Being four feet tall and a hunchback did nothing to limit the life of the amazing abolitionist Benjamin Lay. He was a fierce abolitionist who fought for the rights of all people and animals alike.
Benjamin Lay was born in 1682 and was centuries ahead of his time, maybe even ahead of our time. Lay was all but kicked out of the Quaker community in his hometown of Colchester, England and moved to Barbados to become a merchant. When Way arrived in Barbados, the slaves made up about 75% of the population. Lay was clearly shaken from his time in Barbados and it would shape his thinking for the rest of his life.
Not able to keep his mouth shut when it comes to injustice, the ruling class in Barbados quickly grew tired of Lay and told him to leave.
Lay then resorted to Pennsylvania where he would meet fellow Quaker and founding father Benjamin Franklin. Franklin befriended Lay and published his first book All Slave Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage; Apostates in 1737. In this book, Lay put forth his radical anti-slavery views.
He would often go to Quaker congregations just to yell at anyone profiting from slavery. In one instance he hollowed out a book and put in it a bladder filled with bright red pokeberry juice. When it was his turn to speak he began with a thunderous anti-slavery speech and finished by shouting "Thus shall God shed the blood of the persons who enslave their fellow creatures!" While doing this he lifted the book above his head and plunged a sword through the center of it. He then began flinging his arm around splattering "blood" over the slavers in the congregation.
This story might make it easy to understand why everywhere he went he would eventually be kicked out. Even his fellow Quakers often found him to militant and extreme. Lay, however, could not care less. He was a man of extreme moral conviction and felt a need to speak out against anyone he felt was being immoral. Even if it meant splattering bright red juice on the most powerful people in his community in the middle of a congregation, he was going to get his point across.
He was not only progressive on the issue of slavery. He was a fierce believer in animal rights. He grew all of his own food, made his own clothes, and lived in a cave. His favorite meal was boiled turnips with water.
By 1758 Lay was an old man whom largely isolated himself from society and his community. It was also in this year that Pennsylvania finally enacted the reform he wanted. At the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, they ruled that individuals who took part in slavery would be disciplined and in some cases banned from the entire community. Upon hearing this news, Lay stood up and said: "I can now die in peace." Just a year later, he would die at 77 years old.
Lay teaches us that even if our views are unpopular they need to be expressed and argued. His moral certainty ensured that he would speak up at any moment of injustice no matter how much he was ostracized for it. This is what allowed him to die a happy man eating boiled turnips in a cave wearing clothes he made himself. He fought for change and it really happened.
So in the spirit of Benjamin Lay, let's ignite the social justice warrior in all of us and go do some good for the world. There is a lot of injustice everywhere you go and we rely on people like Lay to point out that injustice and begin solving it. Will you be your community's Benjamin Lay?
