David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal

• Published date: 01 April 2015
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591714523623
• Author: Melvin L. Rogers
• Date: 01 April 2015
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Theory

2015, Vol. 43(2) 208 –233

© 2014 SAGE Publications

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DOI: 10.1177/0090591714523623

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Article

David Walker and the

Political Power of the

Appeal

Melvin L. Rogers1

Abstract

David Walker’s famous 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World

expresses a puzzle at the very outset. What are we to make of the use of

“Citizens” in the title given the denial of political rights to African Americans?

This essay argues that the pamphlet relies on the cultural and linguistic

norms associated with the term appeal in order to call into existence the

political standing of black folks. Walker’s use of citizen does not need to

rely on a recognitive legal relationship precisely because it is the practice

of judging that illuminates one’s political, indeed, citizenly standing. Properly

understood, the Appeal aspires to transform blacks and whites, and when

it informs the prophetic dimension of the text, it tilts the entire pamphlet

in a democratic direction. This is the political power of the pamphlet; it

exemplifies the call-and-response logic of democratic self-governance.

Keywords

David Walker, rhetoric, judgment, democracy, appeal, authority

David Walker’s famous 1829 pamphlet immediately confronts the reader

with a problem. Consider the title in its entirety: Appeal, In Four Articles;

Together with A Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in par-

ticular, and very expressly, to those of The United States of America.1 How

1Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Melvin L. Rogers, Department of Political Science, University of California, 3270 Bunche Hall,

Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

Email: mrogers097@ucla.edu

523623PTXXXX10.1177/0090591714523623Political TheoryRogers

research-article2014

Rogers 209

are we to understand the phrase “citizens” in this title? By the late 1820s we

see a diminution or removal of the rights otherwise extended to black men in

northern states, calling into question the accuracy of the attribution of “citi-

zens” to “colored” individuals.2 As suggested by Samuel Johnson’s 1755 A

Dictionary of the English Language, the term citizen refers to “a freeman of

a city; not a foreigner; not a slave” (although we can find a similar definition

in Antiquity).3 To be a citizen is to enjoy a legal status of duties, rights, and

privileges constitutive of belonging to a city and to be taken by that city as

having that status. This stands in contrast to persons that are legally outside

the community (as in a foreigner) or legally at the will of another (as in a

slave). Citizenship, at least as suggested by Johnson’s definition, is depen-

dent on what we might call a recognitive legal relationship.4 The problem

then is for Walker to show that one need not rely on legal recognition to

underwrite one’s status as a citizen. How he is able to do this, I argue, is con-

nected to the other important term in the title—the word, “appeal”—and the

way it reflects a capacity that the practice of rhetorical engagement

foregrounds.5

Framing my inquiry as Walker’s problem (rather than “our” problem)

locates him squarely within his historical and political moment; it poses a

challenge regarding the political status of African Americans to which the

pamphlet responds. This is not to claim that defining citizenship is his only

concern. Rather, I mean to argue that Walker’s text engages the dominant

ideas regarding the presumed cognitive deficiencies of African Americans

that were used as obstacles to their citizenship by calling them to perform

their political standing. To use “citizen” to address “colored” folks at a time

when those two terms were increasingly seen as incompatible calls out a form

of political activity that is not itself dependent on the juridical framework

from which blacks were excluded. His use of key terms—citizen and appeal—

exemplify the ways blacks constituted themselves as political actors at the

very moment their ability to do so was called into question or denied. The use

of those terms, I contend, brings into sharp relief a presupposition of demo-

cratic politics—namely, that ordinary individuals are capable of judging their

social world—to which he means to awaken his audience, especially his

African American audience.

This essay explores the presupposition of democratic politics implicit in

Walker’s deployment of the term “appeal.” My claim is that appealing to is a

bidirectional rhetorical practice that affirms the political standing of the

claimant and the one to whom the appeal is directed.6 As we shall see, the

word “appeal” is not idiosyncratic; it captures a way of thinking about one’s

political standing that is not itself dependent on constitutional recognition. In

fact, this is the same logic that the American revolutionary generation