The Sons of Liberty was a secret organization formed in opposition to the Stamp Act in the summer of 1765. Lead by Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and others, the Sons of Liberty coordinated colonial resistance to British tyranny using petitions, propaganda, and public assembly. First formed in Boston, local Sons of Liberty organizations were soon established throughout the colonies.
Charles Sumner (1811–1874) was a Radical Republican senator and reformer who fought for abolition and rights for African Americans. Sumner was born in Boston and attended Harvard Law School. He began his first term in the US Senate in 1852. He immediately denounced the Compromise of 1850 in his first major speech. In May 1856, he delivered another anti-slavery speech. Focusing on the “Crime against Kansas,” Sumner denounced the events in “Bloody Kansas” as well as his pro-slavery colleagues. Among the people Sumner criticized in his speech...
Crispus Attucks (ca. 1723–1770) was one of the civilians killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre of 1770. Little is known about Attucks’ life before the Boston Massacre, but he was likely a fugitive slave of African American and American Indian heritage. He probably worked as a sailor and was certainly among the crowd who gathered on Boston’s King Street on March 5, 1770, to confront British soldiers stationed there.
