81 Joy Street, Beacon Hill, Boston
Walking down Beacon Hill’s cobblestone streets today, it is hard to imagine the inauspicious moment when David Walker (c. 1797–1830), an African-American abolitionist, slumped down in a doorway as his life slipped away.
Although the circumstances of his passing remain unclear and suspicions linger that slave owners poisoned him, Walker was probably the victim of tuberculosis. It likely claimed his life before other plots, including those inspired by the Georgia governor’s $10,000 bounty for his capture, played out.
The son of a free mother and an enslaved father authored An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829), a rousing tract calling for black unity and challenging white supremacy and the institution of slavery. Prefiguring many modern anti-racist themes, Walker recognized internalized racism and the need for revolutionary change to start within oppressed individuals themselves. Racist critics called Walker’s authorship of the erudite pamphlet into question, but the Appeal’s sense of outrage and dignity evoked an authenticity that could only have come from someone with Walker’s life experience. His ideas influenced a multiracial abolitionist movement and the work was widely circulated. It clandestinely reached Southern slave states via networks of preachers, seafarers, and book distributers, thus sparking the Georgia governor’s wrath.
Although Boston’s black population only numbered some 2,000-3,000 inhabitants, Walker was part of an organized community that tapped into national currents. This included his regular participation in the New York-based Freedom’s Journal (the first African American-owned and -operated newspaper) and in black Freemasonry circles. Walker’s and his fellow abolitionists’ efforts strengthened African American claims to U.S. citizenship and their resolve to reject the “colonization” of African-Americans to Africa that many powerful anti-slavery advocates (including a young Abraham Lincoln) saw as a “solution” to the problem of slavery.
A prominent resident of 81 Joy Street (following Walker) was the orator and abolitionist pioneer, Maria Stewart. As an African-American woman, she made history as an early speaker before multi-racial and mixed-gender meetings against slavery and for women’s rights.
Getting there:
Red Line to Charles/MGH Station. The private home is a 0.2 mile (four-minute) walk away.
To learn more:
- Walker, David and Peter P. Hinks. David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003.
- Hinks, Peter P. To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
- The David Walker Memorial Project — http://www.davidwalkermemorial.org/