Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Hard Crackers Presents: Marcus Rediker on The Fearless Benjamin Lay

This Sunday, join Marcus Rediker and the east coast editors of Hard Crackers for a reading and discussion of his new book The Fearless Benjamin Lay
 
Sunday, November 5, 2017
2pm - 4pm
Freddy’s Bar and Backroom
627 5th Avenue, Brooklyn
(between 17th Street & 18th Street)

The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man—a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labor, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to create a new, practical, revolutionary way of life.

Marcus Rediker has written, co-written, or edited ten books: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987); Who Built America? (1989), volume one; The Many-Headed Hydra (2000, with Peter Linebaugh); Villains of All Nations (2004); The Slave Ship (2007); Many Middle Passages (2007); The Amistad Rebellion (2012); Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution (2013); and Outlaws of the Atlantic (2014).