Walker, David

Walker, David

(born Sept. 28, 1785, Wilmington, N.C., U.S.—died June 28, 1830, Boston, Mass.) U.S. abolitionist. The son of a slave father and a free mother, he was educated and traveled widely before settling in Boston, where he became an abolitionist lecturer and wrote for the antislavery Freedom's Journal. In his pamphlet Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), he called for armed revolt. He smuggled the pamphlet into the South by hiding copies in clothing that he sold to sailors from his used-clothes store in Boston. Warned to flee for his life to Canada, he refused, and his body was found soon after; many believed he was poisoned. His son, Edwin G. Walker, was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1866.

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Walker, David (1785–1830) African-American leader; born in Wilmington, N.C. Born a free man in the South, he traveled widely and became greatly concerned over the conditions of his fellow blacks. Moving to Boston (1827), he established a second-hand clothing business. In 1829 he issued Walker's Appeal, an antislavery pamphlet that urged slaves to rise up against their oppressors, and slaveholders to repent. Appearing in the South (1830), the Appeal raised fear among slaveholders, and a price was set on his head throughout the region. After issuing an even more militant appeal to end slavery, he died of natural causes.