David Walker (abolitionist)
| David Walker | |
|---|---|
| Born |
September 28, 1796 Wilmington, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Died |
August 6, 1830 (aged 33) Boston, Massachusetts |
| Nationality | African American |
| Occupation | Abolitionist/Journalist |
David Walker (September 28, 1796 – August 6, 1830) was an outspoken African-American abolitionist, writer and anti-slavery activist. His mother was free and his father was a slave. Therefore, he was free. In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and self-help in the fight against oppression and injustice.
The appeal brought attention to the abuses and inequities of slavery and the role of individuals to act responsibly for racial equality, according to religious and political tenets. At the time, some people were outraged and fearful of the reaction that the pamphlet would have. Many abolitionists thought the views were extreme.
Historians and liberation theologians cite the Appeal as an influential political and social document of the 19th century. Walker exerted a radicalizing influence on the abolitionist movements of his day and inspired future black leaders and activists.
His son, Edward G. Walker, was an attorney and one of the first two black men elected into the Massachusetts State Legislature, in 1866.
Walker was born in the Cape Fear area of North Carolina. His mother was free and his father, who had died before his birth, had been enslaved. Since American law embraced the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, literally "that which is brought forth follows the womb," Walker inherited his mother's status as a free person.
Despite his freedom, Walker found the oppression of fellow blacks unbearable. "If I remain in this bloody land," he later recalled thinking, "I will not live long...I cannot remain where I must hear slaves' chains continually and where I must encounter the insults of their hypocritical enslavers." Consequently, as a young adult, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a mecca for upwardly mobile free blacks. He became affiliated with a strong African Methodist Episcopal Church community of activists, members of the first black denomination in the United States. He later visited and likely lived in Philadelphia, a shipbuilding center and location of an active black community, where the AME Church was founded.
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