h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, I think I'm in love.

Although it seems as if I will never get through the Civil War, every day brings new wonders to my bleary eyes as I work my way through the history course I'm writing under a tight deadline. This week, I've started with Olaudah Equiano, the African slave who survived, got free, and wrote a book, through various forms of slave resistance, and am now in the middle of explaining the abolitionists.

Who were cool people in many ways. The piece de resistance of today's work was the discovery of a picture of Benjamin Lay - one of the many reasons for being proud of Philadelphia. Lay looked sort of like this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3372/3438348014_d455982db0.jpg

He was four foot seven and lived in a cave in Abington, PA, with his wife, back in the 18th Century. From this stronghold (where he was visited by Ben Franklin), this delightful vegetarian gnome (that's what John Greenleaf Whittier called him, a gnome) made forays into the Abington Friends Meeting and told them off about slavery.

Once, he stalked in wearing a long coat. Now, you will recall that Quaker meetings are silent affairs, unless someone is moved to speak. Lay was moved. Really moved.

He told them they were all hypocrites, and should lay aside their Quaker coats. As he would now do...

...to reveal a suit of armour (anathema to Quakers) and SWORD (double anathema). Then he proceeded to demonstrate the evils of some of them keeping slaves by...

Stabbing a Bible with the sword. This in itself would be less awful than you think, as Quakers are well aware that it's, er, just a book and not a talisman, but Lay had hollowed the thing out and filled it with pokeberry juice. (Did I mention he lived in a cave? In the woods near Jenkintown?) The splash probably created laundry issues.

It did not surprise me (but it did make me chortle) to read that Benjamin had already been thrown out of two countries, just for being odd. First his native England, then Barbados. I think there must have been a clause in the Pennsylvania Royal Charter that said 'Thee cannot expel people for weirdness. Remember George Fox.'

Lay got to them, bless his heart. In 1758, they set up a committee (a Quaker specialty) to go talk the rest of the Quakers out of slavery. It worked.

Hurrah for strange people. There aren't enough of them. Benjamin Lay proved once again that it's not the size of the dog in the fight...

Not enough short weirdoes, right. Nice guy, indeed!

It's also a valuable lesson about agitating with a bang (so to speak). Standing outside chanting is fine and dandy, but would his impact have been so strong if he sounded the same as all the other chanters?

Can't see it.

I don't think he limited himself to a chanter. I think he used the whole bagpipe.

When agitating, it is good to pick an audience that has a Peace Testimony (and won't hit you).

So will we be seeing this fascinating info put into an edited entry? Pretty please?

That is a thought. When I've got through the next 36,000 words of history course...

I'll think about it.

Yep this is a very interesting person Dmitri! I didn't even know that Quakers ever had slaves.

I was surprised about that, too - but the movement started during the English Civil War, and people have to learn sometime, I guess.

I had already noticed that my first ancestors, when they came over in 1682, had some indentured servants with them. But that doesn't mean much, as that was often a way to legalise raising other people's kids - an old Irish custom. They indentured the kids as a way to spell out what training they'd get.

Of course, this system was totally abused in Virginia - and led to the invention of chattel slavery. (Don't ask, I've spent months explaining all this to schoolkids.)

I'm pleased to say, though, that in 1758, they set up a Committee (naturally!) to go and talk all the Quakers out of slaveholding. By 1790, it was official: if you held slaves, they'd kick you out.

I love people who have meetings where decisions have to be unanimous.

They, er, talk a lot...

Reminds me of the civil rights meeting run along those lines. Somebody wanted to call a vote. The speaker explained, "Well...under a consensus system like this, we don't take votes..."

"No, we take all year!" says a voice from the back.

This is accurate.

My favourite illustration was from the autonomous collective we lived in one year - a German dorm floor.

There was a three-hour meeting on the problem of who, exactly, kept cutting too large a hole in the washing-up liquid, so that we had to buy it too frequently...

ah, yes, house meetings in collectives. one of many things you don't miss when you live alone

Amen, brother.

Love the story. Hope you'll manage to write an entry about it.

Thanks, Bel.