David Walker's Contribution To The Anti-Slavery Movement

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The revolutionary actions of David Walker gave hope to the black slaves of America and changed the tone of the anti-slavery movement. Although Walker was a free man, he was not freed from witnessing firsthand the brutality, degradation, and inhumanity of the institution of slavery. In order to escape the hatred of blacks in the South, he travelled around the world, settled in Boston, and opened a used-clothing store. Discrimination was still prevalent in Massachusetts, but led him to become the city’s leading spokesman against slavery. He publicly called for black unity against the abuses and inequities of the institution of slavery through his activeness in the Underground Railroad, helping of fugitive slaves with clothing, articles in the …show more content…
His Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World was published in 1829 and demanded for the immediate, universal, and unconditional abolition of slavery and colonization. With the help of black sailors, Walker was able to circulate his radical pamphlet around the nation by hiding them in the linings of clothes. The pamphlet urged slaves to use armed resistance against their owners, bringing more fear of slave insurrections to the slaveholding South and failing to win the support of other abolitionists. In the text, he denounced Americans as moral hypocrites by challenging white Americans to “Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! ! ! ! ! !” Moreover, Walker drew from the Bible to conclude that God would punish the nation for the sin of slavery.1 He spoke out against the movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa, arguing, “America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our
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