The Struggle For Equal Justice: The Story of David Walker and America's Leaders in the Pursuit of Equal Justice for all

By Myrna E Heath

An American Social Justice History

Black, White, And Indigenous Men and

Women From 1820 To The Present<

• Language: English
• Publisher: Senbern Publishing Company
• Release date: May 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9780985764531

Book preview

Acknowledgments

This book is written in honor of David Walker. It commemorates his leadership in the abolitionist movement of the 19th century and acknowledges the impact of Walker’s Appeal. The narrative is also a tribute to over 100 prominent abolitionists, women’s rights advocates, and civil rights leaders. It describes how they collaborated to achieve their goals and their influence on the modern-day protest movements.

The three youngest daughters of Alexander and Victoria Zacharie (Martin) Dewson—Evelina Evelyn (Dewson) Williams (1888–1963), Laura (Dewson) Gordon Preston (1889–1970), and Augusta (Dewson) Balch (1893–1962)—left us insightful information and historical records on David Walker. Victoria Zacharie (Martin) Dewson (1852–1915) left a bible offered by Norma (Williams) Wysinger (1912–1971) that was also a source of historical records. Norma’s brother David Williams (1915–1984), Ernest Dewson (1926–2006), and Edward Plousha Jr. (1934–2015) contributed a large amount of oral history.

Ramona Gibson, JD, provided vital statistics and court records. Elizabeth Bouvier, head of Archives, Massachusetts Judicial Court, researched and documented Walker’s life in Boston as well as Alexander Dewson Sr.’s origins in Hawaii and citizenship in Massachusetts. Donald Hausler of the Oakland Main Library History and Literature Department researched the life of Edwin Eugene Walker (grandson of David Walker) and the Dewson’s history in Oakland, California.

My dear friend, E. Onja Brown-Lawson, provided a copy of Henry Highland Garnet’s Walker’s Appeal and Garnet’s Address. A special thank you to Walter Hickey of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Waltham, Massachusetts, and Patricia C. McMahon, City of Boston registrar, for providing documentation on David Walker and his son Edwin Garrison Walker. Archives acquired by the following provided extensive resources for the documentation in this work: the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New Orleans Public Library, the Bluebonnet Regional Branch Library (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and the Louisiana State University Library. Numerous biographies, historical books, newspapers, online services, and websites were also used to support the research.

The Writer’s Group of the New England Chapter of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society and, in particular, the late Joan Qualls Harris encouraged me to write this narrative and offered many useful editorial comments regarding the initial manuscript draft.

George White, Marilyn Horn-Fahey, Christine Horner and Eve Morey Christiansen prepared the final manuscript for publication.

Some photographs are courtesy of the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation and the NARA. Some images were found online in the public domain and at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

Introduction

T

he Struggle for Equal Justice illustrates how courage and perseverance resulted in change. This journey through the 19th century reveals the experiences of those who lived through the most challenging time in our nation’s history—people who were fierce fighters in the battles against injustice. The Struggle for Equal Justice is an inspiration for current and future generations facing the challenges of the 21st century.

From the treacherous, rocky shores of New England to the enticing sandy beaches of what is now the West Coast of the United States of America, Indigenous people fought to preserve their lives, land, and culture. The conflict began when Europeans set foot on the continent in the 13th century and continued throughout most of the 19th century. Fearless chiefs led their people in battle: Metacomet of Massachusetts in King Philip’s War in Rhode Island, the Apache Wars of the Southwest led by Geronimo, and the Sioux Wars in Wyoming, Nebraska, Colorado, and Montana.

On 25 June 1876, Indigenous forces led by Sioux chief Crazy Horse and Lakota chief Sitting Bull defeated the US Army troops of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River. On 29 December 1890, in one of the final chapters of America’s long Indigenous wars, the US Cavalry killed more than 250 Sioux men, women, and children at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The conflict at Wounded Knee, where at least 25 US soldiers also died, was a tragic and avoidable massacre. Throughout the country, there were a total of 40 Indigenous wars.

However, the original mass subjugation was the enslavement of African people. Many believe that slavery was a Southern institution. Few are aware that New England had an integral role in the enslavement of African people.

From the 1620s until the US government outlawed the importation of slaves in 1807, New Englanders profited in the slave trade as buyers and sellers of kidnapped Africans. They also provided funding and many of the ships that transported the enslaved.

New England was a hub in the triangular trade, driven primarily by sugar and its by-products. This trading began as, first, Europeans exported goods to Africa in exchange for enslaved people; second, Europeans transported the enslaved people (the middle passage) to the New World and sold them to planters; and third, the ships with cargos of sugar, cotton, and rum returned to Europe.

About 11 million African men and women were transported to the New World in chains between 1501 and 1820.¹ Most worked on sugar plantations in the Caribbean, South America, and the United States. Ships from Portsmouth, New Hampshire; Salem and Boston, Massachusetts; and Providence and Newport, Rhode Island, carried the enslaved people from British-held Barbados and Jamaica to the Atlantic coast colonies. In 1644, New England slavers began doing business in West Africa. When British and Dutch slave traders obstructed their intrusion, some New England ships began sailing around Cape Horn and north to Madagascar, where Arab slave traders sold people for lower prices.

triangulartrade.jpg

Source: Robert P. Stearns, University of Illinois Archives

However, New England was also the home of the country’s abolitionist movement. The Struggle for Equal Justice presents a vivid depiction of the challenges that African Americans and women of all ethnicities encountered in their pursuit of equality. It reveals how abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights activists formed innovative organizations and collaborated to achieve their goals. This history also acknowledges the first African Americans elected to the US House of Representatives and the US Senate during the Reconstruction and post-civil war era.

The extensive Afterward section connects the past to the present. It includes the 21st century legacies of David Walker, the Indigenous people of America, Alaskan Natives, Hawaiians, women’s rights, civil rights and modern-day protest movements.

Although The Struggle for Equal Justice does not include every notable leader, it is written in appreciation of all Americans who led the pursuit of equal justice for all.

1 Joyce Appleby, The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (Norton, W. W. & Company, 2011), 124-129.

SALUTE to a Pamphlet that Challenged Slavery

Written in Boston, Massachusetts, Sept. 28, 1829.

Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles, together with a Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in particular, and Very Expressly to Those of the United States of America

Chapter I:

The Journey Begins

In 1 810, King Kamehameha the Great ² united the Kingdom of Hawaii. At that time, the Sandwich Islands ³ abounded with lush vegetation and picturesque waterfalls. Kahunas recited centuries of Hawaiian history, while hula dancers performed accompanying chants and songs. The islands’ thousands of temples and various rituals fascinated arriving Europeans and Americans, who later provided a written Hawaiian language, but also brought fatal diseases to the Hawaiian people.

Most ethnic Hawaiians can trace a family line to Kamehameha, who had at least 30 wives and 35 children.⁴ Orphaned as an infant, the Son of the Dew lived with relatives who traced his lineage to Kamehameha. Beginning at the age 12, and continuing for the next 13 years, the energetic boy worked on the ships of American industrialists. While a youthful sailor, his nautical adventures took him around the world. Ancient seafarers claimed, though few believed, that God held the Son of the Dew in the palms of His hands and blessed the young mariner with a magnificent voice.

Rumors of his talent abounded. It was no surprise that dignitaries who heard of the gifted tenor invited him to sing for them. The orphan, who assumed the name Alexander, always enjoyed performing for audiences at his ports of call. He basked in the recognition he received and cherished the adulation of the captivating people he met.

The years passed, and by 1830, Hawaii was the Commercial Gibraltar of the Pacific.⁵ The islands served as a trade center for Massachusetts merchants and their connections in California, Canton, Kamchatka, and smaller South Sea Islands. Whalers from Massachusetts strode through Hawaiian streets, and shops filled with New England notions and rum, while missionaries, living in frame homes, constructed neoclassical meetinghouses built from coral blocks. In time, Hawaiians converted to Christianity. Over the years, Hawaii became as Yankee as New Bedford, Massachusetts, and thrived as a vibrant, sovereign, nation.

In 1830, Alexander settled in Boston, Massachusetts, and took the surname Dewson.⁶ As he was one of only a few Hawaiians in New England, people considered him intriguing, to say the least. Dewson, like most Polynesians, was tall and robust. His thick, silver-gray hair, in contrast with his warm skin tone, gave him a striking and handsome appearance. The former sailor is remembered as clever and also faithful, and industrious. Moreover, his years traveling around the world provided fodder for interesting conversation, and people enjoyed listening to him.

On 19 September 1833, Alexander Dewson married Eliza Caroline (Butler) Walker,⁷ widow of David Walker,⁸ the Black abolitionist and publisher of Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Walker published his thesis in 1829. The Appeal, which circulated the world, called on the enslaved to revolt. The Appeal surfaced in Walker’s home state in Wilmington, North Carolina, where copies smuggled on ships from Boston or New York were distributed by a bondsman believed to be an agent of Walker’s.

White slaveholders were infuriated, as panic spread to Fayetteville, New Bern, Elizabeth City, and other towns in the state. News of the booklet was accompanied by rumors of a slave insurrection plot scheduled to take place at Christmas. When the enslaved became almost uncontainable, Whites petitioned Governor John Owen for protection. The governor sent a copy of the Appeal to the legislature and urged that it consider measures to prevent a revolt. Meeting in a secret session, the legislature enacted the most repressive measures passed in North Carolina to control enslaved and free Blacks. Severe penalties were imposed on anyone teaching the enslaved —also known as known bondsmen—to read or write and for circulating seditious materials. Manumission laws were made more prohibitive, and the movements of both bondsmen and free Blacks were restricted. A quarantine law imposed the confinement of any Black entering the state by ship and prohibited contact between resident Blacks and incoming ships.

When slaveholders, enraged by the Black journalist’s Appeal, demanded that Walker cease publication and distribution, the defiant author published a third edition of the Appeal from his vintage clothing store on Boston’s wharf. He concealed the pamphlet in the linings of seamen’s coats for distribution in the Southern seaports. In response, the governors of Georgia and Virginia and the mayor of Savannah wrote letters to the mayor of Boston demanding Walker’s arrest. The Boston mayor refused to detain Walker.

In