David Walker (September 28, 1785 – June 28, 1830) was an American black abolitionist, most famous for his pamphlet David Walker's Appeal To the Coloured Citizens of the World – among the most powerful anti-slavery works ever written. Walker denounced the American institution of slavery as the most oppressive in world history and called on people of African descent to resist slavery and racism by any means. The book terrified southern slave owners, who immediately labeled it seditious. A price was placed on Walker's head: $10,000 if he were brought in alive, $1,000 if dead.

Walker was born as a free black in Wilmington, North Carolina, to an enslaved father and a free mother. Although he was free, Walker witnessed the cruelty of slavery during his childhood in North Carolina . As an adult, he left the South and traveled the country, eventually settling in Boston, where he supported himself by opening a used clothing store on the waterfront during the 1820s . David Walker was the Boston agent for the distribution of the Freedom's Journal, a New York based weekly abolitionist newspaper. Walker provided an appeal to secular theological basis for insurrection. His work was banned in several states and were instrumental in initiating slave escapes and insurrections.

In Boston, Walker made acquaintances with black rights activists and began to write and speak against slavery and racism. He wrote many articles for Freedom's Journal, an early African American newspaper based out of New York City , and, in 1828, he joined the Massachusetts General Colored Association , which had been organized in 1826.