Attucks likely was the first to die in the Boston Massacre in 1770. British soldiers killed Attucks and four other men in the face of a mob in Boston.

By 1770, more than 4,000 British soldiers were garrisoned in a town populated by 16,000 people. On Feb. 22, 1770, a group of young colonists protested a local merchant who declined to participate ...

Attucks, of African and Native American descent, and four other men died on March 5, 1770, after British soldiers opened fire on an unruly crowd. The victims were posthumously hailed as heroes, ...

Many are invoking Crispus Attucks – an African American gunned down by a British soldier in the Boston Massacre – as a symbol of entrenched white-on-black violence and oppression.

On March 5, 1770, as a lone British soldier stood guarding King George III’s money stored at the Custom House, a group of colonists gathered and began hurling insults and threats of violence.