| | by admin | | posted on 26th June 2025 in Quakers in 100 Objects | | views 66 | |
The First Protest Against Slavery Marker remembers the time and place of North America's first-ever campaign against slavery — by Quakers against fellow Quakers.
In 1688, in the quiet settlement of Germantown, Pennsylvania, four German-speaking settlers — Francis Daniel Pastorius, Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff — drafted a short but powerful petition. Written in clear, plain language and grounded in conscience, it protested the enslavement of Africans in the colonies. This document, known as the Germantown Protest Against Slavery, is widely recognised as the first written anti-slavery protest in North America.
The signers were Mennonites and Quakers, recently arrived from Europe, and deeply disturbed by the practice of slavery they found in the new land. Their petition was addressed to the local Monthly Meeting of Friends, urging their fellow Quakers to reflect on the moral contradiction between slavery and Christian teaching. The petition posed a deeply challenging question:
Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, than if men should rob or steal us away, & sell us for slaves to strange countries, separating husband from their wife and children? Being now this is not done in the manner we would be done at unto, we are against this traffic of men-body.
The statement rested on a simple principle: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The petition was respectfully received and passed up through the structure of Quaker meetings — first to the Quarterly Meeting at Abington, then to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. But no action was taken. The message, though clear, was considered too controversial, too soon.
And yet, the seed was sown. Though the protest did not immediately change Quaker policy, it introduced the question into formal conversation. Over time, that conversation grew. By the mid-1700s, Friends like John Woolman, Anthony Benezet, and Benjamin Lay would take up the same call — some through quiet persuasion, others through theatrical and uncompromising witness. Eventually, the Society of Friends would become the first religious body in North America to officially condemn and disown slavery.
Though the original document is a single sheet of paper, its legacy is cast in metal and memory. The marker reminds all who pass that dissent has deep roots, and that even in times when the world is not ready to listen, the truth must still be spoken. The Germantown Protest was not just a moment in Quaker history — it was a beginning.
The text on the marker reads as:
Here in 1688, at the home of Tunes Kunders, an eloquent protest was written by a group of German Quakers. Signed by Pastorius and three others, it preceded by 92 years Pennsylvania's passage of the nation's first abolition law.
The First Protest Against Slavery Marker is located at the intersection of Germantown Avenue and E Wister Street, on the right when traveling north on Germantown Avenue. It was erected in 1983 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission