Crispus Attucks
A Man of Many Worlds Online Panel
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Crispus Attucks: A Man of Many Worlds Online Panel unpacks what we know about Crispus Attucks’s time and place. He lived in a world where many people were descended from both Native and African peoples that had much in common, including enslavement at the hands of white colonists. With this background, Attucks would have had a deep understanding of British oppression, and how his community fought back. And as a mariner going through the port of Boston, he would have encountered people both Black and white making the case for liberty and freedom in louder and more certain terms.
About the Participants
Kerri Greenidge is Mellon Assistant Professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University and author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter.
Jared Hardesty is Associate Professor of History at Western Washington University and author of Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England.
Chris Newell is Executive Director and Senior Partner to Wabanaki Nations for the Smithsonian-affiliate Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine, and a member of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township.
Reflecting Attucks
Reflecting Attucks is a virtual exhibit that explores the memory of Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native descent who was the first to die at the Boston Massacre, an act of protest widely viewed as a turning point on the road to American Revolution.
In this exhibit, we delve into Attucks’s world and look at how generations of Americans have seen their own reflection in the image of Attucks standing in the face of fierce opposition. By remembering him as a martyr, leader and courageous fighter, they fueled freedom movements that changed the course of history.