Marcus Rediker Lecture April 7 2016, 4:00 pm 202 Frick Fine Arts Building

Benjamin Lay and the Iconography of early Anti-Slavery

Marcus Rediker

This talk will explore the history of images associated with Benjamin Lay (1682-1759), the eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who was one of the first to demand an immediate, unconditional end to slavery.  The centerpiece of the presentation is a portrait of Lay commissioned by Benjamin Franklin and painted by William Williams or perhaps a young Benjamin West in the 1750s. That painting was the basis for many subsequent engravings and lithographs of Lay, whose image and actions became central to the abolitionist movement.

Marcus Rediker is Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History at the University of Pittsburgh. He is author of nine books, his most recent being Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Beacon Press, 2014). He also produced Ghosts of Amistad: In the Footsteps of the Rebels, a film documentary about how the Amistad slave ship rebellion of 1839 is remembered in contemporary Sierra Leone.