THE FIGHT FOR BLACK MOBILITY: TRAVELING TO MID-CENTURY CONVENTIONS

EDWIN GARRISON WALKER

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. “Edwin G. Walker, Esq., attorney at law. He was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1863 and nominated by General Butler for the position of judge.”The New York Public Library Digital Collections

Edwin (sometimes Edward) Garrison Walker (1831-1901) was born to a free father and a mother who is believed to have been an escaped slave living and working in Boston, Massachusetts.¹ While Edwin G. Walker was still a child, his father, the famous abolitionist writer David Walker, published the text, David Walker’s Appeal.² David Walker’s political activities likely contributed to his son’s later legal and political activities. Before entering the legal profession, and becoming the fourth African American admitted to the Massachusetts Bar (in 1861),³ Walker was educated in the Boston public school system and took a job as a leather worker.⁴ Robert Morris, who participated in the Shadrach Minkins case alongside Walker, would later become Walker’s mentor.⁵ Shortly after obtaining his legal degree, Walker ran and was elected to the Massachusetts state legislature; however, the following year he fell in opposition with the Republican party’s ideals and the party refused to re-nominate him.⁶ Walker’s political aspirations did not end here. In fact, late in his life (1896), Walker was nominated to run for the United States presidency through the Negro Party.⁷

Aside from these specific instances of political activity, Walker was also involved in a number of organizations centered on improving African American quality-of-life and political status. In 1859, The Weekly Anglo-African (republishing an article from The Liberator) reports Walker likening the work of the American Colonization Society to American Colonization.⁸ Additionally, J. Clay Smith cites a 1901 Boston Globe article that claims Walker was a prominent figure in efforts for women’s suffrage.⁹ Notably, in 1885 Walker was initiated into the Negro Political Independence Movement, which worked towards opening political avenues for African Americans that were otherwise unavailable. According to Ryan Hurst, “Partly in response to his difficulties as a rare black Democrat, Walker and other black leaders including George T. Downing of Rhode Island, initiated in 1885 the Negro Political Independence Movement.”¹⁰ The extent to which Walker supported the causes may be evidenced in the following quote, found in an 1892 edition of The State Capital newspaper, “The time for fighting has come. You will never save our people from being murdered in the south unless you get up off your knees and kill the man that did it.”¹¹ Here, we can see how Walker’s sentiments in 1892 echo and recall those of the 1855 Colored Convention in that many convention speakers argued that uplift in the south was not possible without social, economic, and political improvement for African Americans living in the north.

Unlike many of the 1855 National Colored Convention delegates found on this website, Edwin Garrison Walker holds a remarkable presence in the archive. While this may be partially due to his biological (David Walker) and legal (Robert Morris) lineage among notable activists, it may also be attributed to the variety of causes for which he campaigned and his effusive presence in late nineteenth-century politics. Walker is memorialized in a poem written by Pauline E. Hopkins, published in The Colored American just shortly after his death in 1901.¹² Moreover, Walker’s presence is not limited to the depths of academic research, dissertations, or texts published in the early decades of the twentieth century; in fact, he appears even in recent publications from some of the United States’ most popular newspapers.

Credits

Submitted on 22 March 2013 by Elizabeth A. Boyle, graduate student at the University of Delaware.

Researched for English 634, Spring 2013, taught by Professor P. Gabrielle Foreman.

References