Blues: Harpsichord, or Boston Massacre

On March 5, 1770, Boston was rocked by the “Bloody Massacre on King Street,” later immortalized as the Boston Massacre, an event viewed today as a turning point on the road to the American Revolution. The deadly incident was the culmination of an overwhelming British military occupation of Boston and “imposed” taxation that prompted disgruntled, heated protests from Massachusetts colonists. One of the more immediate factors that helped to precipitate the Massacre was the death of 11-year old Christopher Snider (or Seider), who was killed at the end of February by Ebeneezer Richardson, Customs House official and Loyalist. Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem about Snider’s death, which had provoked a widespread outpouring of anger on the part of the colonists.

Five men lost their lives in the skirmish between civilians and British soldiers that night, including Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent. Accounts of Attucks’s life are fragmented -- if sources are correct, he grew up in the Framingham area, escaped slavery as a young man, and spent his adult life working at sea. On that fateful, snowy March evening, Attucks marched toward the Old State House to confront the British troops on King Street and fell after two musket balls pierced his chest. Generations of African Americans have called on the memory of Attucks as the “first martyr of liberty” to advocate for civil rights.