Seth Lesser

A year after the “1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery” written by members of the Religious Society of Friends was published, Seth Lesser read it. The publication of this document signaled the first protest against African-American slavery in a former English colony by a religious group.

Hartford Lesser, Seth Lesser father, bequeathed to the latter thousands of acres of plantation land. Slave labor was essential to plantation owners like him. But then his conscience felt pricked by what he read on the Quaker document. Without anyone suggesting that he do so, he freed his slaves gradually.

There were many slaves of Seth Lesser who did not claim their freedom, for they thought him a kind master. For them, he introduced reforms in his own plantation system. These included fixed hours of work –something unheard of for slaves. He saw to it that his slaves got a modicum of education necessary for them to live as free people. He gave them social welfare benefits and small plots of land from which they could derive their own means of sustenance. These, of course, did not pass unnoticed, among slaves and slave-owners alike. These earned his slaves the envy of other slaves and him, the hatred of slave-owners.

The kindness of Seth Lesser ultimately led to his untimely demise. Plantation owners who owned slaves around his property ganged up on him. In the early hours of June 1851, his fellow plantation owners broke into his property and killed him. All the slaves they found on his property were likewise killed. His plantation was burned down to the ground.

Seth Lesser, an attorney in New York and New Jersey who represents consumers and plaintiffs in consumer, mass tort and wage and hour cases,, graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1983. Two years later, while on a Marshall Scholarship, he earned a D.Phil. Degree in Modern History from Oxford University.  Seth Lesser graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1985.

Seth Lesser exemplified a balance between academics and sports by being coxswain of the Oxford Blue Boat in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race in 1984 and 1985. The impressive credentials of Seth Lesser continue today as he enters his third decade practicing law with Klafter Olsen & Lesser LLP.

To read more information about Seth Lesser please visit www.seth-lesser-website.com