why do certain stories gain widespread credibility and familiarity . Why do other stories get overlooked or forgotten . Why are certain people honored as heroes while others are villains . And others still, ignored completely . What i have tried to do in this book is examine the many different ways over the past 250 years that Crispus Attucks and by extension africanamericans in general have either been made a part of or excluded from americas understanding of the story of the American Revolution and the nation. I want to start by reading from the books opening pages, which i hope will introduce both Crispus Attucks and the questions i explore. From the introduction, the election of barack obama began march 5, 1770 at the boston massacre with the death of Crispus Attucks. This provocative opening line from the 2009 documentary we the people is never fully explained. Viewers are left to wonder how the death of a mixed race former slave led to the election of the nations first africanamerican president over two centuries later. While the connections between obama and attucks are tenuous at best, each man has occupied that intellectual and emotional juncture at which americans attempt to understand how race has affected our understanding of what it means to be a patriot, citizen and american. These questions challenge us. First, to recognize the continuous black presence in america and American History from the 18th century to the 21st. And then to consider how americans think about africanamericans place and to ponder the process through which National Heroes and myths are constructed. The book examines how Crispus Attucks has been remembered and forgotten, lionized and vilified in the centuries long debate over citizenship and belonging. What do we really know about him and his role in the boston massacre . There is little certainty about attucks life story. The most widely accepted interpretation suggests he was born around 1723 year natick, massachusetts, a praying town of christianized indians. It is about 20 miles west of crosby. He was likely of next african and native american ancestry. He was likely a slave owned by William Brown of framingham until he liberated himself around 1750. He worked as a sailor around the docks until his role in the events of march 5, 1770. Most modern historians see the socalled boston massacre as a noteworthy event in the colonys growing disaffection with the British Empire. Available evidence confirms attucks was part of the unruly mob, with a small detachment of british soldier outside the king street customhouse where he and four white colonists were killed after threatening british guards with rocks, chunks of ice and clubs. A few days later, four of the victims were buried in a single grave in bostons granary burying ground. Patrick carr was placed in the grave with the others. Some months after that the soldiers were tried for murder. All were acquitted of manslaughter, lightly punished and sent home. Thousands of american colonists and at least hundreds of bostonians were direct participants in mob actions between the early 1760s and the start of the revolution in 1775. Crispus attucks was one of those colonists and in the greater scheme of things, he was no more important or significant that than the on the rest. They all laid played a role in moving disgruntled colonists toward a new struggle for independence. It is understandable the first person to be killed by british soldiers might hold a memorable place in that revolutionary saga. Wasthe fact that the man Crispus Attucks is happenstance. Had a been another person in the mob that day or a confrontation on another day, would that person be remembered at all . Why has his name been remembered in a way those men who died alongside him have not . It makes sense to consider these questions because his incorporation into the story of the revolution was not a foregone conclusion. It was the result of a Conscious Campaign to construct an american hero, the first martyr of liberty. Just a bit from chapter one. In 1782, after the famous question in his letters from an american farmer, what then is the new american, this new man, he was not thinking about Crispus Attucks or other people of color. He was trying to explain the nature of america and the emerging american character to a european audience intrigued by this land of distant colonials who were engaged in the modern worlds first experiment in revolutionary nation making. As far as he was concerned, the new man he saw coming into being in the nascent United States was either a european or the descendent of a european. In other words, he was white. Yet, during the era of the American Revolution, approximately 20 , 1 in every five people was of african birth or african descent. People like Crispus Attucks were very much a part of 18th century america. They embodied much of what was new and distinctive in the revolutionary nation. Attuckss life allowed him to see the best and worst of 18th century america. The economic and social vitality of growing colonies, the oppression of slavery, the intermingling of diverse peoples and languages at atlantic seaports, opportunities of life at sea, the fluidity of identity in americas formative era, and the language of liberty and natural rights that came to define the idealistic new itself view of itself. So in looking at stories that have grown around Crispus Attucks over the past 250 years, ive looked into scholarly histories, juvenile literature, public monuments, works of drama and literature, visual arts, Popular Culture, tv, movies, the internet and so on. One of the things that i found is that because there is so little evidence about who attucks was, people have tended to make things up about him. Details about his family, his education, his religion, his politics, his patriotism, things of which we have virtually no concrete evidence. Excuse me. So, there are a lot of distorted stories about attucks floating around but people have constructed to suit their own purposes. The construction of different meanings around attucks started almost immediately. Future United States president john adams, in his role as defense attorney for the british soldiers, succeeded in portraying attucks as an outsider, a threat to the social order who led the riotous mob that provoked the troops into firing. Attucks, he claimed, appeared to have undertaken to be the hero of the night and to lead the army with banners and march them up to king street with clubs. Attucks cried, do not be afraid of them. They dare not fire. Kill them. Kill them. Knock them over. And he tried to knock their brains out. To have this reinforcement under the command of a mulatto fellow whose very looks were enough to terrify any person, what had not the soldiers then to fear . He, with one hand, took a a bayonet, and with the other, knocked the man down. This was the behavior of attucks, to whose mad behavior the dreadful carnage of that night is chiefly to be ascribed. Adams did his best to characterize the entire mob as a rabble that did not represent the interests of the good and peaceful people of boston. A large part of that involved identifying attucks as a racially mixed outsider, as the ringleader. He did his job well and the soldiers were exonerated. Over the next several years, bostons patriots used the memory of the massacre and its victims to serve their own political agendas by portraying the victims as respectable, innocent citizens struck down by a tyrannical military power. The paul revere engraving, of course, is perhaps the bestknown piece of propaganda in this activity, showing the respectable and apparently white colonists being mowed down by an abusive military. There are also annual march 5, commemorations from 17711783, with speeches placing all blame over the horrid scene on the british tyrants. These orations pay little attention to individuals. So, no mention of attucks, no mention of the racial makeup of the martyrs. Collectively, they were referred to as our brethren, slaughtered innocents, and fellow citizens. The implication, of course, was that they were white. Between 1771 and 1850, the boston massacre itself remained a part of the collective memory of the north american nation. American revolution. Some characterized it as a key event in forging colonial unity while others preferred to distance the revolution from what they considered a disorderly riot. In either case, attucks role in racial identity remained largely ignored, even among africanamericans. Only a few scattered references to attucks appeared during the first half of the 19th century, sometimes casting him not as a hero or a patriot, but lets like john adams, as a ruffian. Samuel goodrich was one of the most popular and prolific authors of history schoolbooks during the middle decades of the 19th century. In his first book of history for children and youth, which was published in numerous editions between 1831 and 1859, he described the boston mob led by a giant of a negro named attucks. They brandished their clubs and pelted the soldiers with snowballs, abused them with all manner of harsh words, shouted in their faces, challengedthem, and them to fire. Had the troops not fired, he he informed his young leaders, the irritated and unreasonable populace would have torn the soldiers to pieces. The appearance of this text and a few others in the 1830s that identified attucks racially, brought him to the first time to the attention of africanamerican abolitionists. Once black abolitionists learned about attucks, they made him into a revolutionary symbol. A usable symbol. William cooper nells colored patriots of the revolution in 1855, shows attucks as the first martyr of the American Revolution, who was of and with the people and never was regarded as otherwise. He was the man most responsible for Crispus Attucks bursting onto the american scene in the 1850s and 1860s, as the fundamental example of black patriotism and virtuous citizenship. In the emerging mythology, black activists ignored attuckss native american ancestry and presented him as a unequivocally black man who was the first to sacrifice his life on the altar of American Freedom. His identification with the nations founding and mythic image as the first martyr of liberty was a careful historical reconstruction intended to bolster africanamericans arguments for Citizenship Rights. And that has been the most common characterization of attucks ever since. What is more remarkable is the rapidity of attucks rise to prominence as an africanamerican hero. Virtually unknown to black activists before the 1840s, by the 1850s, he had become one of the most widely recognized symbols of black patriotism and citizenship. Attucks prominence among black and white abolitionists grew during the civil war, as black men donned blue uniforms and risked their lives to preserve the union and dismantle american slavery. So hes widely known in the 18th century, and received considerable attention through the reconstruction era. Tion of theon erec attucks monument in the boston commons in 1988, also sometimes in 1888, also sometimes referred to as the boston massacre monument, was the most publicly visible honor attucks received up to that time. It was also a turning point. While the monument was erected with black and white support, it also drew a lot of criticism from conservative bostonians. Leaders of the Boston Historical Society mounted a position, declaring that the proposed monument was a waste of the publics money, maintaining that these men were rioters, not patriots. Attucks in particular, because the famous mulatto was a rowdy person, killed while engaged in the defiance of law. A few years later, one longtime bostonian referred to attucks as , halfnegro rowdy who shouldve been strangled the day he was born. As jim crow segregation took over after the late 1800s, africanamericans faced a new and troubling reality. Thats next reading is from chapter 4 but which is titled Crispus Attucks meets jim crow. On a chill january day in 1879, william h. Palmer, an africanamerican revenue inspector, awaited the birth of his fourth child. We cannot know the conversations he, his wife, and his family may have had about naming that child, but when the baby boy came into the world, he became known as Crispus Attucks palmer. At the age of 21, Crispus Palmer still lived in Norfolk County with his mother, by then a widow, and with his siblings. 10 years later, crispus was married and on his own, and they he and his wife mary had three young daughters. When his sons was born in 1912, he was named Crispus Attucks palmer jr. A few years later, the crispus senior registered for the world war i draft, although he did not serve. By 1920, he was a widower and had moved to norfolk city, where he owned his home free and clear and worked as a clerk at the post office. Later that year, crispus married again. He and his second wife, rose, provided well for their family. The home was worth 3500. They purchased a radio to keep up with the changing times and they placed a high priority on education. Crispus still held his post office position, and both rose and his oldest daughter, marion, were schoolteachers. 17yearold crispus jr. Was soon off on his own adventures. He completed four years of college, an impressive achievement for a black man in the early 20th century. He was working as a film editor in the Motion Picture industry until may, 1942, when he and he enlisted in the u. S. Army to help defend the country in the war. He earned the rank of technician fifth grade and gave his life to serving his country in france, where he was buried. Young Crispus Palmer junior did not marry or have children, so we can only speculate whether he would have carried on his familys tribute to the first martyr of the revolution. The Palmer Family personifies important aspects of the culture of racial uplift among middleclass africanamericans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They placed a high value on family, education, and economic advancement. William palmer was very likely a slave prior to 1865. In 1870, he was a domestic servant. And while he could read and write, his wife, annie, could not. By 1880, annie was literate and william had risen to the position of county revenue inspector. Successive generations of ers illustratelm the emergence of the post bellum southern black middle class, with jobs increasingly removed from the subservience of slavery and able to parent households in which the childrens education was a priority. They became homeowners and had the expectations that the next generation would exceed their own accomplishments. In naming a black patriot and hero, two generations of palmers also claimed their place as black citizens, while illustrating an attention to racial pride that solidified Crispus Attucks status in black communities across the nation. Despite the upward mobility of families like the palmers, black americans generally saw their stock decline during the years after the civil war. Africanamericans hopes for a 40 quality in American Society expended briefly after the coast issue of amendments between 18651870 abolishing slavery and guaranteeing equal Citizenship Rights. But those hopes steadily eroded after the 1870s. By 1879, when Crispus Attucks was born, only 2000 black men have held Political Office in southern states, 16 in the congress. At the birth of his namesake in 1912, there were no africanamericans in congress and very few held elective offices at any level. Even the right to vote, let alone hold office, was undermined by convoluted voting rules, racially restrictive laws, intimidation, and violence. While black literacy climbed, from 10 to over 70 in this period, black hopes to pursue education were slim. The passage of jim crow laws across the south restricted africanamericans access to schools, jobs, libraries, and other public facilities. After their withdrawal of federal troops from the south in 1877 and the return to power of the white supremacist former slaveholders, even basic constitutional Legal Protections for black americans disappeared. In 1882, 49 lynchings of africanamericans were recorded, a number that climbed steadily over the next several decades, with the total reaching well over 3000 in 1920. Countless others, no doubt, went unreported. In times like these, when White America had all but abandoned its concern for the basic welfare and rights of its black citizens, a black hero like Crispus Attucks had little chance to enter the hero pantheon of the nation. While White Americans and mainstream Popular Culture virtually erased attucks from the history of the American Revolution, just as black service in the civil war disappeared from the mainstream and popular conceptions of that conflict. As white northerners and southerners gradually left behind the hatred spawned by the civil war and reconciled their differences over the halfcentury after 1865, blacks were left to preserve their own contributions in segregated spheres of public and personal memory. As both legal and de facto segregation kept the races separate, a memory also developed among racially exclusive parallel paths. With few exceptions, africanamericans had to rely on their own written histories, public commemorations, and acts of memory, like the naming their children, to defy and preserve a meaningful history of the races role in shaping American Society. In the period from the late 19th century into the world war ii era, Mainstream Society paid little attention to the role Crispus Attucks and other africanamericans played in American History and culture. One important measure of the Broader Societys erasure of africanamericans from the nations story is history textbooks. Officials are quasi documents that basically tell children, this is what you need to know. This is the true story of your nation. While attucks appeared, sometimes as a hero and sometimes as a villain, in many history schoolbooks prior to the civil war, i have not been able to find a single reference to Crispus Attucks in American History textbooks published between the 1880s and 1950s. So africanamericans ramped up their own efforts to promote black history and to critique black omission from School Textbooks and curricula, as well as the demeaning images of black s circulating in american Popular Culture. Africanamerican historical writers in the late 1800s countered this omission with a noble and heroic Crispus Attucks. Unfortunately, one problem with those attempts to tell attuckss story, was that practically nothing was known or can be known about the man. In many cases, writers simply made stuff up about attucks to suit their purposes. While many presentations held close to the slim historical record, between the 1880s and 1930s, some of the stories generated by black writers had grown downright preposterous. 19th century writers like George Washington williams and william j. Simmons invented an attucks who was goodlooking, literate, well read in political philosophy, a man who was a prominent member of the boston sons of liberty, good friend of paul revere and sam adams, whose actions became a rallying cry for black and white patriots. He was clearheaded and loyal hearted, a man who saw himself as an american citizen and was determined to avenge oppression in every form. All of this is fabrication or conjecture with no connection with any historical evidence. After world war i, africanamericans intensified their attention to attucks and other race heroes as they made overt efforts to incorporate africanamerican achievements into the National Historical narrative. Several authors writing Historical Books for Young Readers during the 1920s, even presented the highly unlikely image of attucks giving speeches to the admiring boston public and exchanging ideas with the people who thronged around him. Beyond the written word, Crispus Attucks was also honored by africanamericans who named Community Institutions after him, including schools, public parks, housing projects, community centers, hotels, movie theaters, American Legion posts, and more, including at times the naming of their children after him. And his name was invoked more and more frequently by public spokespersons and organizations calling attention to the disregard for black Citizenship Rights during the jim crow era. And you might be able to read the sign being held there, the first blood for american independence was shed by a negro, Crispus Attucks. Interest in promoting attucks as a National Hero was redoubled, as africanamericans once again presented opportunities to sharpen activists arguments for black inclusion and full Citizenship Rights. And there was much broader attention given to attucks from both the american government, and White Americans more generally. Explaining why would require more time than we have tonight, so youll just have to read the book to find out. [laughter] as a hint, the war had a lot to do with it. It should be no surprise that things began to change as the postwar Civil Rights Movement focused attention on africanamericans and their place in the nation as at no time since reconstruction. In the 1960s, some School Districts outside the south made conscious efforts to rectify the neglect of the black past. By 1963, Community Activists in detroit, los angeles, washington, d. C. , chicago, and other cities were successfully successful in moving School Systems towards including africanAmerican History into the curriculum. By middecade, attucks began to appear in mainstream history textbooks, albeit as a token. One good measure of the change can be seen in a Popular High School text, the adventure of the american people. The 1960 editions cover of the coverage of the boston massacre refers to a mob of ruffians, taunting the troops and patriots using the memory of the event to keep the flames of discontent high. This identical language appeared in the 1970 addition 10 years later, but there we also learn that one of the victims was Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave who was the leader of the mob. The authors also point to the story of the irony of a black who is less than free becoming a martyr to the cause of freedom. By the 1980s and 1990s, it was difficult to find a textbook that did not at least mention attucks. And many featured him prominently as a hero and a patriot. Some texts gave into repeating fabricated biographical details. Like identifying him as active in the sons of liberty, when no evidence to that effect exists. He is still widely represented and misrepresented in textbooks today, as well as other things like documentaries and public addresses and so on. Attucks was also getting attention in juvenile literature, juvenile biographies , and even comic book histories, what we might call today graphic novel histories. And the authors usually paid little attention to historical accuracy, continuing the pattern of making up stories, family members, attitudes, and other details about attucks which bear little resemblance to the historical record. This book shown here is based on some solid historical research, though it also embellishes quite a bit. This mainstream attention to attucks was not without its critics. Since textbooks can contain only so many pages, the inclusion of natives and others who were starting to get more attention meant that some white men to less attention. Lewising to historian speer, in the 1970s, the average College Freshmen was expected to have been taught some version of the following. Crispus attucks, a black man, was the first person to die for american independence. Speer argued Crispus Attucks was seeking wanton amusement by harassing the soldiers, and expressed her hope that students would carefully rethink the negros role and find better leaders with which to identify. Similarly, historian Thomas Bailey complained, in his 1960 1968 organization of american historians president ial address, that history of any kind is deplorable, especially when significant white men are bumped out to make room for significant black men in the interest of social harmony. To bailey, Crispus Attucks and his fellows were guilty of hooliganism, not heroism. And africanamericans were not always of the same mind about treating attucks as a hero either. Even as early as 1860, john s. Rock, said that he would rather honor nat turner or even john brown, rather than Crispus Attucks because attucks fought for the revolution that ended up maintaining slavery. In 1966, black power spokesperson Stokely Carmichael argued on the one hand that a black man who goes out and throws a brick at a white cop is taking part in an uprising, as Crispus Attucks, another black man, was when he threw rocks in the revolution of boston. He also argued that attucks exemplified blacks fundamental problem of always trying to be american first and black people all the way down the end. And that is why we are catching hell the way we are catching it today. He listed a group of black heroes who he thought should be part of the school curricula, w. E. B. Dubois, nat turner, Frederick Douglass, malcolm x and others, and he mocked the fact that on the uncle toms like George Washington carver and booker t. Washington received attention. He took a Seattle High School audience by surprise in 1967 when he told them the very first man to die for the war of of independence in this country was a black man named Crispus Attucks. Very first man, yes. There was applause and carmichael went on, he was a fool. Eah he died for white folk country. He should have been fighting white folk instead of dying for white folk. That has been our history as a black people, we have always been dying for white folk. The 1976 bicentennial brought greater attention from the mainstream to Crispus Attucks and black participation in the revolution more broadly as well as increasing opportunities to disseminate interpretations of attucks and other black heroes in schools and the everexpanding mass media. Sometimes commercialization was involved, as with this commemorative bottle of 100 proof jim beam bourbon. In 1998, the u. S. Mint featured Crispus Attucks on a commemorative coin honoring africanamerican veterans of the revolution with this portrait, even though we really have little evidence as to what attucks looked like. Moving into the 21st century, we can see lots of different ways attucks is discussed or mentioned in songs, movies, television shows, documentaries, or even the internet. In the 1990s, three maryland teenagers named their metal band Crispus Attucks after learning about him in school and identifying with his resistance to repressive authority. Im actually wearing my Crispus Attucks tshirt under my shirt here, i will refrain from showing it to you. [laughter] black musicians from stevie nas and commo rs n, referenced him in some of their works and Tv Documentaries began to include attucks in their presentations of the revolution. More recently, some rightwing political organizations have chosen attucks to represent their causes. In 2006, black los angeles activists founded a Crispus Attucks brigade of the socalled minuteman movement, which urged both government and civilian action to secure americas border with mexico. The brigade embraced the first black to die in defense of the american nation as inspiration for 21st century africanamericans to take their rightful and dutiful role to stop illegal immigration into the United States. Another africanamerican group aligning itself with a far right Political Movement devoted to the ostensible ideals of the nations founders, was the Crispus Attucks tea party, established in houston, texas in 2011. The texas group aspired to teach americans the history of blacks in america and to help blacks gain control of their lives and the destiny of their children. During the 21st century, attucks became even more a part of School Textbooks, curricula, black History Month presentations, juvenile biographies and histories, and academic scholarship, though misinformation about him abounds. It seems by the year 2000, he had become widely accepted as a part of the nations story, though again, mainly as a token presence. If people knew anything at all about him, he was merely the black guy from the revolution. Crispus attucks has always been a malleable figure in american memory because there is so little documentary evidence about his life. He is a virtual blank slate upon which different people at different times have inscribed a wide variety of meanings, from patriotic hero and first martyr of liberty, to an unsavory ruffian threatening the social order, to an uncle tom who sold out his race to fight alongside white slavers, to an irrelevant nobody not worth remembering at all. His connection with black men and violence in the public streets has not gone unnoticed in the 21st century. In 2000, during a debate over whether to name a bridge for attucks in his probable hometown of framingham, a historian associated him with an all too, two common image in American Public culture. Attucks, he is quoted as saying, is said to have gone on into the street waving a stick about the thickness of a mans wrist, leading a crowd of about 20 or 30 soldiers. Sounds like a thug to me. Attucks day, march 5, 2014, political journalist amy goodman had a different take, connected him with the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in ferguson, missouri. From Crispus Attucks to Michael Brown 245 years later, goodman wrote, two things remain clear. We never know what sparks a revolution, and black lives matter. Crispus attuckss place in American History today is decidedly mixed. He clearly has had an impact on a sizable number of individuals and organizations, yet remains unknown, or at least easily forgotten by the vast majority of americans. To me, this raises questions about why certain figures seem to stick so easily in americans popular conceptions of the national story, while others fail to make a lasting impact. Part of the answer is fairly straightforward. For generations prior to the 1960s, mainstream american schoolbooks systematically excluded black heroes, black accomplishments, and black participation in the construction of the American Culture and the american nation. Since the 1960s, blacks collective inclusion in the american narrative has left a lot to be desired. Rarely are africanamericans presented as serious contributors to the making of the nation. For the most part, theyre still shunted aside as peripheral to the main narrative i summarized earlier. What im trying to do in the book is examine the different ways over the past 250 years that Crispus Attucks has either been made part of or excluded from americans understanding of the story of the American Revolution and the nation. Im interested in these questions of who gets included and who gets ignored in textbooks. Whos honored with monuments, and public commemorations . Who belongs in this country and and whocountrys story, is not . Who can claim to be a citizen, a patriot, a hero, and an american . Increasingly, especially since the last president ial election, americans seem to be discussing these sorts of issues more publicly and with more passion then used to be the case. As we listen to increasingly vocal white supremacists, claiming that they want to take our country back, as we hear fellow citizens wanting to keep certain people out of the United States based on religion or culture, and as we face violent public confrontations over what statues and monuments represent and which should be torn down, reinterpreted, or replaced, i cant help but feel that the first martyr of liberty and works like it are coming out at the right time. We are currently facing a crisis of historic understanding and national identity. I certainly dont claim to have clear answers on how we should proceed, what i do argue that the broader American Public would be very well served to consult the work that professional historians do in order to have informed and civil public conversations and debates over these important questions of what america means and who belongs in this country and in this countrys story. Thank you very much. [applause] i am very happy to take any questions or listen to any comments you might have. Theres a microphone on the side here. I believe they would like you to come up to the microphone to make any points you might have or ask any questions. This might sound strange, but when i was in the fifth grade, which would have been 1960 could you get closer to the microphone please . Sure. In 1960, i was in the fifth grade. He was just a little footnote in our history books. He was included in the history books, and our teacher, who was relatively young at the time, she was about 28, of course we all thought she was an old maid. [laughter] she led a discussion afterwards about the conflict between dying for the American Revolution and then slavery still continuing so long afterwards. Was that a complete anomaly . Professor kachun im not sure. In my research because ive covered roughly 250 years of history and had to do some superficial looking, i didnt look at every single American History textbook during the 20th century. I looked at a sort of wide variety of places like Columbia Teachers College that has a really nice collection, repositories around the country. I came earliest textbook across was in 1963, mentioning attucks. So your experience, i doubt it was unique. It was right around that time. I would be surprised to find any earlier than the 1950s. But that is great to hear that it was a little bit earlier and also great that your teacher took advantage of that to have that conversation in 1960. That, i think, was a pretty unusual circumstance. Thank you. Just fascinating, splendid talk. Im going to try to not touch this with my actual hand. I was very struck by the descriptions of atticus leading the mob in john adams account, and in the woman who didnt want the bridge named after him account. And in those accounts, positioning him as a leader was used to discredit the mob. But adams is pretty close to the historical moment. And even with his defense attorney rationale for wanting to do that, i guess i would like to hear you talk some about that notion of him as a leader of a largely white mob, and whether you think of that as another fiction about him, or something that there seems to be some historical evidence for, and if so, what do you make of it . Professor kachun thats a good question. A lot of it comes down to, what do we mean by a leader . That can have a lot of different meanings in different contexts. In terms of the evidence about attucks participation in that mob, there are a number of eyewitness testimonies that make it clear he was not an innocent bystander. He was noted as coming up corn hill toward the custom house on king street. He was holding two big cordwood clubs and gave one to another person i think Patrick Eaton testified to this he said, come on, lets get them. He was obviously very vocal. Several witnesses had him shouting at the troops and daring them to fire and so on, and he was at the front of the mob, right in front of the british soldiers. One witness, and only one witness, placed him as an individual who actually used the club he was holding to strike at a british soldier. Some people question that witnesss credibility. They suggest he was certainly not that innocent bystander. Was he a leader . Well, people coming into that area, we have an unclear understanding of what really happened that night in the first place. How many people were in the streets . Some people said 40 or 50. Some people said 200 to 300. I have the sense that there were probably at least 100 people there. And attucks was not just leaning against the post, he was at the front, again, being very vocal. So in that sense, maybe he can be described as a leader. But that doesnt really get to his mindset, his motivation. Maybe this guy you have to keep in mind, in 1770 no one was talking about independence. There is no way the desire to separate from the British Empire and declare the american nation to be a new and distinctive country without a monarch, nobody was maybe sam adams in and a couple of people, but nobody was really thinking about that. So you are inscribing these ideals of patriotism onto attucks in an ahystorical way. That wasnt really part of the conversation at that time. But, again, these folks in boston who were trying to agitate against the British Empire even as early as 1771, when these massacres started to commemorate the event, their goals still really werent to separate from the British Empire, but to call attention to british abuses in order to substantiate the american case for having some kind of remediation, i guess, from the empire. So, was he a leader . One could make that argument. But it is really hard to get to his motivations, his mindset and so on. Im not sure that fully answers your question. I guess the other part is if he is a leader, does that mean that [indiscernible] professor kachun again, the question was, if he is a leader in that context, can we consider the white people in that crowd to have been following him as a leader . Again, that is very difficult to measure. We dont have any evidence after the fact. Again, when the massacre martyrs are commemorated in these march 5 commemorations dozens of years after, they are rarely mentioned by name, and never is any one of them singled out as someone to hold up as a hero. So, some of these things that people put into their textbooks or into their biographies or arguments about attucks role that he was an inspiration to black and white revolutionaries after the fact, theres just no evidence to support that. So again, its hard to get in the mindset of those people, but the depositions that were taken, most of the people didnt know who he was. I dont think most people saw themselves as following him. People in this mob were coming from a lot of different directions. He was said to have led 20 or 30 people up the hill. But people were coming from different directions. They were following someone else or the sound of church bells, or what have you. Hard to say. Yes, i have two comments or questions, perhaps. One, you mentioned other black leaders, nat turner and john brown, but you forgot to mention the ladies. I mean come at you dont mention harriet tubman. He dont mention Sojourner Truth. Seems there is a few people, a lot of these people have remained nameless throughout history, but it might have been a nice link. Anyway, the second thing is, there has recently been a book published about john adams, and about his as a lawyer representing the british soldiers and winning for them. I havent read it, because i have it on order from my library, but i thought, one should read your book and that book, that they might make an dichotomy. Contrast, would you suggest or say that might be a good idea . Professor kachun i think that everyone should buy my book. [laughter] and the book on john adams and make that comparison. Do you know who the author is . I cant remember, but he has been on different talk shows and articles, and there have been reviews on his book in, say, the boston globe, and the new york times. Professor kachun i havent read it either. I will have to look for that. Unfortunately, im old and poor, so i had to order it from the library. Professor kachun libraries are great. I am a big fan. Thank you. Yeah, in terms of the women, i didnt mention them. But certainly, my focus is on Crispus Attucks. But it is important to note that he was not the only person used by africanamerican spokespersons trying to reorient, reconstruct the central narrative of American History. And they did use people like tubman and Sojourner Truth and over the years, others Like Mary Church Terrell and mary mcleod bethune. And on through the decades in order to try to inscribe africanamerican contributions to the construction of the american nation. So, yeah, i didnt mention them tonight. And really, dont spend a lot of time talking about either them or Frederick Douglass or nat turner and others in my book, because i am using attucks to a two sort of represent that movement to reorient and recenter the narrative around black contributions. Ok, thank you. Professor kachun thanks. Thank you for a great lecture. Question is, do we know much about the other four in the mob who were killed that day . And can we make any inference about Crispus Attucks sort of biography from knowledge of the other four . Professor kachun i really havent looked too much into the biography of those other four. Again, my focus is on attucks. Im trying to cover a quarter of a millennium here. So [laughter] i have to keep the blinders on in certain respects. One thing i do in the first chapter is, although we cant really reconstruct biography of try to useucks, i other historians work in the 18th century atlantic world, the world of sailors and seaports, to try to get a sense of what kind of possibilities there were for Crispus Attucks. One of the other victims was also a sailor. The others were young people, rentices, leather turners turners, ivory workers. So we can look at that crowd and see that there were a lot of young people in there, especially among the young victims. There were a lot of people certainly of the working classes. There were many townspeople of various social levels, a lot of the middling and even upper folks were out on the street. Some of them did get wounded, most of them, to my knowledge, were not at the forefront. That sort of helps feed into adamss characterization of this rabble out in the streets making trouble. Again, i dont have a lot of information about the biographies of the others. Thats one of the fascinating things. The reason stories about Crispus Attucks are so prominent is because he became a useful symbol in black abolitionists work to advance their own agendas for pursuing Citizenship Rights for themselves and the abolition of slavery. The others didnt really were not really utilized in that way by other constituencies. Thank you very much. Professor kachun yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. I have a question, actually a twopart question. Its related. The first would be, what if Crispus Attucks was indeed not enslaved, which is one question, because you used the term lightly. And i dont think its a given that he was indeed a slave. And secondly, when nell does his work on colored patriots in the 1850s, he includes a good deal of information on the Indigenous People and their participation in the revolutionary struggle. So my question becomes, what is the significance of erasing or obliterating the complexity of who attucks was as an individual in making him only a black man . And nell doesnt use the term black. He used the term colored, because colored includes, africanamericans, ethiopians, Indigenous People, and all of the other terminology at that time. But i would like to ask you, does anything change if attucks is indeed a free person of color and not a slave . Professor kachun thats an interesting question, yeah, and , again, it is part of the speculation. There was a lot of really good circumstantial evidence. There was a runaway advertisement published in 1750. You are probably aware of this that identifies, i forget the exact language, a runaway slave named crispas, c,r,i,s,p,a,s, from framingham c,r,i,s,p,a,s, from framingham who was 62 tall, wellbuilt, mulatto. And then in 1770, we have a newspaper account of this victim of the boston massacre as a man well, he was initially identified as a man named Michael Johnson, and theres you can speculate about whether that was an alias or misidentification, but he is eventually identified as a man named crispus. He is over six feet tall, substantially built man from framingham, described as a mulatto. To me, that is a very strong circumstantial connection that we are talking about the same man. Its not ironclad, absolutely. Does it change the narrative if indeed he was not an enslaved man . In fact, nell and the other black abolitionists who were using attucks in their activism, i dont believe nell was aware of that runaway ad until about 1860. So, in his research, in his construction of attucks, he starts writing about attucks, he is certainly aware of attucks by 1839. Hes communicating in 1841, writing letters with wendell phillips, a white abolitionist, who is something of a mentor to nell in some ways, about a biography of attucks. So, through the 1840s, his first writings about attucks in the late 1840s and then in the 1850s, he does not identify i might be wrong but i dont think he identifies attucks as someone who had been enslaved. That is sort of left open. So, i dont think it would have made a difference because the identity of someone who was a selfliberated former slave was not really part of the narrative that nell started to construct in the 1840s. Does that make sense . Of course, but the advertisement that you are referring to from 1750 does not use the term slave in the notice. Theres an earlier advertisement for a fugitive named Michael Johnson. And some of us would argue that johnson is actually jonarsson, which the topographer in boston reduced to johnson, because his father was prince jonah. But if his mother is indeed a free, native woman, he would not have been born a slave. Professor kachun well, based on the family that most people seem to place him in and im not familiar with that Michael Johnson ad. Id like to talk to you and get that citation, but the family that most people place him in was this prince jonar, and his manny woman named nanny peterattucks. Nanny peterattucks was identified in most sources as someone who is an indian, descended from a person who is killed in king philips war. But in the estate of William Brown, poor colonel buckminster i am blanking on which one it is. But in this statement, the gentleman died in 1847, i believe. Shes identified as a negro and as a slave as part of his estate. She is valued at 80 pounds. So, whether she was misidentified, her status as a free or indentured or enslaved person is unclear, but since she had a value of 80 pounds, it seems that she was not a free and clear, free person. She was bonded to this person in some way. The fact that shes identified as a negro maybe suggested while she was enslaved, and even though she was of native american ancestry, she is negro by association because of her marriage to a gentleman who was apparently born in africa. So, theres so much we dont know about the minute details of his family life, and so on. And i am not sure if i missed other parts of your thats it. Thank you. But i did want to know if you thought the narrative changes, because it is an appeal to a white audience to argue that the first person to die for American Freedom was an enslaved african. And that flattens out this story of attucks. Professor kachun yeah, but again, i dont think that was the initial argument nell was making. This was an argument that it was a person of color. Ill have to look more closely at nells full language as to whether he uses the term black, or negro. But clearly colored patriots is a little bit broader term. But hes clearly seen by black abolitionists as a black man and others who picked that up, including people like Martin Delaney and william johnson. They identified him as an unequivocally black man. So theres some ambiguity there. You tilted your head. So you might want to look at other sources as well. I dont want to monopolize this, but, you know, when you have people in the 1850s, we now call africanamerican, using the term colored, and you have nell rewriting entire chapters on Indigenous People who fought in the revolution, im not so sure that they were ignoring the complexity of who this attucks person was. Professor kachun ok. Yeah, im going to stick to my guns on that, though. [laughter] but its worth thinking about. The term colored, of course theres been an evolution of the way africanamericans are referred to by the Broader Society and the way they refer to themselves. There were considerable debate s in the 1830s about whether to identify you know, in the revolutionary era, the term african was widely embraced. So you have the free africans society, the african methodist episcopal church, the African Union society, in various cities, the term african was very much embraced by free black communities as they were beginning to form in the aftermath of the revolution. But by the 1830s, increasingly, that term, colored, became adopted by many africanamerican people today, who today we call africanamericans. A very famous newspaper out of new york in the 1830s was called the colored american. Someone went so far as to say we should get rid of any qualifying adjectives at all and simply refer to ourselves as americans. So, those are conversations. But the term colored american or free people of color were terms widely used by the free black communities in the north in identifying themselves with in the american context. So im not sure how much time we have left here. Maybe one more question. Just a comment, actually, on what you said. You said free people of color. In its common usage you hear now people of color. Interesting that transition. I am looking at the picture you brought along, another sailor. And, sort of, you alluded to it before. But i was just wondering, if he did not exist, if he was not there, would this still have been the boston massacre . Was he that prominent . I mean, we dont know, i just had another question. The newspapers of the time, how they reported it . Professor kachun i think, absolutely, the boston massacre would have played the role it ended up playing, even if he were not involved or another person of color was not involved or amongst one of the victims, because, again, for the most part, his racial identity was kind of erased in the coverage after the fact. He was identified in newspaper accounts immediately, first as Michael Johnson, then, but always as a mulatto, a person of mixed racial background. So they werent hiding that initially. But afterwards, certainly by the time those orations at the First Anniversary and beyond in 1771, there was no racial identification of any of the victims, which would lead them and again, the purposes of the patriot cause, it would serve their purposes well for the public to assume that these are all respectable, upstanding, white citizens. Members of Boston Society who were struck down by a tyrannical power. So yeah, i think thats how that would play out. Thanks. Thank you very much. [applause] i really appreciate the opportunity. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] American History tv is on social media. Cspanhistory. between violence and political change from the American Revolution present day. This was part of a conference called remaking American History