image credit: americanhistorycentral.com
February is Black History Month. Athena Thorne offers us this history lesson at PJ Media:
Black
History Month Should Begin With Crispus Attucks,
America's First Patriot
Every February, America goes
through a month-long ritual where it reminds everyone that blacks and whites
have beef, and black people only matter historically when they’ve been
victimized by white people. Setting aside the first part — the incessant
picking at a great scab that is never allowed to heal — black people are taught
to feel angry, less important, and, through their identity as victims, trained
to measure any success they might have as a function of either a defeat for or
a gratuity from white people.
If Black History Month were truly
meant to be a paean to black Americans, it would highlight blacks whose
historical contributions to America include more besides ending slavery and
overcoming prejudice. While those are undoubtedly massive steps forward for any
society, they are not uniquely American.
. . .
Crispus Attucks’ name ought to be as well-known as Paul Revere’s: Attucks [a sailor of mixed African and Indigenous ancestry] was the first American Patriot killed as he confronted the British at the very beginning of the American Revolution.
. . .
In March of 1770, tensions were running red hot between American colonists and their British rulers. On that fateful day, Attucks helped lead a group of angry sailors who confronted British soldiers stationed in Boston. The sailors wielded clubs, hurled snowballs, and shouted at the soldiers. In a panic, the soldiers fired into the crowd. Attucks was the very first person killed in what came to be known as the Boston Massacre, a pivotal event that brought the colonies and England to the threshold of war.
Crispus Attucks lay in state in
Faneuil Hall alongside the other four men killed in the Massacre. The City of
Boston waved segregation laws so he could also be buried with them. It is right
and just that he was so honored, and he deserves to be a household name in this
country. . . .
Crispus Attucks was the very first
American to give his life to the cause of liberating the colonies from British
rule and creating the freest, greatest nation man has yet conceived. How is that
not at least as important?
Read the rest here.
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