Crispus Attucks, The First to Defy, Necklace

This delicate gothic necklace combines the spark--and cost--of Revolution with the haunting remembrance of Crispus Attucks' coffin.  

A tall man of mixed African and Wampanoag Nation ancestry, Crispus Attucks escaped enslavement and lived and worked amongst the docks and ships of Boston. Many credited him with leading the antagonism against the British soldiers on the night of March 5, 1770, when he was the first killed during the Boston Massacre.

The printing of the image of the coffins of the dead in the Boston Gazette the week after the event became a rallying cry for opposition to British tyranny. Over time Attucks’ biography became a vital part of his legacy, especially during the charged atmosphere of the 1850s when Attucks represented a long history of resistance to both political tyranny and racial oppression. 

At the dedication of the Attucks Memorial on Boston Common in 1888, Irish-American poet John Boyle O’Reilly delivered a poem linking Attucks to generations of Revolutionary and anti-colonial movements across the world, immortalizing him as “The first to defy, the first to die.”

This necklace features the iconic coffin image from the Boston Gazette as a somber remembrance of Attucks' courage.

This item is packaged in a beautiful black gift box with the original period imagery and historical information vetted by a museum curator. The box is perfect for gifting or storage!