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Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, and Phillis Wheatley bled for the freedom they were denied, but they didn’t burn flags or curse this nation. They believed that the solution wasn’t to abandon American principles but to hold the nation accountable to them through biblical truth.
Leftists want you to believe that America was born in sin and baptized in racism. They want your children to learn that 1619 — not 1776 — marks this nation’s true founding. They want you to accept that patriotism is white supremacy and that Black Americans have never had reason to love this country.
They’re lying.
The proof is written in blood on Boston’s streets, etched in powder burns on Charlestown’s hills, and penned in poetry that shamed a nation into righteousness.
Critical Race theorists don’t want you to know about Crispus Attucks, Peter Salem, or Phillis Wheatley. These black patriots destroy their victim narrative. They obliterate the lie that America is irredeemably racist. They prove the problem was never America’s founding principles — it was sinful hearts that failed to apply them consistently.
So let me tell you the stories they don’t want you to hear. Stories of black Americans who understood liberty’s promise and died defending it. Stories that reveal the Gospel truth behind American freedom and expose the lies being taught in our schools.
It was March 5, 1770, and tensions in Boston had reached a breaking point. British troops occupied the city, enforcing unjust laws and harassing colonists daily. That cold night, an angry crowd had gathered in front of the Customs House, confronting a squad of British soldiers.
At the front of that crowd stood Crispus Attucks, a man of African and Native American descent, a fugitive slave who had tasted freedom for 20 years. While others shouted from the back, Attucks pressed forward. Eyewitnesses said he struck the first blow, hurling snowballs, ice, and stones at the soldiers, wielding a cordwood stick, daring them to fire.
“Come on, you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare!” the crowd taunted.
The British soldiers, overwhelmed and frightened, opened fire.
Attucks was the first to fall, two bullets tearing through his chest. He died instantly, his blood spilling onto King Street and becoming the first shed for American independence.
But Attucks hadn’t died for reparations or racial grievances. He had stood face-to-face with real tyranny and paid the ultimate price for an idea bigger than his own suffering: that men should be free.
The “Boston Massacre” became the spark that ignited the American Revolution. Patriots like Samuel Adams turned Attucks into a martyr for liberty. His image appeared in engravings throughout the colonies. His name was read at memorial services. His blood became a rallying cry: “Remember the Boston Massacre!”
John Adams called Attucks and his fellow protesters “rabble in arms.” But this “rabble” had just bled the first blood for American independence, embodying the Gospel truth that God often chooses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.
Five years later, on a hill outside Boston, another Black patriot would prove that liberty’s promise was worth more than life itself.
Peter Salem had been born into slavery around 1750 and given a biblical name that meant “peace.” But there was nothing peaceful about what he was about to do.
It was June 17, 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British were advancing up Breed’s Hill in perfect formation, their red coats gleaming in the summer sun. The colonial forces were outnumbered, outgunned, and running low on ammunition.
British Major John Pitcairn, the seasoned officer who had commanded troops at Lexington and Concord, charged up the hill shouting confidently, “The day is ours!”
But Salem, a former slave who had been freed by his master specifically so he could enlist in the Continental Army, raised his musket, took careful aim, and fired.
Major Pitcairn fell dead. The British assault faltered. The tide of battle turned.
Salem’s bullet didn’t just kill a man, it preserved a cause. It helped shift momentum in a battle that would rally American spirits across the colonies. Yet this hero would spend the rest of his life in poverty, buried in an unmarked grave until patriots decades later finally gave him a modest headstone.
But Salem never renounced the cause. He never burned the flag nor did he curse the nation. He believed in liberty’s promise, even when liberty hadn’t yet reached him.
This is what the architects of racial grievance cannot comprehend: a man who experienced real oppression yet chose hope over hatred, who suffered genuine injustice yet refused to abandon the principles that would eventually set all men free. Salem embodied the Gospel pattern of suffering leading to glory, of patient endurance producing character.
In 1772, an 18-year-old girl stood before 18 of Massachusetts’s most powerful men. They couldn’t believe the extraordinary poetry they were reading had been written by this young black girl.
Phillis Wheatley had been kidnapped from West Africa at age seven, sold into slavery, and brought to Boston on a ship called the Phillis. Her owners taught her Latin, Greek, and theology — not from kindness but as a parlor trick.
Phillis turned their education into a weapon of truth.
By age 12, she was writing poetry with theological understanding that surpassed that of most seminary students. By 20, she’d published “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” — the first book of poetry by an African American.
Her most controversial work, “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” declared:
“Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
‘Their color is a diabolic die.’
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.”
With one stanza, she dismantled white supremacist theology using biblical doctrine: the imago Dei, salvation by grace, and unity in Christ. It was subtle yet scorching, speaking truth in love while refusing to compromise justice.
Wheatley understood what modern “anti-racism” activists refuse to acknowledge: True racial reconciliation comes through the Gospel, not political activism. The deepest problem wasn’t systemic racism but systemic sin, solvable only through Christ’s cross.
She didn’t rage against the nation. She called it to repentance, the same pattern Christ followed when He wept over Jerusalem. She loved America enough to tell it the truth.
What made these patriots believe in American liberty while experiencing American hypocrisy?
They understood the difference between the ideal and its implementation. They weren’t naive about America’s contradictions but chose to fight for principles rooted in God’s design rather than abandon them.
They grounded their hope in biblical truth, not political promises. Their trust wasn’t in government but in the Gospel — in the recognition that true freedom comes from Christ, making earthly liberty valuable because it reflects divine design.
They chose courage over comfort, engaging and speaking truth even when it cost them everything.
As we celebrate the Fourth of July this year, these forgotten patriots offer us a profound lesson about faith, freedom, and the courage to believe.
In an age when Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) officers are rewriting history, when the 1619 Project is being taught as gospel truth in our schools, when patriotism is being redefined as white supremacy, we need to remember the black patriots who bled for American liberty.
They weren’t fighting for racial quotas or the oppression Olympics. They weren’t demanding that statues be torn down or history be canceled. They weren’t teaching children to hate their country based on the color of their skin.
They were doing the exact opposite.
While modern race-baiters profit from perpetual victimhood, these patriots chose victory. While Critical Race theorists teach division, these patriots modeled unity around shared principles. While today’s activists demand America repent for sins for which it has already repented, these patriots called America to live up to ideals it had proclaimed but not yet perfected.
These patriots understood that the problem wasn’t with the ideals of 1776, the problem was with the sinful hearts that failed to apply those ideals consistently. They believed that the solution wasn’t to abandon American principles, but to hold the nation accountable to them through biblical truth.
Galatians 5:1 tells us: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”
Crispus Attucks stood firm against British tyranny. Peter Salem stood firm on Bunker Hill. Phillis Wheatley stood firm in truth and called a nation to biblical faithfulness.
Each understood that true freedom is found first in Christ and that political freedom reflects God’s design for human flourishing.
Let us remember these forgotten patriots and learn from their courage and sacrifice. Let us stand firm in the freedom Christ has won — not submitting to racial grievance and historical revisionism but holding fast to America’s founding ideals.
Psalm 33:12 tells us, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage!”
True patriots don’t abandon their country when it falls short of its ideals. They call it higher.
That’s what these Black patriots did. That’s what we all must do.
PHOTOS: Crispus Attucks (left), Peter Salem (center), and Phillis Wheatley (right) CREDIT: Public Domain
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