By SHANNON O. WELLS
While many Quakers joined in the circa-1700s abolitionist “movement” to eradicate slavery, one of the more outspoken of their Christian ranks believed the motion involved was far too slow and deliberate. If slavery was indeed inhumane and against Christian values, Benjamin Lay contended, why then should it continue for a single day longer?
“He’s making the demand that slavery has to be abolished — now,” explained Marcus Rediker, distinguished professor in Pitt’s Department of History. “Not gradually, but right now, and he’s one of the main reasons why Quakers eventually turned against slavery. Quite a few Quakers owned slaves in early Pennsylvania, but Benjamin Lay began to convince them that this was not the right thing to do. Christianity did not permit slave owning. This was his argument.”
Rediker shared insights on Benjamin Lay, an Englishman who emigrated to the Pennsylvania colony, during a conference call from London. He was there for the opening of “The Return of Benjamin Lay,” a one-man play co-written by Rediker and Naomi Wallace that tells Lay’s fascinating story.
The production, starring actor Mark Povinelli, debuted June 20 at London’s Finborough Theatre. It depicts Lay, who acknowledged his dwarfism with the self-reference of “Little Benjamin,” returning to Pennsylvania nearly 300 years after his death to confront those who scoffed at or suppressed his beliefs.
Calling Lay “the most fascinating historical person that most people have never heard of,” Rediker said he learned of Lay’s story while writing his book, “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.”
Lay’s aggressive prophet-like persona and moral unflappability — he supported feminism and practiced vegetarianism before such beliefs had labels — so entranced Rediker that he wrote a book about him, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf,” published in 2017.
A man of ideas, and principles
Rediker’s deep dive into Lay’s life evolved from a subgenre he calls “history from below,” which focuses on “ordinary working people” who have “mostly been left out of history” in favor of more famous, distinguished figures.
He found Lay “so fascinating that I decided that he deserved to have his own book — that he shouldn’t just be lumped into another book,” Rediker said, calling Lay “just an extraordinary person to get to know. I mean, you study someone, or you write a biography, you’re living with that person. You’re trying to learn everything about them, trying to learn how they think, how they dress, how they walk, all these things, and Benjamin Lay just had an extraordinary set of ideas.”
For example, Lay — a farmer as well as author — would never ride a horse, because “he thought that was exploiting the horse,” Rediker noted. “That it was unfairly taking the advantage of a horse (and) that human beings should walk. And that’s what he did. He walked everywhere — for miles and miles and miles: went to Quaker meetings all over the place, always walking. He had a staff that he used as he walked. But he had very radical ideas and he really stuck to them.”
The play came together through Rediker’s work with Naomi Wallace, who he calls a dear friend and distinguished playwright. “She wrote a prize-winning play called ‘The Liquid Plain,’ ” based on a story in a Rediker book called “The Slave Ship, a Human History,” about the slave-ship murder of a black woman by a very wealthy merchant.
Rediker and Wallace met up when “The Liquid Plain” opened in 2015 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. “And I remember still quite vividly sitting with her in an outdoor café, and she says, ‘What are you writing now?’ I told her about Benjamin Lay. And she said, ‘Well, when you finish that book, we’re going to write a play about him,’ because she was fascinated by how theatrical (Lay’s) protests were. And I must admit, when she said that … I thought, ‘Well, that’ll never happen.’ But lo and behold, it did.”
Protecting the divine
After emigrating to the Pennsylvania colony, Lay settled in Abington Township. He became one of the earliest and most outspoken opponents of slavery, his strident activities often culminating in dramatic protests.
He also lived in Barbados for a brief time as a merchant, where he was unpopular for his anti-slavery views.
Despite his small stature, Lay seemingly had the ability to see a larger picture beyond prevailing circumstances and mores, circa 1730s. One of Lay’s more prophetic lines, Rediker noted, was “ ‘Beware a rich man who poisoned the Earth for gain.’ Now, he wrote this in 1738. You know, that could have been said last week, sure. Or yesterday. … He was what you might call a pantheist, meaning that he saw God was present in all living things. And therefore, animals are divine. Human beings are divine. The environment is divine. This is all suffused with divinity. And therefore, we have to protect all these things.
“This is part of his logic,” Rediker added. “And yeah, he believed in these things and believed in them so strongly that it cost him.”
Rediker likened Lay’s direct attitude and approach to young, modern-day climate-change activist Greta Thunberg. “I think she has the same kind of confidence as Benjamin Lay. The same desire to speak truth to power,” he said. “That was actually something (Lay) learned by studying Greek philosophy: You must speak truth to power. That’s your first moral obligation. I think (Thunberg) has that. And I think those two would have liked each other.”
Despite Lay’s reputation for offending in the name of morality and righteousness, Rediker’s work led to the modern-day Abington Quakers reconsidering Little Benjamin’s role in the group’s history and evolution. They invited Rediker to deliver a presentation on Lay in advance of his book publishing.
The following year, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission erected a historical marker in Abington, and the Abington Friends Meeting Quakers unveiled a grave marker for Lay and his wife, Sarah.
Lay, who Rediker noted once attended the same Quaker meeting as Voltaire, the famed French philosopher and historian, may not have succeeded in all his lofty goals, but as a stimulator of thought and ideas, he was one of the most adept public relations agents of his time. He made his mark.
“He would do these very radical things, like confront slave owners and try to humiliate them in public. And this meant everybody talked about what he did,” Rediker said. “Whether you were for him or against him, you were talking about him.
“There’s a very rich folklore that’s passed down, some of it in colonial newspapers, some of it in books and articles that were published of people remembering something outrageous that Benjamin Lay did.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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