Instead of choosing between competing July Fourth celebrations, honor the man whose death helped ignite the American Revolution.
Division is a word that stands in stark contrast to the ideals inherent to the United States of America, but it has become an operative one for Donald Trump and his administration.
Even as the nation gathers to celebrate its 250th birthday, we witness an insuperable divide, keenly illustrated in the notion of two differing commemorations. One is “America 250” and the other “Freedom 250.”
The latter was initiated by Trump to counter the prior one established by Congress in 2016 as the official, nonpartisan commission and often cited as “America’s Block Party.”
In 2025, Trump issued an executive order, thereby creating an arm of his administration‘s Task Force 250. What we have, as one pundit put it, is one birthday and two planners.
First to Die for His Country
Of course, early on, the country observed that someone else’s birthday was in the mix when Ultimate Fighting Championship events were staged on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14.
This was just another blatant example of his egomania, his narcissism that has imperiled us since the inauguration of his second term. We have, in these pages, posted countless critiques of his tyranny of monarchy, and there is so much more to be said as we endure his assault on our democratic rights.
Evidence of this occurs daily — the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, the suspension of the Temporary Protection Status that threatens the deportation of Haitians and Syrians, and at the same time opening our portals to allegedly racially embattled white South Africans, the militarization of our streets with ICE agents, ending the Constitutional guarantees of birthright, an unsanctioned and reckless war with Iran, and ad infinitum.
So you have your choice as to which of the two parties to hang your hat, commit your loyalty, and attend. What we are proposing is a third option — let’s celebrate the birthday of Crispus Attucks, the first to fall in the Boston Massacre in 1770.
Sailor, Whaler, Patriot
There is still debate about his ancestry, whether he was Black, Native American, or a bit of both. To a certain degree, that is inconsequential when you consider he escaped from bondage and ended up among those protesting the presence of British soldiers in Boston. According to the best records, he was born in 1723, predating the Declaration of Independence by 53 years.
Before and after his enslavement, Attucks worked as a sailor and whaler, and sometimes on the docks. One of my favorite accounts of his courage and death was written by historian Kenneth C. Davis in his book, “Don’t Know Much About History — Everything You Need to Know about American History but Never Learned.”
“Early in March 1770,” the book reads, “a group of ropemakers fought with a detachment of soldiers who were taking their jobs, and all around Boston, angry encounters between soldiers and citizens became more frequent. Tensions mounted until March 5, where a mob, many of them hard-drinking waterfront workers, confronted a detachment of nine British soldiers.”
“Confronted by a taunting mob calling for their blood, the soldiers grew … nervous. It only took the word ‘fire,’ and most likely yelled by one of the crowd, to ignite the situation. The soldiers shot, and five bodies fell. The first to die was a fifty-year-old former slave, either a Black or Indian mulatto sailor named Crispus Attucks.”
Cries for Justice and Freedom
Thus began the Revolutionary War, the subsequent rise of the so-called founding fathers (many of them slave holders), and those hallowed but unfulfilled words of the Declaration of Independence.
The call to honor Attucks’ place in the nation’s history gives resonance to the millions of enslaved African Americans, the decimation of Native Americans, and their ongoing cry for justice and total freedom.
Added to this cry is the demand for reparations, an end to the electoral college, expansion of the Supreme Court, and erasure of the unitary executive theory, the constitutional law that Article II of the Constitution vests all executive power directly in the president. Already, the current president is invested with far too much unchecked authority.
We are not sure of the date of Attucks’ birth, so we have made it July 4, 1776. Let us hope and pray it doesn’t take 250 more years to obtain our meager demands. On that day, we can truly celebrate an undivided United States.
This article was originally published by Word In Black.
The post America 250: Why Crispus Attucks matters today appeared first on AFRO American Newspapers.
Based on reporting by Afro-American – Washington.
The post America 250: Why Crispus Attucks Matters Today appeared first on BlackPressUSA.
