1

David Walker’s Early Years: I could only start where all stories start, at the beginning, with David Walker’s free-born entry into the world in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1795 or 1796.  No amount of research will reveal where or from whom Walker...

2

Activism and Altruism in Boston In Boston, Walker went to work, setting up a used clothing store on Brattle Street, a major thoroughfare near Boston’s wharves. He married Eliza Butler, a daughter of well-to-do black Bostonians. Walker counted as his bes...

3

The Appeal: The Appeal speaks to us from under the shadow of a slave society, but it is no slave narrative. It is the liberation manifesto of a free man amidst a world enchained. David Walker attacked avarice itself, finding this urge at the root of ...

4

The Plan: Walker, instead of depending on the publishing industry apparatus, used his own money earned in business for the printing, binding and self-publishing of the Appeal. The pamphlet made the Boston abolition circuit, as would be expected. But whe...

5

The Impact: By late autumn of 1829 the dangerous pamphlet was found circulating among blacks in Savannah, Georgia. In North Carolina, the state’s Governor was informed by a magistrate of a seditious document “treating in most inflammatory terms of the c...

6

The End and the Legacy: On June 28th, 1830, David Walker died suddenly. Walker’s abolitionist associates believed he’d been poisoned by pro-slavery enemies. The opinion of most historians is that Walker fell victim to the cholera epidemic that swept thr...