Peter Bestes
active 1773 - 1777
Peter Bestes (also recorded as Peter Bess) was an enslaved Boston resident who co-organized the first collective legislative movement for abolition in American history. Working with a committee of enslaved activists, including Felix Holbrook, Sambo Freeman, Chester Joie, and Prince Hall, he coordinated strategic legal appeals against human bondage in revolutionary Massachusetts. On April 20, 1773, Bestes signed a landmark freedom petition to the provincial legislature that leveraged Patriot rhetoric to highlight the hypocrisy of white colonists demanding political liberty while maintaining slavery. He continued this legal activism by signing a subsequent anti-slavery petition in January 1777 and later helping to establish Boston's African Lodge of Freemasons.