THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, February 22, 1997 TAG: 9702210053
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR AND ALAN STEINBERG
LENGTH: 283 lines
BLACK PEOPLE don't know enough about their own history in America. Most don't know that blacks were instrumental in founding this country. Until I learned that on my own, I didn't know it either.
When I was in college at UCLA, I wanted to know more about blacks in American history. So I started asking questions and buying books. I accumulated a varied library on African-American history and just kept adding to it. During my NBA career, especially the last half, one of my favorite ways to relax was reading these books and learning more about black participation in American history.
In 1983 a fire destroyed my home, and I lost hundreds of books, including most of my favorites on African-Americans. I started showing up at the Aquarius Bookstore in Los Angeles to replenish my library a few volumes at a time. One day while I was browsing, a book cover caught my eye. On it was a painting of a black youngster firing a pistol at a mounted British officer. The book was Burke Davis' ``Black Heroes of the American Revolution.'' It looked as if it was for kids, because it was a thin hardback with large type. But when I started reading, the material drew me in and held me. I was not only intrigued by the stories but also startled by how much of it I didn't know.
That one thin book was mind-boggling. It started to change my sense of my heritage. I was astonished to learn that blacks had fought in the Revolutionary War. In 1770, one-fifth of the population was African-American. Most were slaves, so they had nothing to lose by joining up. Anything that could free them from degradation and suffering was worth doing. So they joined local and state militias, and for the first eight months of the war, they were openly accepted in the Continental Army. African-Americans fought during the opening salvos at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill. The truth is, not only did they fight well, but many were bona fide heroes.
I never got any of this in school.
I kept on reading. I discovered that as many as five thousand blacks served during the Revolutionary War; that bigoted Southern politicians objected to black participation because they didn't think blacks would be good soldiers and didn't want them to be armed with guns; that in November 1775, George Washington was forced to ban all blacks from service; and that when the war dragged on into its third year, and the Continental line had been whittled down to fewer than 6,000 volunteers, Washington caved in and allowed blacks to enlist en masse - and they helped save the cause.
I was excited by all these new facts. But I was also outraged; I couldn't understand why I hadn't known them before. So I started reading every book I could find on black contributions to the Revolution: ``The Negro in the American Revolution,'' ``The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution,'' ``Before the Mayflower,'' ``The Negro in the Making of America,'' ``History of the Negro Race in America.'' All this fresh information made me reflect seriously on how black Americans had been continually denied their basic rights on the basis of race and ethnic features. And how we are still battling to gain those rights, 220 years after the first Independence Day.
When I learned how many African-Americans had served the patriot cause, I was amazed. I wanted to scream and hit something. Why hadn't I known about this? But it really wasn't so amazing. It turns out that Colonial blacks had already fought in four ``European'' conflicts in the Americas: King William's War (1689-97), Queen Anne's War (1702-13), King George's War ( 1744-48) and the French and Indian War (1754-63). They had also served as minutemen, local volunteers pledged to fight on a minute's notice.
All this made me understand, for the first time, that America was our country too - in more ways than most people know.
To me the most significant African-American hero of the 18th century is Crispus Attucks. Crispus Attucks first came into my consciousness when I started playing pro ball in 1970 with Oscar Robertson, a Crispus Attucks High School grad. I knew that in the mid-'50s Crispus Attucks was the first black high school to win the state basketball championship in Indiana. So I asked Oscar, ``Who was Crispus Attucks?''
He said, ``Most people don't know.'' He explained that Attucks was with the group of patriots who died in the Boston Massacre - and he was black. That stunned me. I had prided myself on my knowledge of history - I had switched my major to history at UCLA and read voraciously - so I could not believe I had never heard of him. Years later, when I started looking into black contributions during the Revolutionary War, I discovered that Crispus Attucks was the first real American martyr. I remember telling myself I would never again get caught short about the history of my people. I started reading everything about Attucks I could find.
At the start of my Crispus Attucks education, I imagined him as larger than life: a leader of men, a noble freedom-fighter, a combination of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry. The classic American hero, only black. But history recorded only fragments of his life and portrayed him as an ordinary 18th century black man, in some ways even unsavory.
It turned out that 20 years before the Boston Massacre, Attucks had been a slave in a Boston suburb. We know this because after the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770, someone dug up an old ad that had run in the Boston Gazette on Oct. 2, 1750. The ad began: ``Ran away from his Master William Brown of Framingham, on the 30th of Sept. last, a Molatto Fellow, about 27 Years of Age, named Crispus, 6 Feet two Inches High, short curl'd Hair, his Knees nearer together than common: had on a light colour'd Bearskin Coat.'' The ad offered a 10-pound reward, which, of course, no one would ever collect. Because the next time the name Crispus Attucks appeared in public was the day after he passed into history at the customhouse square.
Attuck's enslavement and ordinariness made him seem all the more courageous. I was so fascinated with his story that it mattered more to me at the time than winning an NBA championship. Suddenly I was obsessed with finding out all I could about that freezing March night in 1770 when a runaway slave incited the riot that led to the war that founded our nation. How did an obscure black man find himself as the forefront of those historic events?
First, some context. The Boston Massacre did not happen in a vacuum; it was provoked by King George II and the British Parliament. In the mid-1760s, the crown tried to tighten its grip on its rebellious American colonies. It started when Britain imposed the Sugar Act, cutting our sugar trade with the West Indies. Then came the Currency Act, forbidding us to print our own paper money. Next, the Mutiny Act forced us to provide for British troops stationed among us. Last, but certainly not least, the hated Stamp Act required us to purchase stamps for all legal documents, including ship's papers, tavern licenses, newspapers, almanacs, pamphlets, decks of cards, even dice. The colonists finally realized, ``Hey, maybe belonging to the empire is not in our best interests anymore.'' That was when agitators calling themselves the Sons of Liberty started terrorizing the British. They assaulted so many stamp agents and burned so many stamps that almost none got sold.
Several years later, Parliament imposed more hard duties; it also stationed British regiments in Boston and created a board of customs commissioners to end colonial smuggling. In response, colonial merchants boycotted British goods. Finally, the British prime minister, Lord North, repealed all new duties except the tea tax. But it was too late. For 17 months, Bostonians had resisted the troops, baiting and insulting them, calling them ``Oppressors! Trespassers!'' At one point, the customs commissioners were so scared they retreated to Castle William in the harbor.
Meanwhile, the patriot rabble-rouser Samuel Adams started circulating stories of soldiers committing terrible crimes against citizens. Most of this was invented, along with the explosive rumor that British soldiers planned to attack the city. But the citizens panicked; mobs prowled the streets and taverns, starting brawls with soldiers. Heads got cracked, weapons were brandished, and Boston became a tinderbox.
On the clear, frigid night of March 5, the fuse got lit. Around 8 p.m., soldiers from Murray's Barracks in the center of town traded insults with a rowdy group of sailors led by the tall, brawny, 47-year-old Crispus Attucks. Attucks was originally from Framingham, Mass., though lately he had been working aboard ships out of the Bahamas. He was known on the lower Boston docks as a tough customer, part African, part Natick Indian (Attucks meant ``deer'' in a Natick language). As a slave, he had suffered oppression at the hands of his own countrymen, so he certainly would have resented the British yoke. Maybe more than most, he was primed for a fight.
Attucks and a loud, drunken mob drove the soldiers back to their barracks. Then the soldiers regrouped and loaded their muskets, threatening to shoot. A citizen rang the fire bell in the Old Brick Meeting House, and crowds poured into the streets, hauling buckets and fire bags, guns and clubs. Nobody knew what was happening. That was when a young apprentice ran through the crowd, holding his bloodied head and crying, ``Murder! Murder!'' He claimed the customhouse sentry had bashed him with a musket for cursing a soldier.
Three groups formed up and marched on the custom house. The largest group - about 30 sailors with cudgels and sticks - followed Crispus Attucks. Somewhere along King Street, Attucks grabbed a big piece of cordwood from a butcher's stall and waved it as his followers cheered. When they reached the customhouse square, they joined a bigger, angrier crowd. As the injured apprentice pointed out the sentry who had hit him, people screamed, ``Kill him!'' They tossed stones, ice balls, sticks. The sentry was scared for his life. He backed up the steps, loaded his gun and yelled for help. Instantly a square of the 29th Regiment came at a trot, flashing their bayonets. They formed a half-circle around the sentry box, and Capt. Thomas Preston ordered them to load. People yelled, ``You lobsters! Bloody-backs! Cowards!'' Some started throwing things at the redcoats as they aimed their guns, chest-high, at the crowd.
No one knows exactly what happened next. According to one account offered at the soldiers' trial, Crispus Attucks was part of the inflamed mob. When others cried, ``Fire! Fire and be damned!'' Attucks allegedly threw a stick at Pvt. Hugh Montgomery, who stumbled back and fired his musket. The ball struck Attucks in the chest. Then all hell broke loose. The mob surged forward, and other soldiers fired. Attucks took a second ball in the chest, crumpled to the gutter and died. In all, 11 were shot and five died.
Ironically, the most widely accepted version of events was that of a slave named Andrew who was near the soldiers when they fired. He told the court of inquiry in no uncertain terms: ``The people seemed to be leaving the soldiers, and to turn from them, when there came down a number from Jackson's corner, huzzahing and crying, damn them, they dare not fire, we are not afraid of them. One of these people, a stout man with a long cord wood stick, threw himself in, and made a blow at the officer; I saw the officer try to ward off the stroke; whether he struck him or not I do not know; the stout man then turned around, and struck the grenadier's gun at the captain's right hand, and immediately fell in with his club, and knocked his gun away, and struck him over the head; the blow came either on the soldier's cheek or hat. This stout man held the bayonet with his left hand, and twitched it and cried, kill the dogs, knock them over. This was the general cry; the people then crowded in.''
Andrew insisted the stout man (meaning, most likely, brave or resolute) was ``the Molatto who was shot,'' Crispus Attucks. To the colonists, Attucks was now a martyr. But not to John Adams. As a lawyer for the crown, our future second president had to discredit his own countrymen. Because key witnesses all named Attucks as the chief instigator, Adams went after him with a vengeance. He slandered Attucks by calling him the leader of ``a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tarrs'' - in other words, a lowlife thug. In his final argument, Adams poured on the melodrama. He argued that Attucks was so dangerous that his ``very looks was enough to terrify any person,'' implying, obviously, that any soldier confronted by Attucks was justified in shooting. Adams then urged the court to conclude it was Crispus Attucks ``to whose mad behavior, in all probability, the dreadful carnage of that night is chiefly to be ascribed.''
It does make you wonder: Was Crispus Attucks nothing more than a dockside thug spoiling for a fight? Or was he a true American hero ready to die for the cause of freedom?
What we know for sure is that Crispus Attucks was a hard man who led a hard life. He escaped slavery at 27, went to sea, associated with unscrupulous types, and had a reputation on the docks as a shady character. And on the night of March 5, 1770, he was down there agitating; it was a riot, not a peaceful demonstration. They were throwing sticks and glass; they were trying to hurt people. If you read John Adams's defense of the British officers, it sounds as if he's defending the LAPD. He says, in effect: ``Your Honor, these gentlemen were performing their duties to uphold the law and trying to keep public peace. And these thugs were agitating against the orders of His Majesty and had to be silenced.'' Sound familiar?
Remember, this was not a classic confrontation between oppressor and oppressed. The troops of the 29th Regiment were not battle-hardened vets. They were scared recruits an ocean away from home who just wanted to do their tour of duty and sail back. On the other hand, the rioters weren't just protesting ``taxation without representation.'' They were there to get the British boot off their necks.
Maybe Crispus Attucks had no business being in that square. Maybe he didn't care about taxes or the British boot. He wasn't politically active, and we don't know if he could even read. But he certainly shared the Bostonians' resentment of the British. Perhaps he just wanted the chance to crack a British skull or two.
We'll never know his motives; there will be no news at 11. But Crispus Attucks will always be an American hero. If he was engaged in thuggery, fortunately for him, it was for the right side. Also, and this is important, here was an escaped slave with no education and very little stake in anything - he didn't own land, he worked odd jobs - yet he was the first to risk his skin for a better way of life in America.
What counts is that a black man was in the first group of patriots to bite the dust. If you read about the scoundrels who fought at the Alamo or in the Spanish-American War, some were cowards who shot at people over their shoulders as they were running away. Not every hero is like Audie Murphy, taking prisoners for country and God. So even if Crispus Attucks wasn't motivated by noble thoughts on the dignity of man, he nevertheless aligned himself with the downtrodden because he knew that the British were the worst of all evils. To me - and to history - that makes him a hero.
I am not alone in this belief. On Crispus Attucks Day in Boston 75 years after the Revolution, the famous white orator Wendell Phillips said that Ralph Waldo Emerson believed the Battle of Lexington was the spark that had ignited Americans to fight for liberty. But Phillips took Emerson's statement a step further and declared Crispus Attucks the American Revolution's first hero: ``Who set the example of guns? Who taught the British soldier that he might be defeated? Who dared look into his eyes? Those five men! The 5th of March was the baptism of blood. . . . I place, therefore, this Crispus Attucks in the foremost rank of the men that dared. When we talk of courage he rises, with his dark face, in the clothes of the laborer, his head uncovered, his arm raised above him defying bayonets. . . . When the proper symbols are placed around the base of the statue of Washington, one corner will be filled by the colored man defying the British muskets.''
In 1855, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of ``Uncle Tom's Cabin,'' said that Crispus Attucks and the thousands of blacks who served the revolutionary cause were more than ordinary heroes: ``It was not for their own land they fought, not even for a land which had adopted them, but for a land which had enslaved them, and whose laws, even in freedom, oftener oppressed than protected. Bravery, under such circumstances, has a peculiar beauty and merit.''
No one questions John Adams as a foundation rock of this country. Well, Crispus Attucks was his equal. He did what had to be done too. Without one there could not have been the other.Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former center for the Los Angeles Lakers, was recently inducted into the NBA hall of fame as the highest-scoring player of all time. Since retiring in 1989, he has appeared on television shows and in films, worked with charitable organizations, and written an autobiography. He lives in California and Hawaii. Alan Steinberg is a Chicago-basked author of six books and numerous magazine articles. MEMO: From the book ``Black Profiles in Courage,'' by Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg. Copyright 1996 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Reprinted by permission of William Morrow & Co., Inc.From the book
``Black Profiles in Courage,'' by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan
Steinberg. Copyright 1996 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Reprinted by
permission of William Morrow & Co., Inc.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a former center for the Los Angeles Lakers, was
recently inducted into the NBA hall of fame as the highest-scoring
player of all time. Since retiring in 1989, he has appeared on
television shows and in films, worked with charitable organizations, and
written an autobiography. He lives in California and Hawaii. Alan
Steinberg is a Chicago-basked author of six books and numerous magazine
articles.
[For a related story, see page E5 of THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT for this date.] ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Crispus Attucks
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's passion for history led to his book, "Black
Profiles in Courage," from which this story is excerpted.