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David Walker Declaration Of Independence Summary

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David Walker was a free black man who became infuriated by how the very country he lived in used his race as slaves. Walker voiced his outrage in his publication Appeal to the coloured Citizens of the World, where he criticized the major aspects of the United States that affected his people including religion, political thought, and the social status of blacks. Consequently, Walker received his own criticism by people who thought his document was radical and his ideas subverted the foundation that the United States was founded on. Walker’s ideas were radical during the time he released the document, but the ideas he brought out in his text seem to be a logical extension of the principals of the American Revolution in that the very document …show more content…

Some of these issues were discussed in the document and included issues such as taxation without representation, erecting new offices, and depriving them of trial by jury. Walker very much felt the same way when describing multiple real life instances where this oppression is apparent. One instance was when Walker heard a white man in North Carolina say that of any man would teach a black person to “spell, read, or write,” he would persecute him. Another instance was when the legislature of Georgia passed a law where “all free or slave persons of colour,” were prohibited from learning to read or write. There are even laws from states such as Virginia and North Carolina where they prohibit a man of color from obtaining and holding any office in the government of the United States. Walker believes that his people are facing oppression in very much the same way that Americans believed they were being disadvantaged by Great Britain’s rule; he even goes to question whether their suffering was” one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical” as what his people have suffered under the United States government. This mistreatment of black people is evident social, religious, and political measures and affects them whether they are free or confined to slavery; the government of the country that Walker lives in, as he sees, was to blame for these

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