<Tr> <Th> </Th> <Td> March 5, 1770 (approximately aged 47) Boston, Massachusetts, British America </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Occupation </Th> <Td> Dock worker </Td> </Tr> <P> Crispus Attucks (c. 1723--March 5, 1770) was an American stevedore of African and Native American descent, 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 free man or an escaped slave, but most agree that he was of Wampanoag 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 ..." Because of his mixed heritage, his story is also significant for Native Americans . </P>

Who was the first person shot in the boston massacre