Who Were the Minutemen and Minutewomen?
This spring a proposal to replace the Minuteman with some other symbol for our athletic teams triggered a firestorm in the national news media. The proponents of change saw in the Minuteman issues of gender, race and guns. There were no Minutewomen, said some. Minutemen were not people of color, said others. Some did not like firearms. Once again the Minuteman won, as it did in a similar debate in 1983. But the dialog among the participants revealed a substantial lack of knowledge about the role of armed women, and people of color, who were members of the original Minutemen. In Massachusetts alone, 840 minorities served in the Revolutionary War, 740 were recorded as black or mulatto and 100 recorded as Indians. Armed men and women, white and colored, repelled the British at Concord, Lexington and elsewhere. They fought at Bunker Hill. They were members of George Washingtons Continental Army. One Minutewoman, two months before the Battle of Concord and Lexington, came close to making Sa
