By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

March 5 marks an important, but oft-overlooked, anniversary. On a winter’s day 245 years ago, in the year 1770, an angry crowd formed in Boston, then the capital of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. People were enraged by the extortionate taxes imposed by the British Parliament. In order to quell the public furor, the British sent troops, who violently quashed dissent. On that cold day, people had had enough. Word spread after a British private beat a young man with the butt of his musket. By late day, hundreds of Bostonians gathered, jeering the small crowd of redcoat soldiers arrayed with muskets loaded. The soldiers fired into the crowd, instantly killing Crispus Attucks and two others. Attucks was a man of African and Native American ancestry, and is considered the first casualty of the American Revolution. It took the indiscriminate murder of a man of color, by armed agents of the state, to launch the revolution. Which brings us to Ferguson, Missouri.

“Nearly seven months have passed since the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in opening his press briefing Wednesday. He was detailing the findings of two Justice Department investigations in the killing of the unarmed African-American youth by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson. “The facts do not support the filing of criminal charges against Officer Darren Wilson in this case. Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer Wilson.” With those words, the outgoing attorney general laid to rest any prospect of a criminal trial sought by so many seeking justice for Michael Brown. But Brown’s death continues to send shock waves, through his community, and beyond.

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