Journal Article

“My Colour Will Yet Root Some of You Out of the Very Face of the Earth!!!!!!”: Demystifying David Walker’s Apocalypse

Baker, Benjamin

2025

Overview

This essay does a close reading of David Walker’s Appeal to outline his prediction around the termination of American slavery and its aftermath, a prediction that scholars have nearly universally labeled “apocalypse.” My contention is that this label has foreclosed a thorough explication of what Walker actually forecast and therefore has resulted in inadequate treatments and mischaracterizations of Appeal . Contrary to most scholars, I argue that Walker’s apocalypse was not conditional; rather, he was certain that it was going to occur, and it was not the parousia or the millennium as popularly conceived by Americans in his time. Instead, Walker’s apocalypse has Black people violently overthrowing slavery and the existing American government and political order. This demystification of Walker’s apocalypse challenges conventional scholarly positions of Walker on the United States and its founding, the nature of white people, the role that Black people play in their emancipation, and the future of America. Perhaps most relevant for literary scholars, I posit that Walker’s Appeal defies the literary category of jeremiad, and it would be better categorized as revolutionary literature.

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Subject: African American literature / Black people / Civil war / Harding, Vincent / Literature / Messianism / Oppression / Rebellions / Slavery / Walker, David / White people