An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World

David Walker, a free black man, published a militant antislavery pamphlet, David Walker's Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But Particularly and Very Expressly to Those of the United States, which became known as An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World and was distributed widely throughout the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Walker may have been the first black militant to write against the institution of slavery. Definitely no one prior to him had ever distributed a pamphlet as incendiary as An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

It is believed that Walker was born in North Carolina in 1785 of a free mother. At an early age, he left North Carolina and settled in Boston, where he became a barber. The discussions Walker had with clients in his barber's chair fueled his opposition to the system of enslavement that had trapped Africans in perpetual bondage. Walker became increasingly angered by the system that defined Africans as inferior to whites—and especially by the hypocrisy of white Christian Americans, whom he said were the most brutal people on the face of the earth.

In the 1820s, most African people were not as convinced as David Walker was that the only way Africans would be free was for Africans to free themselves. This belief, which was the beginning of the school of thought that has been called nationalism, influenced the thought of the most electrifying intellectuals and political activists in African American history. Walker predated Henry Highland Garnet, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, Martin Delany, Alexander Crummell, and Marcus Garvey.

Walker was fed up with the fact that the abject conditions of the African community did not cause more revolution. He was familiar with Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), as well as with the revolution in Haiti, Gabriel Prosser's 1800 conspiracy, and Denmark Vesey's 1822 attempted revolt. Walker's education and passion enabled him to produce the most challenging document written by an African in America until that time. An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World consisted of a direct call to the enslaved Africans to rise up against their masters in a violent revolt.

In addition to being a barber, Walker had a small tailoring business in Boston. His shop was very likely a gathering place for those who engaged in antislavery activities, as his pamphlet was distributed as far as the Carolinas by black Bostonian seamen. Walker was a member of the Massachusetts General Colored Association that was organized in 1826 to petition the Massachusetts government in the interests of African Americans. In addition, Walker was a representative for Freedom's Journal from 1827 to 1829.

Walker's speech to the 1828 convention of the Massachusetts General Colored Association was a preview of his pamphlet. In the speech, he admonished the Africans in his audience to work toward self-determination and self-help. It was clear that [Page 89]Walker did not believe that dependency on whites was the solution to the problems of Africans in Massachusetts. It would be seen later in An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World that what he believed about Africans in Massachusetts he also believed about the masses of Africans everywhere. Walker stressed that only Africans' active efforts in their own interest would change their situation.

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