Benjamin Lay’s remarkable life story can be a lesson in courage and hope for us all.Fearless Benjamin tells the story of a courageous little person, only four feet tall, who fought slavery at a time when almost everyone else accepted it. A shepherd, a sailor, and a Quaker, Benjamin Lay insisted that all people, of all nations and races around the world, were equal. Every human being—rich and poor, men and women, Black and white—deserved respect, love, and freedom. After he...

Outlaws of the Atlantic turns maritime history upside down, exploring the dramatic world of seafaring adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants and other builders of empire, but rather from the point-of-view of common people whose labors made that world possible-sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates and other outlaws, whose formative experiences at sea are brought together for the first time.Against long-dominant national histories, this book shows...

In 1972 Selma James set out a new political perspective. Her starting point was the millions of unwaged women who, working in the home and on the land, were not seen as “workers” and their struggles viewed as outside of the class struggle. Based on her political training in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, founded by her late husband C.L.R. James, on movement experience South and North, and on a respectful study of Marx, she redefined the working class to include sectors previously dismissed a...

Freedom Ship is a gripping history of the enslaved African Americans who stowed away on vessels that carried them to liberty. Up to 100,000 fugitives successfully fled the horrors of bondage in the American South. Many moved northwards through a network of secret routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. Thousands of others, most of them completely unknown, escaped by sea. Their dramatic accounts of whispered conspiracy and billowing sails make Freedom Ship

A stunning graphic history of how enslaved Africans on board the Amistad rebelled and captured the slave ship in 1839, challenging a whitewashed version of history and putting the Africans back at the center of their own freedom storyFrom the trio of Rediker, Lester, and Buhle comes another graphic "history from below" about the Amistad rebellion of 1839 when 53 enslaved Africans on the slave ship Amistad slipped out of their restraints a...

On 28 June 1839, the Spanish slave schooner La Amistad set sail from Havana to make a routine delivery of human cargo. After four days at sea, on a moonless night, the captive Africans that comprised that cargo escaped from the hold, killed the captain, and seized control of the ship. They attempted to sail to a safe port, but were captured by the US navy and thrown into a Connecticut jail. Their legal battle for freedom eventually made its way to the Supreme Court, where former p...

Fearless Benjamin tells the story of a courageous little person, only four feet tall, who fought slavery at a time when almost everyone else accepted it. A shepherd, a sailor, and a Quaker, Benjamin Lay insisted that all people, of all nations and races around the world, were equal. Every human being - rich and poor, men and women, Black and white - deserved respect, love, and freedom. After he protested against his fellow Quakers for enslaving others in violation of the golden rule, 'do t...

**Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award · Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award · A Library Journal Best History Book of the YearA definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad’s long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent scholar of Atlantic history and the award-winning author of The Slave Ship**As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellu...

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 theatre 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 ...

Based on the little known real life "Slave Insurrection" of 1741, this book imagines outlaw fugitive John Gwin and an eclectic crew of renegades as they attempt to disrupt and overthrow the colonial social orderRebel fugitive John Gwin was previously introduced in Under the Banner of King Death and this graphic novel continues his adventures. Revolution by Fire is a hypothetical look at the inner workings of the so called “New York Conspir...

Under the Banner of King Death is a tale of mutiny, bloody battle, and social revolution, bringing to life an itinerant community of outsiders behind today's legends. This graphic novel breaks new ground in our understanding of piracy and pirate culture, giving us real reasons to love the rebellious and stouthearted marauders of the seas.At the pinnacle of the Golden Age of Atlantic piracy, three unlikely companions are sold into servitude on a merchant ship and thrust int...

In your hearts you know the truth: I was here among you three hundred years ago . . . Had you chosen differently then - before slavery and greed breathed their venom so deeply into our souls - we would be living in another world now. It is not too late to purge these poisons.Benjamin Lay - shepherd, sailor, prophet, and the British Empire's first revolutionary abolitionist - returns from the grave almost three hundred years after his death, as feisty and...