Education and religion were especially important to Walker. Black knowledge, he argued, would not only undermine the assertion that blacks were inherently inferior; it would terrify whites. "The bare name of educating the coloured people," he wrote, "scares our cruel oppressors almost to death." Those who were educated, Walker argued, had a special obligation to teach their brethren, and literate blacks were urged to read his pamphlet to those who could not. As he explained: "t is expected that all coloured men, women and children, of every nation, language and tongue under heaven, will try to procure a copy of this Appeal and read it, or get some one to read it to them, for it is designed more particularly for them."