A fugitive from slavery was the first colonist to die in the American Revolution

Evidence

A confrontation between colonists and British soldiers erupts outside the Boston Custom House. In the ensuing melee, Crispus Attucks, a fugitive from slavery now employed as a dockworker, becomes the first colonist to die for the cause of independence. The event, which comes to be known as the Boston Massacre, is one of the factors that turns the colonies against British rule and leads to the American Revolution. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 314

One of the very first to die in the American Revolution was a Black and Indigenous man named Crispus Attucks who himself was not free. In 1770, Attucks lived as a fugitive from slavery, yet he became a martyr for liberty in a land where his own people would remain enslaved for almost another century. In every war this nation has waged since that first one, Black Americans have fought—today we are the most likely of all racial groups to serve in the United States military. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 86

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s overall reframing argument — the enslaved and the institution of slavery at the founding event of American independence — and to the Revolutionary-War-cause dispute the reader is tracking.
• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘origin stories are infrastructure’ framing — the very first war deaths include a founding martyr who was not free, which is the reframing thesis’s argument that Black people fought for a liberty they did not yet enjoy.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 314; Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 86