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The Dangerous Mind of Benjamin Lay

The Newberry @ 60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL

This lecture, by Marcus Rediker, explores the life and thought of Benjamin Lay, a radical abolitionist dwarf who, in the 1730’s, practiced guerilla theater against slave-owners and became one of the first to argue for the immediate, unconditional abolition of slavery. This intellectual history from below argues that Lay’s radicalism was a rope of five strands: “primitive Quakerism,” seafaring solidarity, African-American freedom struggles,...