An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States

Nothing frightened white America, especially slave owners, more than
Black violent resistance to ending slavery. Enslaved Africans learning to
read and write was another source of white fear. David Walker’s Appeal,
published in 1828, was an account written by a secondhand-clothing seller,
and was, for white America, a terrifying piece of literature. It encouraged
enslaved Africans to rise up against their masters and overthrow them. It
also offered a fierce critique of American racism. Walker’s writings had an
impact on the North and the South. Southern legislators passed strict
literacy laws further prohibiting enslaved Africans from reading. Even
northern white liberals like William Lloyd Garrison, who had been praised
for his belief in the abolition of slavery, was taken aback by Walker’s
Appeal. 45 In his attempt to challenge white America to come to terms with
its racism and for enslaved Africans to overthrow slavery, Walker also
noted that Native people would never suffer under white domination. He
appealed to a common trope of nineteenth-century America: the assumption
of Indigenous peoples’ unbridled violence, which is an offshoot of the
European-constructed notion of noble savagery. In his appeal to Black
folks, he rhetorically asks, “Why is it, that those few weak, good-fornothing
whites, are able to keep so many able men, one of whom, can put to
flight a dozen whites, in wretchedness and misery? . . . Would they fool
with any other peoples as they do with us?” He answers his own question:
“No, they know too well, that they would get themselves ruined.” He then
shifts to commenting on how they would not do the same to Native people:
“Why do they not get the Aborigines of this country to be slaves to them
and their children, to work their farms and dig their mines? They know well
that the Aborigines of this country (or Indians) would tear them from the
earth. The Indians would not rest day or night, they would be up all times of
night, cutting their cruel throats.” 46
Walker’s Appeal is a rhetorical text designed to critique white America
and to get Black people to think and to end enslavement on their own terms.
It is not clear how Walker wanted this to happen, but he suggested it. In
using this rhetorical strategy, he underestimated the cruelty of white
America toward US Indigenous populations. In his fervor to end the
enslavement of his people, he did not consider other forms of oppression.
Perhaps Walker, a Boston resident, did not know of the Native people living
in that area, which would not be surprising. 47 However, he held firm beliefs
that Native people would not sit idly by, so he must have known something