David Walker (1796 - 1830)

Born 28 Sep 1796 in Wilmington, New Hanover, North Carolina, United States

Husband of Eliza (Butler) Dewson — married 23 Feb 1826 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States

Descendants

Died 6 Aug 1830 at age 33 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States

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Biography

David Walker is Notable.

David Walker was an outspoken African-American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. ^[1]

David Walker was born in 1796. He was born free because his mother was free. His father was enslaved, but passed away before his birth.

David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World^[2] was his most popular work, which he wrote and distributed. This was a heartfelt call to his "afflicted and slumbering brethren" to rise up and break free from the chains that bind their minds as well as their bodies.

David Walker was a leading figure in African-American civic organizations. The Massachusetts General Colored Association, the Prince Hall Freemasonry, and the Methodist church of the Rev. Samuel Snowden, a strong anti-slavery leader who had been a slave in the South, were among them. Walker also worked for the New York-based Freedom's Journal as a writer, key supporter, and Boston subscription agent.

Walker was one of the main leaders in the second wave of abolitionism. The first wave was dominated by Quakers who mainly focused ending the slave-trade and persuading fellow Quakers to free their slaves. The second wave of abolitionists called for the immediate end to slavery by federal law or by constitutional amendment. This phase is generally called Garrisonian abolitionism even though William Lloyd Garrison was a pacifist.

Manisha Sinha has called attention to the Black roots of this more radical robust period of abolitionism.^[3]. Walker's writings appeared in Freedom's Journal the first African American newspaper and the voice of Black protest.

Writers such as Walker rejected manumission societies that called for voluntary manumission predicting "the day will come, when all we have read about Spartacus and his servile band--of the horrors of the revolutionary scenes of St. Domingo, will be re[en]acted before our eyes".^[4]

Benjamin Lundy called Walker's Appeal a "bold, daring, inflammatory pamphlet". Garrison's review of Walker's pamphlet was the first abolitionist work he reviewed at length and respectfully.

He married Eliza Butler in Boston in 1826.^[5]

His son, Edward G. Walker, was an attorney and one of the first two Black men elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1866. He was given the middle name 'Garrison' after William Lloyd Garrison.

He died in 1830.

Sources

1. ↑ Wikipedia contributors. "David Walker (abolitionist)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 20 Dec. 2017. Web. 18 Jan. 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Walker_(abolitionist)
2. ↑ Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, To The Coloured Citizens of the World.
3. ↑ Manisha Sinha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2016), p. 195.
4. ↑ From Freedom's Journal quoted in Sinha, The Slave's Cause, p. 202
5. ↑ "Massachusetts Marriages, 1695-1910", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHK6-JWB : 24 January 2020), David Walker and Eliza Butler, 23 Feb 1826, Boston, Suffolk, Mass.

See also:

• Wikidata: Item Q1177046
• http://www.davidwalkermemorial.org/david-walker/david-walkers-life
• One of the most "dangerous" men in American history - Keenan Norris, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOOLAGXdGpI
• David Walker: Boston African-American National Historic Site
  National Park Service
  https://www.nps.gov/people/david-walker.htm (accessed 28 January 2024)
• Repressive Slave Laws In Reaction to the Appeal: David Walker, 1785-1830
  Documenting the American South
  https://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/bio.html (accessed 28 January 2024)