History is an ongoing argument. But as we begin Black History Month, there’s one thing we can be sure of: the first American to die in our war for independence was a black man.

Folks have argued about exactly who he was. The only two surviving documents that refer to him describe him as “mulatto,” “Indian,” “a tall man,” and “stout.”  Some historians point to a notice in the local paper that stated, “Ran away from his Master William Brown of Framingham on the 30th of Sept. last a mulatto Fellow, about 27 years of age, named Crispus, 6 Feet and 2 inches high, short curl’d Hair, his Knees near together than common,” as evidence that he was perhaps a former slave.  And his last name was common among the Wampanoag Indians, and may have come from their word, “ahtug,” meaning “little deer.”  From all the evidence, the most likely scenario is that his father was a black slave and his mother a native, and historians refer to him as Crispus Attucks.

The larger, more important argument is over his participation in the events of March 5, 1770. On that day, a group of men, probably rope-makers, were sitting in a pub in Boston, when an English soldier walked in. The colonists and the soldier got into an argument, and the soldier left. Later that evening, about 30 colonists headed over to the customs house and started taunting the English guard, and then may have attacked him with sticks and snowballs. Whereupon seven Redcoat soldiers came to the guard’s defense and opened fire. Three Americans were killed instantly – the first was Crispus Attucks – and two more would die of their wounds shortly after.

The citizens of Boston dubbed the event, “The Boston Massacre,” and treated the victims as martyrs for liberty. Eyewitnesses to the event claimed Attucks and others had only taunted the guard, and most had been minding their own business when the English opened fire. But when the soldiers went on trial, they were defended by John Adams, who put the blame on the colonists. He called them “a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish jack tars.” As for Attucks, Adams accused him of being the leader of “the dreadful carnage,” who had “hardiness enough to fall in upon them, and with one hand took hold of a bayonet, and with the other knocked the man down.” In the end, the soldiers were acquitted.

The people of Boston were enraged. They laid the victims in state in Faneuil Hall for three days and then they buried them in Granary Burying Ground – which would later contain notables like John Hancock – despite laws prohibiting the burying of blacks there. For the next several years, the citizens of Boston recognized the anniversary of the Massacre with increasing revolutionary fervor, and summoned the “discontented ghosts of the victims.”

In later years following the Revolution, the argument over Attucks continued. In 1858, black abolitionists called for a “Crispus Attucks Day,” which angered southerners and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1888, a Crispus Attucks Monument was erected in Boston Common, against the wishes of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who considered him a villain.

To this day, historians are divided on what to make of him. Was he, as John Adams described him, “mad,” and “whose very looks was enough to terrify any person”? Or should he be remembered as described by poet John Boyle O’Reilly, “the first to defy, the first to die.”

He remains a mystery. But this much is certain. His name was Crispus Attucks. He was a black man. And he will be forever remembered as “The first martyr of the American Revolution.”