LEGENDS AND LIES

CRISPUS ATTUCKS
 

 THE MASSACHUSETTS 54TH AT YORKTOWN (Google file)

Monday, noon.  19 degrees F at  the ferry dock, no back porch reading as a gust of wind dashed the thermometer to the deck last night and broke it.  Wind SW, light with stronger gusts.  The sky is clear and mostly sunny with a few clouds, the humidity 74%.  The barometer stands at 29.94" and steady for now; we got about 4" of new snow last night.  The coming week will have snow showers and mixed skies, with low temperatures around 0 and highs mostly in the low teens.
   Sunday, after the Packer's rout of the Sea Hawks, we watched a new segment of Bill O'Reilley's Legends and Lies series, about the mostly unsung black heroes of the American Revolution.  More than 5,000 black soldiers served in the Continental Army, and in many ways were crucial to the American victory, including the battle at York Town, in which the famed  all black Massachusetts  54th Regiment played a pivotal role, and which ended the war.
   Additionally, the first person to die in the Boston Massacre, and perhaps in the entire conflict, was Crispus Attucks, a black American Patriot.
   This is a wonderful way to teach history, to adults as well as children.  The story of Crispus Attucks is well known now, but frankly I don't remember it being told in any American History course I ever took, much less the rest of the stories presented. Much of our national history has been forgotten or poorly told, and it is time to tell it fully and correctly.  Properly taught, history is a unifying and uplifting subject, no matter when we learn it.