<P> Crispus Attucks ( c. 1723 -- March 5 , 1770 ) was an American stevedore of African and native American descent , widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolutionary War . Historians disagree on whether he was a free man or an escaped slave , but most agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent . Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre published in 1770 did not refer to him as `` black '' nor as a `` Negro '' ; it appears that Bostonians viewed him as being of mixed ethnicity . According to a contemporaneous account in the Pennsylvania Gazette , he was a `` Mulattoe man , named Crispus Attucks , who was born in Framingham , but lately belonged to New - Providence , and was here in order to go for North Carolina . '' </P>
<P> Crispus Attucks ( c. 1723 -- March 5 , 1770 ) was an American stevedore of African and native American descent , widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolutionary War . Historians disagree on whether he was a free man or an escaped slave , but most agree that he was of Wampanoag and African descent . Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre published in 1770 did not refer to him as `` black '' nor as a `` Negro '' ; it appears that Bostonians viewed him as being of mixed ethnicity . According to a contemporaneous account in the Pennsylvania Gazette , he was a `` Mulattoe man , named Crispus Attucks , who was born in Framingham , but lately belonged to New - Providence , and was here in order to go for North Carolina . '' </P>
who was the first person to be killed in the boston massacre
who was the first person to be killed in the boston massacre
Crispus Attucks
Crispus Attucks