The entry begins:It would be challenging to make a film based on the life of Crispus Attucks since we know almost nothing about the man’s life that can be confirmed with documentary evidence. This is a big part of what makes Attucks such a fascinating figure—he is pretty much a blank slate, so over the nearly 250 years since his death in the 1770 Boston Massacre various people or groups have constructed a wide range of versions of his life to suit their purposes—sometimes a hero who was the first to give his life for American independence; sometimes a good-for-nothing rowdy who was a threat to the social order; sometimes an irrelevant nobody who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would be doubly challenging to make a film based on my book because, while my analysis does suggest the most likely framework for Attucks’s life, family, and experiences, it is primarily an exploration of the stories and myths that have grown around him over the past quarter millennium.Learn more about First Martyr of Liberty at the Oxford University Press website.
There actually have been several efforts to make films based on Attucks’s life, and several playwrights have developed scripts as well. In the 1940s one African American writer claimed to have gotten Paul Robeson to agree to portray Attucks on the silver screen, and in the 1980s a playwright contacted the agent for James...[read on]
My Book, The Movie: First Martyr of Liberty.
--Marshal Zeringue
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