8 - A “Modern Crispus Attucks”

Summary

This chapter narrates African American historian William C. Nell’s efforts to highlight the actions of black Revolutionaries. His focus on figures such as Crispus Attucks, rather than static texts, such as the Constitution, laid claim to the first American Revolution in a way that signaled the need for a second revolution. While emphasizing instances of black assertiveness, Nell also narrated the instantiation of white prejudice. This indicated the promise of contingent change: if the human actions of the post-revolutionary period had betrayed the human actions of the revolutionary era, then new revolutionaries could reconstruct the current proslavery and prejudicial context and grant black contemporaries the rights for which their forebears fought. This interpretive frame inspired black reponses to Dred Scott, including the creation of Crispus Attucks Day. The Attucks commemorators crafted historical arguments to confront the racial prejudice they identified in both Roger B. Taney’s decision and in fellow abolitionist Theodore Parker’s speeches, and they looked to the first American Revolution to envision a second revolution in which blacks would play starring roles.