David Walker was born in North Carolina to an enslaved father and a free mother, and consequently, because of the law of partus sequitur ventrem (that which is born follows the womb), he was free. He eventually moved to Black communities in Charleston, South Carolina, and Philadelphia. Walker settled in Boston around 1825, where he set up a clothing store first in Quincy Market, also known as City Market, before relocating to the Boston waterfront. While in Boston, Walker was actively involved with the abolitionist movement. He served as a contributor to the Freedom’s Journal (1827-1829), the first Black newspaper in the US, and was also its Boston sales agent. Walker was also an active member of the May Street Methodist Church community (a significant church for the Black community in Boston), Prince Hall Masons (a Black fraternal order in Boston), and served in the Massachusetts General Colored Association (a Black abolitionist group).

In 1829, Walker wrote and published his pamphlet, "Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Colored Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America, Written in Boston, State of Massachusetts, September 28, 1829."  That document advocated explicitly for Black resistance to enslavement and racism, drawing on texts like the Bible, as well as Greek and Roman histories of Africa to make its arguments. Though the pamphlet was inspiring to many Blacks and abolitionists, others, including White abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, felt it was too inflammatory. Indeed, it became a source of fear in the South, and several Southern officials worked to prohibit circulation, and Georgia announced a bounty of $10,000 for his capture, dead or alive. Despite these efforts, Walker continued to circulate the pamphlet, and it went through three editions. Soon after the appearance of the third edition in 1830, Walker died of tuberculosis.