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, boston, subsequent and/or career:
“Comes over one an absolute necessity to move. And what is more, to move in some particular direction. A double necessity then: to get on the move, and to know whither.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“However strongly they resist it, our kids have to learn that as adults we need the companionship and love of other adults. The more direct we are about our needs, the easier it may be for our children to accept those needs. Their jealousy may come from a fear that if we adults love each other we might not have any left for them. We have to let them know that it’s a different kind of love.”
—Ruth Davidson Bell. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 3 (1978)
“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)
“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
—Barbara Dale (b. 1940)