The Dangerous Mind of Benjamin Lay (1682-1759), Atlantic #Abolitionist
Lay had a theatrical talent that accompanied his antislavery rhetoric. On one occasion he threw off his Quaker garb in meetinghouse to reveal a military uniform, denounced slaveholders as men of war, and stabbed his belt with a sword to pierce a bladder containing red fluid. On another occasion he stood barefoot in the snow in front of a meetinghouse to protest slavery. Once he kidnapped the son of Quaker slaveholders to demonstrate how Africans felt when their children were kidnapped; he returned the child when searchers came to his house.
continue: http://antislavery.eserver.org/religious/allslavekeepersfinal
Detail, Engraving of Benjamin Lay by Henry Dawkins, c. 1760, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
