David Walker

David Walker, who was born a free black in North Carolina in 1785, attained literacy as a child. Walker traveled extensively as a young man and eventually settled in Boston, where he became involved in that city's budding abolitionist movement. He worked for Freedom's Journal, the first black weekly newspaper published in the United States, and he frequently lectured against slavery at abolitionist rallies and on Boston's street corners. Walker's greatest contribution to the abolitionist movement was the publication of a pamphlet titled David Walker's Appeal in 1829. The Appeal, which was reprinted several times and widely distributed, was one of the first antislavery treatises authored by an African American to be published in the United States. This excerpt from that text illustrates the religious foundation of Walker's critique of American slavery. A year after his vitriolic text was published, Walker...