author
David Walker
d. 1830
A fierce early voice against slavery, he wrote one of the most uncompromising antislavery pamphlets of the era. His 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World challenged white America and urged Black readers to claim freedom and dignity without delay.
1 Audiobook
Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
by David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet
About the author
Born free in Wilmington, North Carolina, to a free Black mother and an enslaved father, David Walker later settled in Boston, where he worked as a clothing dealer and became active in Black civic and antislavery circles. He was also connected with Freedom's Journal, the first African American newspaper in the United States.
Walker is best remembered for Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, first published in 1829. The pamphlet was shocking to many readers at the time because it condemned slavery in direct, urgent language and rejected gradualism, helping make Walker one of the most radical and influential Black abolitionist writers of the early 19th century.
He died in Boston in 1830, only a short time after his Appeal began circulating widely. Though his life was brief, his writing had a lasting effect on antislavery thought and on later generations of Black political activism.