Topic > What is the theme of the appeal David Walker's Appeal

This anti-slavery reform work was bold in its attempt to fight oppression regardless of its risk and urged white Americans to realize the moral and religious failures of human slavery. Walker spoke explicitly about the plight that black slaves faced when it came to harsh treatment and unjust brutality from whites. It paints the portrait of the White Terror as not only unequal and inferior, but also less than human. This publication has helped galvanize and empower those engaged in the fight for freedom against American terrorism. By exposing the political, social, and religious moral hypocrisy of white people, David Walker uses this work to provoke an emotional conflict of possible guilt when it comes to their internal whiteness and how it is recognized by “Others.” If it was not an internal emotional conflict, then Walker's Roll Call may have caused antebellum Southerners to become more paranoid if not fearful, fearful of what might be their equal. Even the Founding Founder, Jefferson, in his work Query 14, expressed Blackness as inferior and less than human. With this being some of the first antislavery work, whites now had to reconsider how they viewed not only blackness but also whiteness as