David Walker

A visionary leader and activist, David Walker (c.1797-1830) put his life on the line by publicly demanding the immediate end of slavery in the United States. He is best known for his searing anti-slavery and resistance pamphlet, Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which was secretly distributed via friends, allies, and underground networks throughout the South. 

Walker made his living as a clothes dealer, and he even sewed copies of the Appeal into the lining of coats he sold to sailors headed for southern ports. Authorities in the slave states did everything they could to suppress the Appeal, fearing it would spark further revolts among the enslaved at a time of rising resistance. 

Born a freeman in North Carolina, Walker settled in Boston in 1825. Active with many civic organizations – he was a founder of the Massachusetts General Colored Association – Walker also served as a sales agent and writer for the influential New York-based Freedom's Journal, the first newspaper owned and operated by African Americans in the U.S. 

David Walker is featured on Abolition Acre! A Black Freedom Trail, a self-guided trail of abolitionist sites in downtown Boston created by BHS. Through our David Walker Memorial Project, we aim to build public support for the construction of a public memorial to Walker in Boston. 

You can read David Walker's Appeal here.   

Photograph of Walker's Appeal above: Courtesy of the National Endowment for the Humanities.