IUN History Club

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Cowpens National Battlefield is honoring Black History Month, by celebrating African Americans that made their mark on our history, during the American Revolution.

Let’s get started with a man, who turned out to be the first victim of the “Boston Massacre”, none other than Crispus Attucks.

Crispus was born around 1723, in either Framingham or Natick, Massachusetts. His father was an enslaved African, and his mother was a Native American from the Wampanoag tribe. Crispus spent most of his early life enslaved to a man named William Browne. Wearing a bearskin coat and breeches, Crispus ran away from slavery when he was approximately 27 years old.

Running into life away from slavery, he found work as a sailor on a whaling ship. Additionally, he worked as a rope maker. When the British were sending soldiers over to the colonies to enforce the King’s rule, many soldiers took part-time jobs, to offset the low pay, and Crispus and other sailors found themselves competing with soldiers for their wages. Parliament also authorized the Royal navy, to stop American ships, and seize experienced seaman into the Royal Navy. This scared and angered experienced seamen, like Crispus.

In Boston on March 5th, 1770, after drinking with some other colonists at a pub in Boston, a group of colonists, including Crispus, began taunting a soldier standing guard at the Customs House. As verbal taunts and insults were shouted at the soldier, bells rang out and additional soldiers gathered. During the confrontation, the verbal assaults turned into physical violence; snow and ice balls were thrown at the soldiers, which prompted the soldiers to open fire, killing 5 colonists. The first colonist to perish from a British musket ball that night was was Crispus Attucks.

Image: Color picture of the bronze plaque, honoring Crispus Attucks. The plaque is in Boston, Massachusetts. The plaque shows a bust of Crispus, with words below the bust.

On September 9, 1890, entrepreneur Harland "Colonel" Sanders was born on a farm near Henryville. According to Business Insider, as a child he was tasked with feeding his siblings and learned to cook at the age of seven. In 1930, Sanders bought a service station in Kentucky, where he served classic Southern food and after business boomed he converted it into a traditional restaurant.

Business Insider noted that he got his big break in 1939, when "he found that frying his chicken and its signature ‘11 herbs and spices’ in a new device, a pressure cooker (different from the ones used today), resulted in the ideal consistency he had been looking for." With his recipe, he quickly made a name for himself. Sanders was commissioned by the governor of Kentucky as a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 and soon after he adopted his famous white suit and colonel tie that "would help make him a pop-culture icon."

In 1952, Sanders made an agreement with a restaurateur friend to sell his "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for a 4-cent royalty per piece. When this tactic succeeded, he made the agreement with other local restaurants. Sanders closed his own restaurant and "hit the road with his wife, the car packed with a couple pressure cookers, flour, and spice blends. He would enter a restaurant, offer to cook his chicken, and then make a deal if the owner liked what they tasted." After 600 restaurants agreed to sell his product, he established his own KFC restaurants in 1965 at the age of 75. Business Insider concluded, "It seems Sanders' pursuit was never really about becoming rich, but rather about becoming renowned for his food."

Learn more about Sanders here: https://bit.ly/3xlesr1

The image below is courtesy of IUPUI University Library.