Crispus Attucks Script Reading~ Independence Day 4th of July

Reading of a vintage Script ~ Crispus Attucks (1723? - March 5, 1770) was the first American to die for the Revolutionary cause: "The first to defy, the first to die." Attucks was shot in the "Boston Massacre," the first fight leading up to the Revolutionary War.

Crispus Attucks, a black man, was the first person killed in Boston. When tensions between British soldiers and an angry crowd resulted in the death of five people. March 5, 1770 was initially called the day of the Boston Massacre but the name was soon changed to Crispus Attucks Day. Crispus Attucks Day remained the chief American anniversary until independence was won and it was replaced by July 4. John Adams, our second president, called March 5, 1770 the most important event in American history. On October 13, 1888 a monument was erected on Boston Common called the Crispus Attucks Memorial. 

Attucks went to sea as a whaler and worked as a ropemaker in Boston, Massachusetts. He learned to read and write, and studied government. Attucks went to many anti-British meetings to discuss unfair taxes; he wrote to Governor Thomas Hutchinson (the Tory governor of Massachusetts) to protest these taxes. On March 5, 1770, Attucks and other Patriots (Colonists who were against British rule) fought with the Red Coats (British soldiers) at Dock Square in Boston in an unofficial skirmish. Attucks was the first of five people to die in the fight. The soldier who shot the Patriots were tried for murder, but most were acquitted (the future US President John Adams was the lawyer for the British soldiers); the acquittals further enraged the people of Boston.