DAVID WALKER WAS A MASTER MASON

"Members of African Lodge were interested in the advancement of black people and they found the Lodge was a service of inspiration and mutual assistance. David Walker, a black abolitionist, was one of these members who paid dues in March 1824. He was born of free parents in Wilmington, North Carolina, and came to Boston where he opened a second hand clothing store. In 1829, his 'Appeal in Four Articles together with a Preamble to the Colored Citizens of the World but in particular and expressly to those of the U.S.A.,' was published in three editions within three years. It was a call to blacks to rise against enslavement and oppression. Walker and his associates sent this appeal into many areas of the nation. When it arrived in the South, it caused great consternation and alarm among slaveholders and their sympathizers. State legislatures, like the one in Georgia, forbade its circulation because of its 'evil tendency among our domestics'. Walker disappeared in 1830 and was unheard of thereafter. However, he left his influence on the antislavery movement , having been a black active abolitionist and a Prince Hall Mason, who was raised to the Master's degree on August 14, 1826, according to the 'Minutes' of African Lodge of Boston of this date, 'he requested and begged for it.'" P.131-132, PRINCE HALL LIFE AND LEGACY by Charles H. Wesley (1983)