HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

This week, we’re revisiting a classic episode about the radical Black abolitionist David Walker. Walker was a transplant to Boston, moving here after possibly being involved in Denmark Vesey’s planned 1822 slave insurrection in South Carolina. At a time when very few whites spoke of ending slavery, Frederick Douglass said Walker’s book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement.” He demanded an immediate end to slavery, and he endorsed violence against white slave owners to bring about abolition. After the book helped inspire Nat Turner’s 1830 uprising in Virginia, southern slave states banned his book and offered a reward for anyone who would kill or kidnap him. With a price on his head, many people believed that David Walker’s mysterious death in a Beacon Hill doorway just a year after his landmark book was published was an assassination.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/190/

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• The full text of David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America
• The first edition of William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator. His notes on the Appeal are on page 3.
• More comments from Garrison in the next edition.
• Virginia Governor Giles’ letter to Boston Mayor Harrison Gray Otis about the Appeal.
• Further correspondence between Otis and Southern leaders.
• Hasan Crockett’s article on the Southern reaction to the Appeal.
• Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker’s One Continual Cry on the Appeal and its reception
• An ad for Walker’s used clothing business.
• Notes from the National Park Service about where Walker’s homes were.
• Record of Walker’s death.
• An example of Walker’s instructions to an agent in the South (page 4).
• 1920 NAACP anti-lynching pamphlet using Walker’s style and universal appeal.
• 1947 NAACP tract by WEB DuBois using Walker’s style to take the case for civil rights to the UN.
• Taiyo Davis’ masters thesis on Walker’s appeal.
• Trial records and analysis of a sailor convicted of carrying the Appeal to South Carolina.
• 1832 map of Boston. Look for Belknap and Bridge Streets (where Walker resided) in the top center. Belknap is on the border between pink and yellow, and Bridge is near the border between blue and pink.
• Header image (of WEB DuBois’ first edition of the Appeal) by Leon Jackson
• To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance, by Peter Hinks

We’ve used Richard Vacca’s blog about jazz and jazz clubs in Boston for background on past episodes, especially our shows about the Cocoanut Grove fire and the murder of mobster Charles “Boston Charlie” Solomon. Published in 2012, Vacca’s The Boston Jazz Chronicles: Faces, Places, and Nightlife 1937–1962 captures a moment in time when jazz emerged from the world of “race music” and found widespread appeal with white audiences. It introduces the reader to the composers, musicians, and nightclubs that provided the soundtrack for Boston’s wartime boom and postwar bust. The publisher says,

The Boston Jazz Chronicles is the first book to document the the birth and growth of the Boston jazz scene at mid-century. It describes the formative big-band and wartime years, and follows the scene’s dramatic postwar growth, when Boston became a destination for young veterans and big band musicians seeking new direction… The Boston Jazz Chronicles is also a story of places now lost to time. The jazz haunts are gone, replaced by offices, apartments, and parking lots. But through these years there was music, at the Savoy Café, the Ken Club, the Hi-Hat, the Stable, and other rooms both rowdy and refined.

Though the book rarely talks explicitly about race, it is by default a book about the intersection of black and white worlds in an era when Boston, like much of the north, was still strongly segregated. It’s illustrated with period photos, advertisements, and maps, and it even includes a discography for readers who want to immerse themselves in Boston’s mid-century jazz sound.

First up is a virtual tour of the Jackson Homestead at 2pm on June 26, with past podcast guest Clara Silverstein. The Jackson Homestead is a Federal style home owned by Historic Newton, and the event is a collaboration between Historic Newton and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Originally built in 1809 on a farm the Jackson family had owned since 1646, the house remained in the family until 1949, leaving it well preserved when the city started operating it as a museum. When it’s open to actually visit in person, Historic Newton advertises the Jackson Homestead and Museum as “a participatory museum with exhibits for children and adults, featuring exhibitions about the history of food, farming, and family life; slavery and anti-slavery; and notable people and events in Newton.” For this special virtual event, the MHS says “This tour will focus specifically on the complex legacy of slavery and abolitionism at the homestead, including it’s history as a stop on the Underground Railroad.”

Our bonus event is mostly geared toward public historians. On June 25 at 7pm, check out #FindYourPride: Telling LGBTQ+ History at Boston Area National Park Service Sites.

Join The History Project and Ranger Meaghan Michel of the Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and Ranger Megan Linger of the National Parks of Boston for a presentation on queer history interpretation and inclusion in the National Park Service.

RSVP on Eventbrite, and a link to the Zoom will be sent out the day of the event. Email info@historyproject.org with any questions. For security purposes, Zoom meetings require an authenticated Zoom account, so please be sure to register with Zoom prior to the event.