Local Black and Irish Leaders Unveil the Boston Massacre Memorial on Boston Common, November 14, 1888

On November 14, 1888, state and city officials and citizens from greater Boston officially unveiled the Boston Massacre Memorial on the Tremont Street Mall on Boston Common.

The memorial commemorates the infamous episode in which five men were shot and killed by British soldiers in Boston on March 5, 1770, an event that helped launch the Revolutionary War. The five martyrs were Crispus Attucks, Samuel Gray, Jonas Caldwell, Samuel Maverick and Patrick Carr.

Carr was an Irishman and the last to die from his wounds. Read more about the Irish connections to the Boston Massacre.

Governor Oliver Ames attended, along with Mayor Hugh O'Brien, the city's first Irish-born mayor of Boston. The chairman of the memorial committee was William H. Dupree, a former slave who fought in the American Civil War with the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an offshoot of the famed 54th Regiment of Black soldiers. Also on the committee was Irish immigrant John Boyle O’Reilly, who was asked to write a poem for the occasion.

The memorial was also called the Crispus Attucks Memorial, in tribute to the first man killed in the massacre. Born around 1723 in Framingham, MA, Attucks is described at the time as a Mulatto. "His father was an enslaved African and his mother was a native woman who was a member of the Wampanoag tribe," according to History.com.

Putting up a monument to commemorate these men seemed like a good idea in the 19th century, and a number of citizens gathered together to do just that. But surprisingly, there was opposition to the Memorial from old-line Bostonians. Jeffrey Roche noted in his biography of O'Reilly:

"A vigorous attempt was made by certain gentlemen of Tory proclivities to prevent the (memorial), by showing that Attucks and his comrades were "rioters" and "rebels." The Massachusetts Historical Society petitioned Governor Ames to refuse his sanction to the bill, and made a bitter attack on the memory of the Revolutionary martyrs. O'Reilly, true to his democratic instincts, ranged himself on the side of those who desired to honor the (patriots)."

Here's the opening lines of O'Reilly's poem titled Crispus Attucks:

Where shall we seek for a hero, and where shall we find a story?

Our laurels are wreathed for conquest, our songs for completed glory.

But we honor a shrine unfinished, a column uncapped with pride,

If we sing the deed that was sown like seed when Crispus Attucks died.

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