David Walker's Appeal

Walker suggests that his ancestors spent many generations living in “ignorance.” However, when the “enlightened” white Europeans discovered Africa, they did not attempt to teach and enlighten the people there. Rather, they enhanced this ignorance by teaching them “that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings” (34). Walker describes how certain technologies originated in Africa and then traveled to Europe, where they were further developed and refined. He suggests that the great African general Hannibal would have conquered Rome if his troops had been “well united.” However, like African Americans in the United States, they were “disunited,” and this caused their downfall.

Walker claims that God will soon send another Hannibal to lead African Americans out of slavery and cause white Americans to “curse the day they ever saw [them]” (37). He also calls on contemporary events, such as the successful revolt of enslaved people in Haiti as proof that “a servile and abject submission to the lash of tyrants […] are not the natural elements of the blacks” (38). Instead, this condition of servitude is largely due to ignorance. He describes how an enslaved man might obey a command to beat his own wife or mother to “pacify the passions of unrelenting tyrants” (38). This, Walker argues, is all due to ignorance. This ignorance persists even among free Black people, who might continue to support white “tyranny” by even “selling their own brethren” (39).

In order to illustrate the depth of “degraded ignorance and deceit” (40) among African Americans, Walker shares a story published in the Columbian Centinel on September 9, 1829. A free Black man, Gordon, bought around 60 enslaved men along with their women and children and was marching “the baggage,” chained together, from Maryland to Mississippi. However, using a file, the enslaved people managed to break through some of their chains in secret. Two of the men began a fight, and when Gordon’s associates came to break up, the rest of the enslaved people dropped their chains and killed the two men. Gordon was also attacked, although not killed, and the enslaved men stole his money and fled. A Black woman helped Gordon mount his horse and pursue the men, who were eventually recaptured and put to trial for murder.

Walker calls attention to this woman’s “ignorant and deceitful actions” (41). He argues that Black people’s hearts hold “a solemn awe” that makes them “more humane and merciful than the most enlightened and refined Europeans” (42); however, he calls the Black woman’s actions “insupportable,” a product of “servile deceit” and “gross ignorance” because kindness and humanity to do not extend to “protecting devils” (42). He claims that the enslaver and his associates were “the Lord’s enemies” and argues that the escaping men should have made sure that Gordon was dead. He suggests that white men easily intimidate Black men, but if they only had a bit more courage, Walker is sure “that one good black man can put to death six white men” (44). Despite centuries of oppression, there remains “an unconquerable disposition in the breasts of the blacks,” which demands revenge when awakened. African American enslaved people are in a “kill or be killed” situation, and Walker urges his readers to “not trifle” and make sure to complete any work they start (44).

Walker claims that the example of the Black woman who helped Gordon is repeated across the American South, where African Americans remain “abjectly employed by their oppressors” (45). He argues that this passivity affirms racist beliefs of Black inferiority. Here, Walker turns to the words of Thomas Jefferson, who argued that “a lover of natural history” would “excuse an effort to keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them” (46). Jefferson suggested that there was nothing “further […] to be done” with Black people apart from slavery, and Walker insists that this conclusion is driven by how “[they] so meanly submit” to enslavement (47).

Here, Walker calls on “men of color, who are also of sense” to educate and enlighten their “more ignorant brethren” (48). He suggests that the little “freedom and happiness” that African Americans experience are “the most servile and abject kind” (49), and they must not settle for these “dregs.” He recounts a conversation with a fellow Black man who told Walker that he was “completely happy” shining shoes. This lack of aspiration contributes to the “ignorance” and “wretchedness” that Walker describes, and he argues that “full glory and happiness” will not be realized without “the entire emancipation of your enslaved brethren all over the world” (51). This work of educating all people of color is immensely important in breaking the conception of Black people as “brutes.” Walker describes how even Black children who go to school learn very little. Those who write neatly are considered educated, even if they have no knowledge of grammar and mathematics. They are then afraid to reveal their ignorance and don’t seek further education. Walker calls on God to strip away these “pretensions” and allow young Black men to “seek after the substance of learning” (53). He argues that this is the most effective way to make white “tyrants” afraid because they know that an educated man would never submit to the cruelness of slavery. On the other hand, Walker argues that some Black people believe they know so much that they refuse to listen to and learn from others. This further perpetuates “the promotion of ignorance” and harms Black people almost as much as the “tyrants themselves.”

In conclusion, Walker shares the “heart-rending fact” of the “almost universal ignorance” among Black people and argues that this ignorance is completely intentional on the part of white Americans (56).