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What do you do when a country cries out for liberty, but won't offer it to you?
In the shadowed alleys and crowded docks of Revolutionary-era Boston, Black men and women - enslaved and free - listened as white colonists thundered about freedom.
They heard speeches. They read the broadsides.
But they knew- the liberty being shouted from the rooftops was not meant for them.
Still - they stepped forward.
The first to die in the conflict was Crispus Attucks, a Black Sailor killed during the Boston Massacre in 1770. His death became a rallying cry. Black soldiers like Peter Salem and Salem Poor fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill and throughout the war.
In Boston, poet Phillis Wheatley used her words to question how a nation could demand freedom while keeping people in chains.
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