Walker’s Impact Walker was a leader in the African American community in Boston, Massachusetts. He is best known for writing and distributing a pamphlet called David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.

Synopsis. David Walker was born in 1796 or 1797 (some sources say 1785) in Wilmington, North Carolina. Having witnessed slavery and racism, he wrote an 1829 pamphlet, Appeal…to the Colored Citizens of the World…, that urged African Americans to fight for freedom and equality.

The goal of the Appeal was to instill pride in its black readers and give hope that change would someday come. It spoke out against colonization, a popular movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa. America, Walker believed, belonged to all who helped build it.

In Boston, Walker began to associate with prominent black activists. He joined institutions that denounced slavery in the South and discrimination in the North. He became involved with the nation’s first African American newspaper, the Freedom’s Journal out of New York City, to which he frequently contributed.

Walker addressed his pamphlet to ” the coloured citizens of the world” and not just the United States because he wanted to tell the American that the African shouldn’t be a slave very expressive. He stated that the blacks were ought to be slaves to the American and their children forever.

The publication of Walker’s Appeal soon transformed the thinking and actions of blacks and whites alike. The Appeal increased southern white paranoia about the potential for slave uprising, and was an impetus for increased restrictions on both free and enslaved blacks.

(1829), urging enslaved people to fight for their freedom, was one of the most radical documents of the antislavery movement.

Frederick Douglass

Five Abolitionists

• Frederick Douglass, Courtesy: New-York Historical Society.
• William Lloyd Garrison, Courtesy: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
• Angelina Grimké, Courtesy: Massachusetts Historical Society.
• John Brown, Courtesy: Library of Congress.
• Harriet Beecher Stowe, Courtesy: Harvard University Fine Arts Library.

Though he was president from 1825-1829, John Quincy Adams became known for his passionate anti-slavery advocacy in Congress.

1. Benjamin Lay. Even though he stood just 4 foot, 7 inches tall and had a hunched back, Benjamin Lay loomed large among 18th century abolitionists. The Quaker dwarf first developed a hatred for slavery in the 1720s while working as a merchant alongside sugar plantations in Barbados.

abolitionist

In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin, a slaveholder for most of his life, was a leading member of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the first recognized organization for abolitionists in the United States.

The United States was not the only or even first country to end slavery. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as slaves… shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free,” effective January 1, 1863.