Move To Boston and Subsequent Career
Walker settled in Boston in the 1820s, married Eliza Butler, and immediately became active within the black community on Beacon Hill. He operated a used clothing store near the wharves in the North End.
Walker took part in a variety of civic and religious organizations in Boston. He was involved with Prince Hall Freemasonry, an organization formed in the 1780s that stood up the against discriminatory treatment of blacks, a founder of the Massachusetts General Colored Association, which opposed colonization, and a member of Rev. Samuel Snowden’s Methodist church. Additionally, Walker served as a Boston agent and a writer for New York's short-lived but influential Freedom's Journal, the first abolitionist newspaper published by blacks in the United States. Walker also spoke publicly against slavery and racism.
Just five years after he arrived in Boston, Walker died suddenly in the summer of 1830. Though rumors subsequently suggested that he had been poisoned, most historians believe Walker died a natural death from tuberculosis, as listed in his death record. The disease was prevalent and had claimed Walker’s only daughter, Lydia Ann, the week before. Walker was buried in a South Boston cemetery for blacks. His probable grave site remains unmarked.
Read more about this topic: David Walker (abolitionist)
Famous quotes containing the words move to, move, boston, subsequent and/or career:
“I was only one woman alone, and had no power to move to action full-fed, sleek- coated, ease-loving, pleasure-seeking, well-paid, and well-placed countrymen in this war- trampled, dead, old land, each one afraid that he should be called upon to do something.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)
“I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one’s tongue don’t move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“The right of the police of Boston to affiliate has always been questioned, never granted, is now prohibited.... There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.”
—Francis Bret Harte (1836–1902)
“John Brown’s career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)