1829

Boston clothing dealer David Walker published 'Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,' calling enslaved people to armed resistance and castigating Thomas Jefferson. Distributed by Black sailors in Southern ports, it caused panic: Georgia offered $10,000 for Walker dead, $1,000 alive. Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana passed laws criminalizing circulation of incendiary literature in direct response. Walker died in 1830, cause disputed.

George Moses Horton, an enslaved man in North Carolina, published The Hope of Liberty (later reprinted as Poems of a Slave), becoming the first Black American in the South to publish a book of poetry. He composed verses orally while hiring himself out and dictated them to others, hoping proceeds would purchase his freedom.

David Walker, a free Black man in Boston, self-published 'Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,' one of the most radical anti-slavery documents in American history. The pamphlet demanded immediate emancipation and called on enslaved people to rise up, terrifying slaveholders across the South who placed bounties on Walker's head. It profoundly influenced the abolitionist movement and Black nationalist thought for generations.

John Russwurm, co-founder of Freedom's Journal and one of the first Black college graduates in America, emigrated to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of education and later governor of the Maryland Colony in Liberia. Though his departure was controversial in Black abolitionist circles, his career represented a significant exercise of Black governance and institution-building.

John Russwurm, co-founder of Freedom's Journal and one of the first Black college graduates in America, emigrated to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of education and later governor of the Maryland Colony in Liberia. His career represented a significant exercise of Black governance and institution-building in the nineteenth century.