Crispus Attucks

Crispus Attucks was a sailor and dockworker, most likely of African and Wampanoag descent, who was the first man shot dead when British soldiers fired into a crowd on King Street in Boston on March 5, 1770. The Boston Massacre killed five men and became one of the sparks of the Revolution, and Attucks came to be remembered as its first martyr.

His body lay in state in Faneuil Hall, and on March 8 he and the other victims were buried together in the Granary Burying Ground, where the Freedom Trail passes their shared stone. Historians still disagree about whether he was free or had escaped slavery. On State Street, a circle of cobblestones below the Old State House balcony marks the spot where the shots were fired.