William Lay

Born in Essex, England, in 1682, Benjamin Lay was a writer, farmer, and radical Quaker whose outrage at slavery shaped his life and work. After time at sea and a period living in Barbados, where he witnessed the violence of slave-based plantation life, he carried that conviction with him to Pennsylvania and made abolition the center of his public message.

Lay is best remembered for his uncompromising attacks on slaveholding, including among fellow Quakers. In 1737, Benjamin Franklin printed his book All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates, one of the earliest book-length antislavery works published in North America. He also became known for dramatic acts of protest that shocked audiences and forced them to confront the human cost of slavery.

His activism was so confrontational that many contemporaries saw him as extreme, yet later generations have recognized how far ahead of his time he was. Along with his antislavery work, he was also known for a simple, disciplined way of living and for his concern about the treatment of animals. Today, he stands out as an unusual and memorable early American moral voice: stubborn, vivid, and impossible to ignore.