Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies

by Colin Kaepernick

Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829) David Walker In 1829, David Walker, the son of an enslaved person who was born free in North Carolina, moved to Boston. That same year, he published a pamphlet, Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which became widely read and infuriated Southern enslavers. The state of Georgia offered a reward of $10,000 to anyone who would deliver Walker alive, and $1,000 to anyone who would kill him. Here is an excerpt. I ask the candid and unprejudiced of the whole world, to search the pages of historians diligently, and see if [anyone] ever treated a set of human beings, as the white Christians of America do us, the blacks. . . . I also ask the attention of the world of mankind to the declaration of these very American people, of the United States. A declaration made July 4, 1776. It says, . . . We hold these truths to be self evident—that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that when ever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it. . . . See your Declaration Americans!!! Do you understand your own language? Hear your language, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776— We hold these tru...