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?
Edward G. Walker Edward Garrison Walker, also known as Edwin Garrison Walker (1830–1901), was an American artisan in Boston who became an attorney in 1861; he was one of the first black men to pass the Massachusetts bar. He later became a politician and in 1866, nine years after the state extended the franchise to African-American men, he and Charles Lewis Mitchell were the first two black men elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature. Walker was the son of Eliza and David Walker, an abolitionist who had written an appeal in 1829 calling for the end of slavery.
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.