David Walker (abolitionist)
- For other uses, see David Walker (abolitionist) (disambiguation).
David Walker (September 28, 1785 – June 28, 1830) was an American black abolitionist, most famous for his pamphlet Walker's Appeal, which called for black pride, demanded the immediate and universal emancipation of the slaves, and defended violent rebellion as a means for the slaves to gain their freedom.
Walker was born as free black in Wilmington, North Carolina, to an enslaved father and a free mother. Although he was free, Walker witnessed the cruelty of slavery during his childhood in North Carolina: later in life he remembered watching as a black slave was forced to whip his own mother to death [1]. As an adult, he left the South and travelled the country, eventually settling in Boston, where he supported himself by opening a used clothing store on the waterfront during the 1820s [2].
In Boston, Walker made acquaintances with black rights activists and began to write and speak against slavery and racism. He wrote many articles for Freedom's Journal, an early African American newspaper based out of New York City [3], and, in 1828, he joined the Massachusetts General Colored Association [4], which had been organized in 1826.
Walker's Appeal
In September 1829, a Boston printer published a seventy-six page pamphlet entitled Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America. David Walker, through the MGCA, had secured the assistance of Walker Lewis, a prominent African American abolitionist and Freemason. Lewis got the same printer who had published the Articles of the Grand African Lodge #1 to also publish the controversial Appeal. In the Appeal, Walker argued that African Americans suffered more than any other people in the history of the world, and identified four causes for their "wretchedness:" slavery, a submissive and cringing attitude towards whites (even amongst free blacks), indifference by Christian ministers, and false help by groups such as the American Colonization Society, which promised freedom from slavery only on the condition that freed blacks would be forced to leave America for colonies in West Africa (Mayer 83). The pamphlet called for immediate, universal, and unconditional emancipation — an uncommon position, even amongst antislavery activists, in the 1820s — and in particular condemned colonization plans, arguing:
Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites — we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: — and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?
David Walker, Walker's Appeal, p. 71
Walker went even further, openly praising slaves who used violence in self-defense against their masters and overseers, and suggested that slaves kill their masters in order to gain freedom:
The whites have had us under them for more than three centuries, murdering, and treating us like brutes; and, as Mr. Jefferson wisely said, they have never found us out — they do not know, indeed, that there is an unconquerable disposition in the breasts of the blacks, which, when it is fully awakened and put in motion, will be subdued, only with the destruction of the animal existence. Get the blacks started, and if you do not have a gang of tigers and lions to deal with, I am a deceiver of the blacks and of the whites. ... [I]f you commence, make sure work — do not trifle, for they will not trifle with you — they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us to that wretched condition — therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. Now, I ask you, had you not rather be killed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the life of your mother, wife, and dear little children? Look upon your mother, wife and children, and answer God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; ....
David Walker, Walker's Appeal, pp. 29-30
Walker distributed his work through black civic associations in Northern cities, and tried many different schemes to get the pamphlet to slaves and free blacks in the South. By 1830, outraged white authorities in the Southern states had begun a campaign to suppress it. In New Orleans, four black men were arrested for owning it; vigilantes attacked free blacks in Walker's home in Wilmington. In Savannah, Georgia, the white authorities seized dozens of copies smuggled in by black sailors (who had bought jackets from Walker in Boston, who in turn had stitched copies into the lining); in response they banned black seaman from coming ashore at the city's port (Mayer 83, 84). The mayor of Savannah demanded that the mayor of Boston arrest Walker and outlaw the pamphlet: it was already illegal in Georgia to teach a slave to read (Boston's mayor refused the order). Plantation owners offered a $3,000 bounty for Walker's death, and a $10,000 reward for anyone who brought him to the South alive [5]. In June 1830, not long after publishing the third edition of his Appeal, David Walker was found dead on the doorstep of his home. Official city records report his cause of death as tuberculosis [6]. Many, however, believe he was poisoned, but there is not enough evidence to confirm this position [7].
The Appeal was controversial even among abolitionists, and sparked debates that in many ways anticipated later debates over black nationalism and Black Power. Many white abolitionists, such as Benjamin Lundy, condemned it as inflammatory, and argued that it appealed to the worst passions of vengeance. William Lloyd Garrison expressed mixed feelings, criticizing the appeal to violence on the grounds of his religious pacifism, while arguing that Walker's call for violent revolution against slave-holders was the logical extension of the principles behind the American revolution, and that "if any people were ever justified in throwing off the yoke of their tyrants, the slaves are that people" [8].
Bibliography
- David Walker, David Walker's Appeal ... To the Coloured Citizens of the World, 1829.
- Peter P. Hinks, To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
- Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery. St. Martin's Press, 1998.
- Jessica McElrath, About.com African-American History: David Walker
See also
- List of African-American abolitionists
External links
- Walker's Appeal, at Documenting the American South
- Works by David Walker. Project Gutenberg
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