Author Garnet Henry Highland

al, a New York based weekly abolitionist newspaper. Walker provided an appeal to secular theological basis for insurrection. His work was banned in several states and were instrumental in initiating slave escapes and insurrections. In Boston, Walker made acquaintances with black rights activists and began to write and speak against slavery and racism. He wrote many articles for Freedom's Journal, an early African American newspaper based out of New York City [3], and, in 1828, he joined the Massachusetts General Colored Association [4], which had been organized in 1826. By February 1826, David Walker married Eliza Butler, member of a prominent African American Boston family. From 1827 to 1829 David and Eliza were tenants at 81 Joy Street, on the northside of Beacon Hill. He was a member of Prince Hall Freemasonry, Rev. Snowden’s Methodist Church, and the Massachusetts General Colored Association, the first abolitionist organization in Boston, committed to promoting the interests and rights of African Americans throughout the United States. In 1829, they moved to a home at the base of Bunker Hill in Charlestown, MA. Edwin Garrison Walker, ther surviving son was born in the Fall of 1830, a few months after his father David Walker died. In the early 1830s, Alexander Dewson arrived from Hawaii to Boston, MA. Shortly after he arrived he met and married Eliza Butler Walker, widow of David Walker. Alexander and Eliza Dewson with her son Edwin Garrison Walker, lived in Charlestown, MA, next door to Thomas Dalton and Lucy Lew. Perhaps it is through Lucy Dalton’s family connections in Lowell, MA that Edwin Garrison Walker met and married Hannah Jane Van Vronker. Hannah born in Lowell was one of Henry and Lucinda Webster Van Vronker’s three daughters. Edwin and Hannah Walker had two children. Edwin Garrison Walker became one of the first African Americans to become a lawyer in Massachusetts. In 1866 he was the first African American to be elected to the Massachusetts legislature. In 1883, Republican Governor Benjamin Franklin Butler nominated Democrat Edwin G. Walker as the first African American to be justice of the Charlestown, MA District Court. The nomination was rejected by the Republican-dominated Governor's Council, which must approve the governor's judicial appointments. Governnor Butler second African American nomination, George Lewis Ruffin, was approved. Edwin died January 12, 1901, Boston, MA. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed David Walker on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.[1] In September 1829, a Boston printer published a seventy-six page pamphlet entitled 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. David Walker, through the MGCA, had secured the assistance of Walker Lewis, a prominent African American abolitionist and Freemason. Lewis had the same printer who had published the Articles of the Grand African Lodge #1 to also publish the controversial Appeal. In the Appeal, Walker argued that African Americans suffered more than any other people in the history of the world, and identified four causes for their "wretchedness:" slavery, a submissive and cringing attitude towards whites (even amongst free blacks), indifference by Christian ministers, and false help by groups such as the American Colonization Society, which promised freedom from slavery only on the condition that freed blacks would be forced to leave America for colonies in West Africa (Mayer 83). The pamphlet called for immediate, universal, and unconditional emancipation — an uncommon position, even amongst antislavery activists, in the 1820s — and in particular condemned colonization plans, arguing: Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country. 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 blood? Walker went even further, openly praising slaves who used violence in self-defense against their masters and overseers, and suggested that slaves kill their masters in order to gain freedom: The whites have had us under them for more than three centuries, murdering, and treating us like brutes; and, as Mr. Jefferson wisely said, they have never found us out — they do not know, indeed, that there is an unconquerable disposition in the breasts of the blacks, which, when it is fully awakened and put in motion, will be subdued, only with the destruction of the animal existence. Get the blacks started, and if you do not have a gang of tigers and lions to deal with, I am a deceiver of the blacks and of the whites. ... [I]f you commence, make sure work — do not trifle, for they will not trifle with you — they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us in order to subject us to that wretched condition — therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. Now, I ask you, had you not rather be killed than to be a slave to a tyrant, who takes the life of your mother, wife, and dear little children? Look upon your mother, wife and children, and answer God Almighty; and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty; .... Walker handed out his work through black civic associations in Northern cities, and tried many different schemes to get the pamphlet to slaves and free blacks in the South. By 1830, outraged white authorities in the Southern states had begun a campaign to suppress it. In New Orleans, four black men were arrested for owning it; vigilantes attacked free blacks in Walker's home in Wilmington. In Savannah, Georgia, the white authorities seized dozens of copies smuggled in by black sailors (who had bought jackets from Walker in Boston, who in turn had stitched copies into the lining); in response they banned black seamen from coming ashore at the city's port (Mayer 83, 84). The mayor of Savannah demanded that the mayor of Boston arrest Walker and outlaw the pamphlet: it was already illegal in Georgia to teach a slave to read (Boston's mayor refused the order). Plantation owners offered a $3,000 bounty for Walker's death, and a $10,000 reward for anyone who brought him to the South alive [5]. In June 1830, not long after publishing the third edition of his Appeal, David Walker was found dead on the doorstep of his home. Official city records report his cause of death as tuberculosis [6]. Many, however, believe he was murdered, but there is not enough evidence to confirm this position [7].