David Walker’s Radical Appeal (episode 117)

David Walker was one of America’s first radical abolitionists, a free African American man who moved to Boston in 1824 to escape the danger and humiliations of life in the slave states. He became a prominent member of Black society in Boston before writing and distributing An Appeal to the Colored People of the World. This radical work called for the immediate abolition of slavery, and even advocated violence against whites to bring about emancipation. At the time, few white leaders were talking openly about ending slavery, and those who were favored gradual emancipation. Frederick Douglass would later say that the book “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement,” and it shook the slaveowning society of the white South to the core.

David Walker’s Radical Appeal

• The full text of David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America
• The first edition of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator.  His notes on the Appeal are on page 3.
• More comments from Garrison in the next edition.
• Virginia Governor Giles’ letter to Boston Mayor Harrison Gray Otis about the Appeal.
• Further correspondence between Otis and Southern leaders.
• Hasan Crockett’s article on the Southern reaction to the Appeal.
• Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker’s One Continual Cry on the Appeal and its reception
• An ad for Walker’s used clothing business.
• Notes from the National Park Service about where Walker’s homes were.
• Record of Walker’s death.
• An example of Walker’s instructions to an agent in the South (page 4).
• 1920 NAACP anti-lynching pamphlet using Walker’s style and universal appeal.
• 1947 NAACP tract by WEB DuBois using Walker’s style to take the case for civil rights to the UN.
• Taiyo Davis’ masters thesis on Walker’s appeal.
• Trial records and analysis of a sailor convicted of carrying the Appeal to South Carolina.
• 1832 map of Boston.  Look for Belknap and Bridge Streets (where Walker resided) in the top center.  Belknap is on the border between pink and yellow, and Bridge is near the border between blue and pink.
• Header image (of WEB DuBois’ first edition of the Appeal) by Leon Jackson
• To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance, by Peter Hinks

Boston Book Club

This week, we’re featuring a podcast episode instead of a book.  You probably already listen to the Ben Franklin’s World podcast about early American history, hosted by Dr. Liz Covart.  Our Boston Book Club pick is Ben Franklin’s World episode 83, which first aired in May of 2016.  In this episode, Liz interviewed Jared Hardesty, associate professor of history at Western Washington University, about his book Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in 18th Century Boston.  They discussed why colonial Bostonians turned to slavery, how the institution of slavery was different in our city than in other parts of the Atlantic empire, and what life was like for the men and women who were enslaved here.  

We used Hardesty’s book as a source when we wrote our own episode about slavery in early Boston, and we’re sure you’ll find his conversation with Liz to be illuminating.  

Upcoming Event

Our featured event this week is a documentary film screening at the Boston Athenaeum on February 7th.  Sticking with a theme, in a way, the documentary is called Fair Game: Surviving a 1960 Georgia Lynching.  Filmmaker Clennon King is a resident of Roxbury and a longtime veteran of television journalism. The Athenaeum website proudly notes that he conducted some of the research for the film in their local history archives for New Jersey and Georgia on the fifth floor.  Here’s how they describe the event:

Join documentary filmmaker Clennon King for a screening of Fair Game: Surviving a 1960 Georgia Lynching followed by a discussion of the film. While John F. Kennedy was making a run for the White House in May 1960, James Fair, Jr.—a 24-year-old black Navy veteran from Bayonne, New Jersey—made a fateful pitstop in rural Early County, Georgia, on a roadtrip to Florida. In just three days, he had been arrested, tried, and convicted for the rape and murder of an 8-year old girl and had been sentenced to Georgia’s electric chair. Fair Game chronicles the 26-month campaign that Alice Fair spearheaded to rescue her son from a county notorious for lynching.

The documentary is dedicated to the 24 known black men who were lynched in Early County, Georgia, between 1877 and 1950. It is a tribute to King’s late father, Attorney C.B. King of Albany, Georgia, who fought to prevent Fair from becoming the 25th victim. Featuring Clinton presidential advisor Vernon Jordan, who was a law clerk on the case, and George H. W. Bush cabinet secretary Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, who hails from the Georgia town where the case unfolded, the 65-minute film offers a vivid portrait of Jim Crow justice of 60 years ago, serves as a reminder of the inequities that still exist within America’s criminal justice system, and provides a thoughtful point of departure to discuss the imperative for America to make a change.

There will be a cocktail reception at 5:30pm with a cash bar, and the movie screening begins at 6pm.  Registration is required, and tickets for nonmembers are $20.