In the years leading up to the Revolution and directly afterward, Massachusetts was the site of black political agitation. Just as I had heard the name of Phillis Wheatley in elementary school, so had I learned about Crispus Attucks, a biracial African American and the first to fall during what became known as the Boston Massacre. Over the years, I would learn the names of others, like Lemuel Haynes, a minister who had fought in the Revolution, and Prince Hall, who founded the African Masons. There was Belinda, who petitioned the Massachusetts Assembly for a pension in her old age.
