born Sept. 28, 1785, Wilmington, N.C., U.S.
died June 28, 1830, Boston, Mass.
U.S. abolitionist.
The son of a slave father and a free mother, he was educated and traveled widely before settling in Boston, where he became an abolitionist lecturer and wrote for the antislavery Freedom's Journal . In his pamphlet Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), he called for armed revolt. He smuggled the pamphlet into the South by hiding copies in clothing that he sold to sailors from his used-clothes store in Boston. Warned to flee for his life to Canada, he refused, and his body was found soon after; many believed he was poisoned. His son, Edwin G. Walker, was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1866.