DAVID WALKER’S APPEAL

DAVID WALKER AND HIS APPEAL

(Video 1. Voices for

Freedom Series)

Teaching Guide

Background on David Walker and His Appeal

The video introduces students to a very important document in American history, David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and in Particular and Most Expressly in the United States of America. It opens with an introduction by cultural historian, Dr. Juanita M. Holland, which is followed by an actor’s oral rendition of excerpts from the Appeal.

The Appeal was a bold call to all Americans of African descent to join together to end slavery and racial oppression in America. Walker wrote the Appeal knowing that it would be communicated primarily through the spoken word. The actor in the video presents sample portions of the Appeal as if he were presenting a speech or sermon.

Walker was born free in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1796 or 1797. By the late 1820s, he was the proprietor of a clothing store in Boston and was very active there in free black political and religious organizations. He wanted to motivate blacks to band together in order to destroy the institution of slavery and racial oppression in America.

With these goals in mind, Walker wrote the Appeal and distributed it throughout the North and South. Immediately after its publication laws were passed throughout the South outlawing “seditious publications” that encouraged slave resistance and insurrection. One Boston newspaper described it as “a star in the east, guiding them (enslaved blacks) to freedom and emancipation.” Most whites, on the other had, were terrified that the Appeal would encourage slave revolt. The Nat Turner rebellion occurred in 1831 just two years after its publication.

Walker was found dead on his doorstep on August 30, 1830. Originally, it was thought that he had been assassinated. However, city records reveal that he died of a tuberculosis epidemic.

Suggested Uses and Strategies for the Video

The video is an excellent resource for teaching about slavery, especially about the various abolitionist and anti-slavery sentiments in the 19^th century.

Have students read other abolitionist and anti-slavery writings and debate or compare/contrast in writing those views with views expressed in Walker’s Appeal.
Ask students to write down a phrase or sentence in the Appeal that grabs their attention as they view the video. When the video is over, ask each student to read aloud - with dramatic feeling – the words they wrote. This “text rendering” exercise sets the stage for analyzing the text and the feelings conveyed/evoked.

Have students go on-line to read the Appeal and learn more about it. See: Websites on back.

National Standards of American History

This video teaches history standards that require an understanding of:

the abolitionist movement
the institution of slavery
the various ways in which African Americans resisted slavery
the social and political importance of the free black community in the 19^th century
major African American publications of the 19^th century

This video teaches language arts standards that require an understanding of:

Historical documents

Books about Walker

Walker, David. Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Ed. Peter Hinks. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2000.

Hinks, Peter. To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Web Sites on Walker

http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/heath/syllabuild/iguide/walkerd.html
Suggestions on Teaching David Walker's Appeal

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931.html
Africans In America Resource Bank, David Walker's Appeal

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/abolitn/walkerhp.html
David Walker's Appeal

http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/menu.html
UNC-CH Documenting the American South, David Walker Page, with text and links

http://pages.prodigy.net/gmoses/moweb/dwalker.htm
Critical Essay on David Walker's Appeal and English grammar