David Walker vs. John Day: Two Nineteenth-Century Free Black Men

American attitudes towards slavery underwent significant changes between the Revolution and Civil War, the period in which both David Walker and John Day lived. Both men were born in the 1790s, when liberal ideals of natural human freedom and equality were advocated and led many to question the legitimacy of human bondage. Some slave owners freed their slaves and accepted the presence of free blacks. Yet when both Walker and Day were approaching manhood, in the 1820s, they witnessed the growth of slavery as a response to the expansion of cotton cultivation. They also witnessed, and were greatly influenced by, the evangelical religious movements of the early nineteenth century that made slavery a moral issue. Sectional tensions, symbolized by the Missouri Compromise in 1821, revealed how politicized the conflict over slavery had become.

An increasingly militant antislavery movement was born during this era. Initially, antislavery advocates supported the American Colonization Society (ACS), formed in 1817, with the goal to end slavery gradually by sending consenting African Americans to Africa. But the ACS appeared to be more sympathetic to Southern slaveholders who wished to rid the country of blacks rather than be supportive of black freedom. By the late 1820s, distrust of the ACS was rising and a radical abolition movement centered in the urban North had emerged. In Boston, a vocal minority of free blacks promoted immediate emancipation.

Walker was a prominent member of this Boston free black community and by the time he published his Appeal in 1829, white as well as black abolitionists had mostly turned against the ACS. In 1830, William Lloyd Garrison started the American Anti-Slavery Society and published The Liberator, which endorsed immediate emancipation. In 1831, an enslaved Virginian, Nat Turner, led a violent slave rebellion. Both of these events polarized the views of slaveholders and abolitionists and from 1830–1860 the conflict between opposing views on slavery escalated.

While leaders on both sides of the aisles in Congress managed to subdue their differences on the topic until the late 1840s, the end of the Mexican War and the subsequent struggle to define the Western territories’ status regarding slavery triggered new hostilities that deepened in the 1850s. Southern governments adopted a siege mentality about the presence of African Americans in their midst. Liberties that free blacks had always enjoyed were rescinded. Some legislatures even pursued a course of enslaving those had lived their lives as free.

During this period, John Day wrote his editorial letter arguing that the future for racial equality, even for those who had already attained their freedom, was grim in America. In the next five years, free blacks in the South would see their options further limited, with the Dred Scott decision, which held that no person of African descent could ever be a citizen of the United States. By 1860, it had become clear that neither gradual or immediate emancipation would be possible in the United States without violence, and in 1861, the Civil War erupted.

Anchor Standard for Reading: Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6: Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

Activity 1

• Contextualizing David Walker’s Appeal
• Brief Biography of David Walker
• Brief Biography of John Day
• Video Excerpt from David Walker’s Appeal
• Activity 1. Assessment (student’s version)
• Activity 1. Assessment (teacher’s version)

Activity 2

• The American Colonization Society
• Brief Biography of David Walker
• Excerpt from David Walker’s Appeal
• John Day’s Letter
• Activity 2. Assessment (student’s version)
• Activity 2. Assessment (teacher’s version)
• Brief Biography of John Day
• Comparing Walker’s Appeal and Day’s Letter

Links

• CIA World Factbook. Liberia
• Library of Congress, American Memory. Robert K. Griffin, The Liberian Senate, watercolor.

Activity 1. Comparing and Contrasting the Biographies of David Walker and John Day

In this activity students become familiar with two free black Southerners who came of age in the early 19th-century upper South through the brief biographies. Although David Walker and John Day had much in common, they held very different views about the prospects for their race in America and took divergent paths in their lives.

• Refer to Contextualizing David Walker’s Appeal, which provides an introductory overview of the origins of the abolition movement and its influence on politics, society, and the emerging sectional crisis from 1820 through the 1850s.
• Explain that there were differing perspectives among free African Americans regarding how to address their second-class citizenship in America and what to do about the institution of slavery. Explain that David Walker, a freeborn black man from North Carolina, expressed one of the most outspoken viewpoints. Provide students with the Brief biography of David Walker.
• Show the short video, Excerpts from David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.
• Explain that John Day, a free black man and contemporary of Walker, also appealed to the colored citizens of America several decades later urging them to immigrate to Liberia, a colony on the West Coast of Africa. Distribute the Brief Biography of John Day.
• Referring to the biographies, discuss the lives of John Day and David Walker emphasizing their biographical similarities and also their differences.

Using Activity 1. Assessment (student version), ask students to compare and contrast the biographical points of Walker and Day’s lives. What are the unique and common points in their biographies? Refer to Activity 1. Assessment, teacher's version, for the answer key.

Activity 2. To Stay or To Leave America? Comparing the Views of David Walker, an Abolitionist to those of John Day, a Liberian Colonist

Inform students that they will now compare the views of Walker and Day regarding the future for African Americans in the United States.

• Provide students with the brief introductory overview of the origins of the abolition movement and its influence on politics, society, and the emerging sectional crisis from 1820 through the 1850s found in the handout Contextualizing David Walker’s Appeal. Have students answer the accompanying questions.
• Provide students with the handouts containing the primary sources: excerpt of David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and John Day’s Letter, as well as the handout containing information on the American Colonization Society. Have students also review the Brief Biography of David Walker and the Brief Biography of John Day from Activity 1. If you decided to show any of the images that reveal more about Liberia from the Liberia section of the CIA World Factbook or The Liberian Senate watercolor the Library of Congress’s American Memory project, show those along with this step.
• Divide students into pairs and distribute Comparing Walker’s Appeal and Day’s Letter.
• Option A): Ask each pair of students to work together to complete Comparing Walker’s Appeal and Day’s Letter.
• Option B): Work through Comparing Walker’s Appeal and Day’s Letter as a class as you walk students through each paragraph.

Assessment

Using the Venn diagram in Activity 2. Assessment (student version), have students list major views of David Walker and John Day as well as those they held in common. Wherever possible have students provide examples of “quotations” from the two men that support their views. Consult Activity 2. Assessment, teacher’s version, for the answer key.

Ask students to write a short, five-paragraph essay explaining which view (either that of Walker or of Day) they supported and why. Encourage them to be specific about the reasons within the historical context of race relations in nineteenth-century America.