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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2020
In September 1829, David Walker published the first edition of his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a pamphlet that became a stirring call to arms for both slaves and free blacks alike. Walker's audience was blacks in the United States and his aim was to foster black unity and education, combat racial stereotypes, and make the case for the abolition of slavery. Like most abolitionists, black and white, Walker hoped that the end of slavery could come about through peaceful means. Unlike most other abolitionists, however, Walker openly called for slaves to violently resist their bondage, stating, “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.” While advocates of pacifism and nonviolence often based their positions on their Christian faith, it was Walker's Christianity which lent support to his calls for revolutionary violence. “Does the Lord condescend to hear their cries and see their tears in consequence of oppression?” he asked. “Will he let the oppressors rest comfortably and happy always? Will he not cause the very children of the oppressors to rise up against them, and oftimes to put them to death?” Walker firmly believed that God would have his vengeance on blacks’ oppressors and that the vehicles for that vengeance might very well be the slaves themselves.
1 Walker, David, David Walker's Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, ed. Wilentz, Sean (New York, 1995; first published 1829), 26Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., 3.
3 Ibid., 21.
4 Hinks, Peter P., To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance (University Park, 1997), 26–38Google Scholar. There is some controversy among historians regarding whether or not the Vesey conspiracy was a real one. For the argument that the conspiracy was not a real one see Johnson, Michael P., “Denmark Vesey and His Co-conspirators,” William and Mary Quarterly 58 (2001), 915–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. James O'Neil Spady has in turn questioned Johnson's argument, showing, for example, that the first two witnesses for the state came forward of their own accord. See his “Power and Confession: On the Credibility of the Earliest Reports of the Denmark Vesey Slave Conspiracy,” William and Mary Quarterly 68 (2011), 287–304.
5 Sinha, Manisha, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven and London, 2016)Google Scholar; Rael, Patrick, Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777–1865 (Athens and London, 2015)Google Scholar.
6 For African Americans and Haiti before the Civil War see the articles by Fanning, Sara, Alexander, Leslie, and Bacon, Jacqueline in Jackson, Maurice and Bacon, Jacqueline, eds., African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents (New York, 2010)Google Scholar; and White, Ashli, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore, 2010)Google Scholar. For Haiti's connection to the US and other nations in the Atlantic world after independence see Gaffield, Julia, Haitian Connections in the Atlantic World: Recognition after Revolution (Chapel Hill and London, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 Frederick Douglass's Paper, 8 Aug. 1856, quoted in Jackson, Force and Freedom, 1.
8 Jackson, Force and Freedom, 2.
9 Ibid., 5.
10 Ibid., 15–16.
11 “Henry Highland Garnet Urges Slaves to Resist, 1843,” in Holt, Thomas C. and Brown, Elsa Barkley, eds., Major Problems in African American History, vol. 1, From Slavery to Freedom, 1619–1877 (Boston, 1999), 295–7, at 297Google Scholar, original emphasis.
12 Jackson, Force and Freedom, 37.
13 Ibid., 49.
14 Ibid., 108.
15 Ibid., 116.
16 Byrd, The Black Republic, 4.
17 Ibid., 14.
18 Ibid., 22, 32.
19 Ibid., 70.
20 Gaines, Kevin K., Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill and London, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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22 Ibid., 126–36.
23 Ibid., 167.
24 William Monroe Trotter, “Honors Again at Yale,” Guardian, 9 May 1903, quoted in Byrd, The Black Republic, 175–6.
25 While the Du Bois–Washington rivalry has received an inordinate amount of attention from scholars of black intellectual history, William Monroe Trotter actually opposed Washington far more than Du Bois did. See Behnken, Brian D., Smithers, Gregory D., and Wendt, Simon, eds. Black Intellectual Thought in Modern America: A Historical Perspective (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2017), 6Google Scholar.
26 Byrd, The Black Republic, 177.
27 Ibid., 197.
28 Ibid., 198, 227–8. Winston James attributes the rise of pan-Africanism and internationalism in part to Caribbean migration to the US in the early twentieth century. See his Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America (London, 1998), 50–53, 71, 77. For more on black internationalism see Blain, Keisha N. and Gill, Tiffany M., eds., To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (Urbana, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 La TaSha Levy, “Beyond the ‘Great Men’ Canon of Black Intellectual History,” Black Perspectives, 11 June 2019, at www.aaihs.org/beyond-the-great-men-canon-of-black-intellectual-history.
30 See especially Blain, Keisha N., Cameron, Christopher, and Farmer, Ashley D., eds., New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Evanston, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Christopher Cameron, “Black Intellectual History and the Long Struggle for Freedom,” Black Perspectives, 10 June 2019, at www.aaihs.org/black-intellectual-history-and-the-long-struggle-for-freedom. For the methodological ties between intellectual and cultural history see Haberski, Raymond Jr and Hartman, Andrew, “Introduction,” in Haberski and Hartman, eds., American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times (Ithaca and London, 2018), 2–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32 Bay, Mia, Griffin, Farah J., Jones, Martha S., and Savage, Barbara D., “Introduction,” in Bay, Griffin, Jones, and Savage, eds., Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill, 2015), 1–16, at 2Google Scholar.
