David Walker and the Political Power of the Appeal

Published date01 April 2015
DOI10.1177/0090591714523623
AuthorMelvin L. Rogers
Date01 April 2015
Subject MatterArticles
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

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