When The Revolution Comes…

When the revolution comes
Some of us will probably catch it on TV, with chicken hanging from our mouths
You’ll know it’s revolution because there won’t be no commercials
When the revolution comes -The Last Poets

The above prose comes from a 1960’s civil rights and black nationalist group called, “The Last Poets.” Some say it was the Last Poets that laid the groundwork for what would eventually come to be known as hip-hop or rap music. Their gritty inner-city lyrics laid bare all of the triumphs and tribulations facing the black experience of the semi-post Jim Crow era of the early 60s and 70s. For those who are not familiar with them, I left a link to their music, but be forewarned, if you ever heard the term,” It’s getting real now..,” well they were talking about the Last Poets. I thought about them as I was doing my research for this article. The story starts on March 5, 1770, in Boston Massachusetts, but we are going to go back about 100 years earlier to 1641 for a minute when Massa.. chusetts set up a legal edict called the Body Of Liberties. The Body of Liberties was essentially an itty bitty Bill Of Rights. In fact, many of the laws in the document were included in the Bill Of Rights. I use to think that the Bill Of Rights was a separate document unto itself, but it is actually the first ten Amendments of the Constitution. You know the one that starts with “We the only people in the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish just us, ensure tranquil domestics, provide for the common defense if they’re not tranquil, promote generational welfare and secure the blessing of the cabin in the back, for ourselves to get all the “posterior” we want… do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Of course, that is not their exact words, but it’s close enough. Anyway, the first slaves to arrive in the New World came on August 9, 1526. They were brought to America by a man named  Lucas Vázquez de Mottafoka.. wait a minute… I got that wrong… it’s Lucas Vázquez de Ayllon.. sorry about that… He was a Spanish explorer who after landing, later move the colony of 600 to what is now present-day Georgia. His log indicates there were slaves among them, but he does not say how many. In the interim before the Transatlantic Slave Trade begin, Europeans used Native Americans as slaves. Most were deported to the West Indies to work the sugar plantations, where the labor-intensive crop and high mortality rates demanded ever-increasing numbers of workers. It is estimated that between 1670 and 1715 more than 50,000 Native Americans were enslaved in the West Indies. This number is significantly larger than the importation of Africans enslaved in the New World during the same period. What! Yep… Massa: “Wait a gosh darn minute… hold my chicken wing…” By 1765, just 50 years later, there were an estimated 1.5 million enslaved Africans brought to the New World. Massa: “That’s better!!” Anywho, a while back I brought up the Massachusetts document called the Body Of Liberties.” The reason I brought this up is because Massachusetts was the first colony to legalize slavery and it was legalized through the “Body Of Liberties:”

“There shall never be any bond slavery, villeinage, or captivity amongst us unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons cloth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by authority.” -Body of Liberties 1641

In 1670 it got real when the document was amended to include the enslavement of a slave woman’s offspring to be a legal slave. This guarantees that the offspring of all slaves were considered as the same legal status as their mother, a slave. This type of slavery is called chattel slavery, the owning of human beings and their offspring. In 1698 Massa- chusetts changed their tax code so that a slave would no longer be considered a person, but would henceforth be considered property. Before then as a person a slave could bring up grievances against their massa and would receive protection…. some of the time. After this change… well you know it’s like… “Is that chair back sassing me?” In 1700 a man named Samuel Sewall publishes a pamphlet entitled The Selling of Joseph, which was the first anti-slavery article published in New England. The article was about a man who told a slave named Adam that after seven years of servitude, he would set him free. Of course, the wealthy ship merchant refused to free Adam and Adam took him to court. Yes I know, why did Sewall write a pamphlet entitled “The Selling of Joseph,” when the man’s name was Adam… All I can say is that they were so disrespectful back then… As for Adam, my research shows he won his case and was set free in 1703. In 1704 the merchant that enslaved Adam renamed his ship, “He’s Under That Rock Over There.” lol… As for Sewall, although he was possibly the first abolitionist in the colonies, he was also a judge. As Chief Justice of Massachusetts, he also presided over the Salem Witch trials. Now contrary to the popular belief that those who were found guilty of witchcraft were burned at the stake, there is no evidence supporting this claim. Of the 200 people accused of being witches, men and women, only thirty were found guilty and only 19 of those people were executed by hanging, five died in jail and one was tortured to death because he would not plead. History does not record the fate of the others. Of the 200 accused of being witches, three were black, two women and a man. All three were acquitted. Remember this was 1693 and if they hung your slave for being a witch, then it was yo azz that had to pick that cotton or wash dat cow sh*t off yo pantaloons. Anyway moving on, in 1722 the first inoculations against smallpox were administered. The idea came from a slave named Onesimus, who describe how African tribes had used inoculation to treat diseases. The procedure helped save many lives during the epidemic and finally in 1750 Crispus Attucks who is the subject of our article, escapes from slavery.

Crispus Attucks And The Revolution

In 1750 Attucks escaped from his enslaver in Framingham Massachusetts. Though it is not known when he exactly arrived in Boston, it is known he was a dock worker and had probably changed his name to Michael Johnson in order to avoid being caught after his escape. For the next twenty years, Attucks spent his time working the docks on the Atlantic seaboard as a dock worker and whaler. Now I am sorta torn apart about the historical record as it pertains to Attucks’s ethnicity. Current history celebrates this patriot as being an African American. However nowhere in the historical documents.. “that they have let us see,” says anything about him being Black or being a Negro. Negro was a common term for African Americans used during colonial times. Although the colonials were slave owners, they were a little bit more enlightened than your average 20th-century Alabama red mud creek racist. It was during the early part of the 20th century that Southern racists came up with the “one-drop rule.” Now the rule doesn’t actually mean if you have one drop of black blood then you are a black heathen… you are a black heathen if you have “one” ancestor who is black. The absurdity of the one-drop rule was well spelled out when in 1895 on the floor of the South Carolina legislature a state representative, state senator, and U.S. Representative, named George D. Tillman said, “It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of… colored blood…It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice, and greed.” Although the one-drop rule was never enacted into Federal law, it was enacted into law first in Tennessee in 1915 and later in Virginia under the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924.” The Racial Integrity Act? They were foul with it, right? Anyway, several other states adopted similar laws soon after. Now as much as I would like to go into the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924,” it is way beyond the scope of this article. However, we will revisit this triumph of white supremacy next week… bet on it!! However, we will say a couple of things about this law as it pertains to our article and then move on. The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and classifying as “white” a person “who has no trace “whatsoever” of any blood other than Caucasian.” I heard they had a device that measured the thickness of your lips and if they were more than .01 centimeters wide, you would have to produce your great, great grandmother’s birth certificate. Where do you think the word “lipstick” came from.. it was invented by a man named Revlon.. later he dipped the stick into red paint so he could tell who had been tested… okay.. I’ll stop… that’s how conspiracy theories get started… lol… Anyway, Attucks may have been Native American with African ancestry instead of African American.

It’s Getting Ready To Go Down…

On the evening of the Boston Massacre or “The Incident On King Street,” as it is known in British history, on March 5, 1770, Private Hugh White stood on guard duty outside the Boston Custom House. Although the original building was demolished in 1786, a replacement building was constructed in 1849 by the federal government which still stands today. Anyway, White was on guard duty, when a 13-year-old boy named  Edward Garrick put White’s superior, Captain-Lieutenant John Goldfinch on blast, ” Where is my master’s money sucka!!” Well, he didn’t say it like that, but he did accuse the officer of owing the people he worked for money. Garrick was a wig maker’s apprentice. While wigs were commonly used in England to cover up baldness, their use did not become widespread until King Louis XIV of France experienced hair loss at the early age of 17. He had an army of wig makers at his disposal. Soon members of his court started wearing wigs and before you knew it, it was the hip thing to do. Besides the king didn’t look kindly on those in front of the court tossing and shaking their long curly locks… They say every time the King got a new wig, somebody disappeared. Soon folks were wearing wigs over their hair… They still wear them to this day just in case… lol… Well anyway, so after the kid put the officer on blast, Private White told the boy.. somebody’s being disrespectful and if somebody keeps it up they might get smacked across the lips. So then they started arguing and trading insults. Then the boy stepped out of his lane and went up to Goldfinch and started poking him in his chest with his finger. Well, White had had enough and left his post and smacked Garret upside the head with the butt of his musket. Normally you might assume with all the smack Garrick was talking the two men would start throwing hands, but that rifle butt to head made him drop it like it’s hot. He fell to the ground crying out in pain. So then another guy who was a friend of Garrick’s named Bartholomew Broaders began to argue with White which attracted a large crowd. Another young dude 19 years old named Henry Fox came upon the scene and told White if he fired.. “you will die,”… Awww hush yo mouth… don’t need to be dirty… As time went by the crowd became larger and then someone rang the church bells which usually meant there was a fire.. well the crowd grew even larger.

I Knew I Should Have Stayed Home

More than fifty people now surrounded White, led by the former slave Crispus Attucks. The crowd started taunting White and throwing stuff at him. “Yeah go on and fire!!,… why don’t you fire b**ch!!” they kept yelling at the lone sentry… true story… Seeing that things were getting out of hand White retreated to a safer position near the door of the Boston Custom House, where he sent runners to get assistance. Captain Thomas Preston dispatched a non-commissioned officer and six privates to relieve White and to fixed bayonets. That means go there with your bayonets on your guns and get ugly if a %$$#@ would. The soldiers were Corporal William Wemms and Privates Hugh Montgomery, John Carroll, William McCauley, William Warren, and Matthew Kilroy. Preston went with them. As they made their way through the crowd, Henry Fox, the 19-year-old boy we talked about earlier, repeated his warning to Preston, “If they fire, you must die.” Before we go on I just want to tell you that when the Revolutionary War starts, Fox would be granted a commission as an officer, and later in life he would serve as the U.S. Secretary Of War. Anyway, after Fox told him that, Preston responded “I am aware of it.” I don’t know what kind of officer that is.. but anyway… When they reached Private White on the custom house stairs, the soldiers loaded their muskets and took their positions. Preston shouted at the crowd ” Leave now or it’s going to be trouble!! Disperse!!’ The crowd size was now estimated to be between 300 to 400 people. The crowd continued to press around the soldiers, taunting them by yelling “Fire!”, spitting at them, and by throwing snowballs and other small objects. Subsequently, an object was thrown at Privates Montgomery knocking him down and causing him to drop his musket. He recovered his weapon and angrily shouted “Damn you, fire!”, then discharged it into the crowd.  There was a pause… then the rest of the soldiers opened fire. Almost a dozen men were hit, and three died instantly, Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, and James Caldwell. Two other men died within a few weeks after the attack. The crowd moved away from the immediate area and Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson was able to restore a semblance of order by promising the crowd there would be an inquiry into the shooting. Almost a year later a trial was held on November 27, 1770, charging the soldiers with murder.

The Trial

Captain Thomas Preston, the officer who warned the crowd to disperse was acquitted the previous month on the grounds that he did not give the order to fire into the crowd. The soldiers were represented by none other than John Adams, who would become the second President of the United States. Adams told the jury to look beyond the fact that the soldiers were British. He referred to the crowd that had provoked the soldiers as “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and mulattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tarrs” (sailors). The word teague is an ethnic slur for the Irish… sorta like the “N” word to us. He then stated, “And why we should scruple to call such a set of people a mob, I can’t conceive, unless the name is too respectable for them. The sun is not about to stand still or go out, nor the rivers to dry up because there was a mob in Boston on the 5th of March that attacked a party of soldiers.” So the future president is calling folks out of their names and saying the word mob was too respectable for them. Makes me wonder whose side is he really on. When he got to the part Crispus played in the massacre, he pulled out all the race cards… “His very look was enough to terrify any person” and that “with one hand [he] took hold of a bayonet, and with the other knocked the man down.” Translation… “That big ugly nigg*r took a gun from a white man and smacked the sh*t out of him… y’all gonna let him get away with that?” Now I am not the only one that has this opinion… “Farah Peterson, of The American Scholar, states that Adams’ speeches during the trial show that his strategy “was to convince the jury that his clients had only killed a black man and his cronies and that they didn’t deserve to hang for it.” and they didn’t… The jury agreed with Adams’ arguments and acquitted six of the soldiers after 2½ hours of deliberation. Two of the soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter because there was overwhelming evidence that they had fired directly into the crowd. The convicted soldiers were granted reduced sentences by pleading benefit of clergy, which reduced their punishment from a death sentence to branding of the thumb in open court. They branded their thumbs… Four civilians were also tried in court for various offenses against the King’s soldiers, they were all acquitted.

Granary Burying Ground

After the trial, Adams charged Attucks with having “undertaken to be the hero of the night,” and with having precipitated a conflict by his “mad behavior.” Two years later Adam’s cousin coined the event as the Boston Massacre, ensuring it would never be forgotten. The custom of the period discouraged the burial of black people and white people together. Black people were usually buried at the rear of the cemetery. I said earlier the colonist had a little more class than their southern brethren 200 years down the road. In the 1800’s a black man couldn’t even be buried on the same side of town a white cemetery was in. Anyway, the five men killed in the Boston Massacre, including Crispus Attucks was buried in the same mass grave in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground. Among other notables buried there are Samuel Adams and John Hancock, both signatories of the Declaration Of Independence. Crispus Attucks was 47 when he died.