39 pages • 1 hour read
David Harry WalkerA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses enslavement and racism.
David Walker was a free Black man born in Wilmington, North Carolina. Some sources place his date of birth in 1796 or 1797, while others date his birth to 1785. His father was enslaved and died before he was born. However, his mother was a free woman, and American law indicated that children would inherit the free or enslaved status of the mother. Despite being a free man, Walker was exposed to all the cruelties and injustices of slavery and racism. Grieved and dismayed by this constant exposure, Walker left Wilmington as a young man, claiming, “I cannot remain where I must hear their chains continually, and where I must encounter the insults of their hypocritical enslaver” (6). He spent some years traveling through the United States and finally settled in Boston, where he was married and became the owner of a secondhand clothing shop. Although he was removed from the abuses of slavery, Walker saw that Black people in Boston still faced significant discrimination and disadvantage. He became involved in various organizations in Boston that were speaking out against racism and slavery, including becoming a founding member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association. He was also known for aiding freedom seekers and providing shelter to the “poor and needy.”
In September 1829, Walker published the first edition of his appeal under the complete title Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829. His lifelong contempt for slavery and injustice is evident in his passionate defense of Black humanity and condemnation of white oppression. The pamphlet caused an uproar, especially as it began to circulate through the slaveholding South. Some reports suggest that Walker used his clothing shop to sew the pamphlet into the linings of jackets to smuggle them into Southern states. The Appeal made Walker many enemies, among white slaveholders but also among African Americans who believed he had gone “too far” in his denunciation of slavery. Walker died in 1830, just a year after his Appeal was published. Some suspected his adversaries had poisoned him, but his official cause of death was marked as tuberculosis. Walker left behind a pregnant wife, and his son was born shortly after his death. He went on to become the first Black member of the Massachusetts State Legislature.