Blacks Serving In U.S. Military Over the Years: The American Revolution

From the Feb. 23, 2021, U.S. Army "African American service and racial integration in the U.S. military" by Dr. Paul-Thomas Ferguson.

Formal black service in the U.S. military dates from the American Revolution.  Many freemen and some slaves already served in Northern colonial militias to protect their homes against Indian attack.  Their numbers rose in 1770 after Crispus Attucks, a black man believed to be the first casualty at the Boston Massacre, was killed.

Commanding general of the Continental Army, George Washington, was initially against recruiting black soldiers, but military necessity later made him relent.

 The most prominent group of black soldiers served in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment.   Enough black and Indian soldiers were recruited to eventually make up half of its 225 men.  This regiment achieved its greatest fame protecting  the Continental army's withdrawal from Aquidneck island during the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778.

Crispus Attucks (A Black Man) Killed By British Troops at the Boston Massacre in 1770 Has Similarities With Floyd's Death-- Part 1

From the June 7, 2020, Chicago Tribune "After Floyd's death, a slaying from 1770 evokes similarities" by William J. Kole, AP.

Like George Floyd, he was black, in his mid-40s and died at the hands of a white man.  And, like Floyd, he may have helped touch off a revolution.

Many in the Black Lives Matter movement are invoking the name of Crispus Attucks -- a black American gunned down by a British soldier in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770 -- as a symbol of entrenched white-on-black violence and oppression.

Attucks is widely seen as the first casualty of the American Revolution and 250 years after his death, he's becoming a rallying figure for a nation battling old demons.

Sad to say, though, I don't think many of those you black and white people out there marching, protesting and, in all too many cases looting and destroying Confederate monuments have a clue who Crispus Attucks is.

--Cooter