“America is more our country, than it is the whites—we have enriched it with our blood and tears.”

—David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World

Hoy traemos a este espacio este artículo de Stephen Hartnett titulado

“Lincoln and Douglas Meet the Abolitionist David Walker as Prisoners Debate Slavery: Empowering Education, Applied Communication, and Social Justice ” aparecido en el Journal

ABSTRACT

 This essay offers a case study of an attempt to merge scholarly research and political engagement via an empowering applied communication of social justice. First, a prison project is examined in which students/prisoners re-staged the 1858 Lincoln/Douglas debates as a more fully representative three-way debate including Lincoln, Douglas, and the black abolitionist, David Walker. Second, the essay outlines some “outreach ” strategies that extended the pedagogical and political energies of the classroom into the larger site of the prison itself. Third, descriptions are offered of some outreach strategies that proved effective in launching the energies of the prison classroom into the loose community of prison-rights activists, politically engaged scholars, and friends and families of prisoners. Interwoven throughout the essay is information regarding the political-economy of the “correctional-industrial-complex” and the voices of students/prisoners. 

Stephen Hartnett is a Visiting Lecturer in Rhetoric at University of California, Berkeley, and a volunteer instructor at California’s San Quentin Prison. Sections of this essay were presented at the 1994 Radical Philosophy Association Conference, the 1995 Speech Communication Association Convention, the 1996 UNESCO-sponsored Pedagogy of the Oppressed Conference, and the 1996 Socialist Scholars Conference; For sharing their insights and editing skills, the author expresses gratitude to Shawny Anderson, Jon Rutter, Robert Schehr, Dwight Conquergood, Alberto Gonzalez, and the members of The Blue Mountain Arts Group to End Massive Incarceration. Most importantly, this essay draws upon six years of working with the students/prisoners in Indiana’s maximum-security Pendleton Reformatory and medium-security Correctional Industrial Facility, and two years of working with the students/ prisoners in California’s mixed-security San Quentin Prison. For their frenetic political and pedagogical energy, friendship, commitment to social justice, and belief in the possibility of redemption, this essay is dedicated to these remarkable men.

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David Walker (September 28, 1796 – August 6, 1830)^[a] was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well (partus sequitur ventrem). In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the African Grand Lodge (later named Prince Hall Grand Lodge, Jurisdiction of Massachusetts), he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World,^[4] a call for black unity and a fight against slavery.

The appeal brought attention to the abuses and inequities of slavery and the responsibility of individuals to act according to religious and political principles. At the time, some people were aghast and fearful of the reaction that the pamphlet would provoke. Southern citizens were particularly upset with Walker’s viewpoints and as a result there were laws banning circulation of “seditious publications” and North Carolina “legislature enacted the most repressive measures ever passed in North Carolina to control slaves and free blacks.”^[5]

Historians and liberation theologians cite the Appeal as an influential political and social document of the 19th century. Walker exerted a radicalizing influence on the abolitionist movements of his day and inspired future black leaders and activists.

His son, Edward G. Walker, was an attorney and in 1866 was one of the first two black men elected to the Massachusetts State Legislature.

Walker served as a Boston subscription sales agent and a writer for New York City’s short-lived but influential Freedom’s Journal (1827–29), the first newspaper owned and operated by African Americans in the United States

 

Lincoln and Douglas meet the abolitionist David Walker as prisoners debate slavery: Empowering education, applied communication, and social justice. Stephen Hartnett from eraser Juan José Calderón

 Fuente: [ Slideshare vía Journal of Applied Communication Research ]