<Tr> <Th> Occupation </Th> <Td> Dock worker, whaler </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Parent (s) </Th> <Td> Jacob Peter Attucks and Nanny Peter Attucks </Td> </Tr> <P> Crispus Attucks (c. 1723--March 5, 1770) was an American stevedore and whaler, widely regarded as the first person killed in the Boston massacre and thus the first American killed in the American Revolution . </P> <P> Historians disagree on whether Crispus Attucks was a freed or escaped slave at the time of the massacre, but most agree that he was of Native American and African descent . Two major sources of eyewitness testimony about the Boston Massacre, both published in 1770, did not refer to Attucks as "black" nor as a "Negro"; it appeared that Bostonians of European descent viewed him as being of mixed ethnicity . According to a contemporary account in the Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), he was a "Mulattoe man, named Crispus Attucks, who was born in Framingham, but lately belonged to New - Providence, and was here in order to go for North Carolina ..." Attucks' mother, who was a slave, was recorded as a Natick Indian but also described as a negro, as were his siblings and extended family . Because of his apparently mixed heritage, his story is significant for Native Americans and black Americans alike . </P>

Who was the first person killed in the american revolution