Blues: Harpsichord, or Boston Massacre

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We think of the Boston Massacre as the start of the American Revolution. In Jeffers’s hands, it becomes a moment to call out the hypocrisy of white colonists in comfortable circumstances who protested their “enslavement” by the British even as they held Blacks in bondage. The poem also reflects on the harsh realities of street protests and the continual sacrifice of Black men, including Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent who was the first to fall at the Massacre. This piece was filmed in front of the Old State House in Boston, just across the street from where the Massacre took place in 1770.

In Context | Primary Sources | In Phillis’s Words | Artist Insights | Further Reading

In Context

A Brief History

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.

Primary Sources

Links to documents and artifacts relating to the moment and events referenced in the poem.

Coroner’s Report - March 6, 1770

Boston Gazette, Runaway Slave Advertisement

Boston Gazette - March 5, 1770

Autobiography of John Adams

In Phillis’s Words

Excerpts of Phillis Wheatley Peters’s writings that resonate thematically with Jeffers’s poems.

Excerpted from “On the death of Mr. Snider, Murder’d by Richardson”

“In heavens eternal court it was decreed
How the first martyr for the cause should bleed
To clear the country of the hated brood
He whet his courage for the common good…”
“...Be Richardson for ever banish’d here
The grand Usurpers bravely vaunted Heir.
We bring the body from the wat’ry bower
To lodge it where it shall remove no more
Snider behold with what Majestic Love
The Illustrious retinue begins to move
With Secret rage fair freedoms foes beneath
See in thy corse ev’n Majesty in Death”

Artist Insights

“Reading Blues: Harpsichord, or, Boston Massacre made me emotional. I visualized every bit of it during our recording process and it hurt my heart. We walk through this world carrying so much of the residual pain of our ancestors and negotiating the systemic injustices that continue to this day. But the session also made me feel strong. How gorgeous we are. How much they have taken from us yet we survive, and we thrive.

These past weeks, our Indigenous community has been in collective grief with the confirmation of unmarked and mass graves of thousands of Indigenous babies and children. We all knew of these hidden truths but the reality has been most unbearable. We mourn our stolen and murdered, and those relatives who have survived incredible trauma. It is important in these times to remember and acknowledge our strength and our continuance, and to work fiercely toward making a better world for our children.”
– Tailinh Agoyo, Female Voice in Blues: Harpsichord, or, Boston Massacre