David Walker's Appeal:
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David Walker's Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, caused a great stir when it was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. David Walker, a free black originally from the South wrote, ". . .they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us. . . therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. . . 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." Even the outspoken William Lloyd Garrison objected to Walker's approach in an editorial about the Appeal.
The goal of the Appeal was to instill pride in its black readers and give hope that change would someday come. It spoke out against colonization, a popular movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa. America, Walker believed, belonged to all who helped build it. He went even further, stating, "America is more our country than it is the whites -- we have enriched it with our blood and tears." He then asked, "will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?"
Copies of the Appeal were discovered in Savannah, Georgia, within weeks of its publication. Within several months copies were found from Virginia to Louisiana. Walker revised his Appeal. He died in August of 1830, shortly after publishing the third edition.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Walker
The goal of the Appeal was to instill pride in its black readers and give hope that change would someday come. It spoke out against colonization, a popular movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa. America, Walker believed, belonged to all who helped build it. He went even further, stating, "America is more our country than it is the whites -- we have enriched it with our blood and tears." He then asked, "will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?"
Copies of the Appeal were discovered in Savannah, Georgia, within weeks of its publication. Within several months copies were found from Virginia to Louisiana. Walker revised his Appeal. He died in August of 1830, shortly after publishing the third edition.
http://www.britannica.com/biography/David-Walker
David Walker's Appeal
| "If any are anxious to ascertain who I am," writes David Walker near the end of his Appeal, "know the world, that I am one of the oppressed, degraded and wretched sons of Africa, rendered so by the avaricious and unmerciful, among the whites." Born near the end of the eighteenth century in North Carolina as a freed person of color, by the mid-1820s Walker had moved to Boston. It was there that he wrote this book; first published in 1829, it is one of the earliest African American authored protests against slavery and racism. Despite his title, throughout he addresses himself often to white readers, hoping to change their hearts and acts: "America is as much our country, as it is yours.--Treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness." He intended his exhortation, though, mainly for black readers, hoping to arouse them to claim their human rights: "Oh! my coloured brethren, all over the world, when shall we arise from this death-like apathy?--And be men!!" Before his death in 1830, Walker worked to circulate his Appeal to blacks in both the North and the South. Copies found in the possession of slaves led to stronger laws against teaching slaves to read and distributing inflammatory writing in a number of southern states. |
| 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 Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829. Third and Last Edition, with Additional Notes, Corrections, &c. Boston: Revised and Published by David Walker, 1830. |
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