What outspoken abolitionist and author of "An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World" was also the father of one of the first black men to pass the Massachusetts bar?
David Walker (abolitionist) David Walker (September 28, 1796August 6, 1830) was an outspoken African-American abolitionist, writer and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was a slave, his mother was free so therefore he was free. In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, he published "An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World", a call for black unity and self-help in the fight against oppression and injustice.
Elizabeth Freeman Elizabeth Freeman ( 1744December 28, 1829), also known as Bet or MumBet, was the first black slave to file and win a freedom suit in Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, in Freeman's favor, found slavery to be inconsistent with the 1780 Massachusetts State Constitution. Her suit, "Brom and Bett v. Ashley" (1781), was cited in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court appellate review of Quock Walker's freedom suit. When the court upheld Walker's freedom under the state's constitution, the ruling was considered to have implicitly ended slavery in Massachusetts.