Today in Labor History January 26. 1682: Benjamin Lay was born in England. Lay emigrated to the Provine of Pennsylvania, in British North America, where he became a radical Quaker activist against slavery, and for the rights of women and animals. He was a prolific writer on abolition and his “All Slave-Keepers that Keep the Innocent in Bondage” was one of the first abolitionist works published in the 13 Colonies. In an act of protest, he once stood outside a Quaker meeting in the middle of winter, barefoot, and without any coat. When passersby expressed concern for his health, he asked why they were not concerned for the health of the slaves, who were forced to work in the snow dressed as he was. He also once kidnapped the child of slaveholders temporarily to demonstrate to them how it felt when one’s relatives were stolen and sold. In another act of protest, this time in front of his Quaker brethren, he quoted the Bible saying that all men should be equal under God, and then plunged a sword into a Bible containing a bladder of blood-red pokeberry juice, which spattered over those nearby. He refused to consume any products made from slave labor. He was a vegetarian. He was roughly four feet tall, with a hunchback. He referred to himself as “Little Benjamin.” During the 2012 Occupy Movement, the Occupy encampment in Jenkintown, PA, where Lay was buried, activists renamed the town square as “Benjamin Lay Plaza.”
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