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79-594: Prudence Crandall (September 3, 1803 – January 27, 1890) was an American schoolteacher and activist. She ran the Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut , which became the first school for black girls ("young Ladies and little Misses of color") in the United States. In 1832, when Crandall admitted Sarah Harris , a 20-year-old African-American woman, to her school, she created what

158-573: A botany expert. He was no abolitionist and was opposed to Prudence's efforts to educate African-American girls, and told this to her chief enemy Judson, when the latter gave him a ride. Reuben, who had studied medicine at Yale and practiced for 7 years in Peekskill, New York , was arrested on August 10, 1835, in Washington, D.C., and charged with sedition and publication of abolitionist literature. He narrowly escaped being lynched . At first denied bail, it

237-582: A Connecticut law passed to make her work illegal, as well as violence from the townspeople, resulted in Crandall being unable to keep the school open safely. She left Connecticut and never lived there again. Much later the Connecticut legislature , with lobbying from Mark Twain , a resident of Hartford , passed a resolution honoring Crandall and providing her with a pension. Twain offered to buy her former Canterbury home for her retirement, but she declined. She died

316-648: A Prudence Crandall Collection. It contains "23 letters and one manuscript of poems by Crandall, including three letters to the abolitionist Simeon Jocelyn detailing the opposition to her school. Most of the remaining letters are to her husband, Calvin Philleo . There are also nearly three dozen manuscripts of correspondence and business records of Philleo. The remainder of the collection consists of photographs of Crandall, her family members, and their places of residence and Helen Sellers' research materials and correspondence related to her biography." The Lear Center has also posted

395-410: A few miles off, were seen coming to bring her and her pupils the necessaries of life, they were insulted and threatened. Her well was defiled with the most offensive filth [manure ], and her neighbors refused her and the thirsty ones about her even a cup of cold water, leaving them to depend for that essential element upon the scanty supplies that could be brought from her father’s farm. Nor was this all;

474-634: A few years later, in 1890. In 1995 the Connecticut General Assembly named her the State Heroine of Connecticut . Prudence Crandall was born on September 3, 1803, to Pardon and Esther Carpenter Crandall, a Quaker couple who lived in Carpenter's Mills, Rhode Island , in the town of Hopkinton . Reuben was her younger brother. When she was about 10, her father moved the family to nearby Canterbury, Connecticut . As her father thought little of

553-482: A guide to other archival material of or relating to Crandall. Correspondence with William Garrison is in his papers in the Boston Public Library . Canterbury Female Boarding School The episode is a major incident in the history of school desegregation in the United States . The case Crandall v. State was "the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history.... The Crandall case [in which

632-499: A key issue was whether blacks were citizens ] helped influence the outcome of two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857[ ] and... Brown v. Board of Education in 1954." In 1831, the town of Canterbury approached Prudence Crandall , a well-educated Quaker teacher, who was teaching in nearby Plainfield . There was no school for girls in their town, and they asked if she would establish one; "an unusual number of young girls then growing up in

711-505: A letter that "the wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the village told me that if I continued that colored girl in my school it could not be sustained. I replied to her, That it might sink, then, for I should not turn her out!" She "truly liked Sarah Harris as a person". To educate blacks and whites together was unacceptable to the town of Canterbury. "The people of Canterbury saw to their supreme horror and consternation that this popular school in which they had taken so much pride

790-466: A school. Interest was such that she went ahead with her plan of closing the existing school, which was doomed because of her refusal to expel Sarah, and reopening it as a school for black girls. She announced it to the existing students in a meeting on February 25, 1833. An advertisement in The Liberator of March 2, 1833 (see sidebar), announced that the new school would open April 1. The reactions of

869-484: Is considered the first integrated classroom in the United States. Parents of the white children began to withdraw them. Prudence was a "very obstinate girl", according to her brother Reuben. Rather than ask the African-American student to leave, she decided that if white girls would not attend with the black students, she would educate black girls. She was arrested and spent a night in jail. Repeated trials for violating

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948-475: Is pious, and lovely in person, our informant adds, has actually been thrust into prison in the very cell that Watkins the murderer last occupied!!! In the name of ail that is manly and civilized, are we going back to the dark ages? Are there any free schools or religious societies in Connecticut? Are there no spare missionaries to be sent to Canterbury? She was freed the following day. Teacher Andrew Burleigh

1027-612: Is presented, With affectionate respect, by Female Friends in Glasgow; In the late 20th century, Crandall received renewed attention and honors: The following marker is at Osage Street and U.S. Route 160 , Elk Falls, Kansas : In 1831, Prudence Crandall, educator, emancipator, and human rights advocate, established a school which in 1833 became the first Black female academy in New England at Canterbury, Connecticut. This later action resulted in her arrest and imprisonment for violating

1106-725: The Connecticut Supreme Court , under the direction of Judge David Daggett . Crandall's attorneys were Ellsworth and Goddard, Judson and C. F. Cleaveland for the state. Daggett, like Judson, was a colonizationist , "known to be hostile to the colored people, and a strenuous advocate of the Black Law ". Daggett informed the jury that while the Constitution specified, in Article 4, Section 2, that " The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in

1185-486: The Elisha Payne house, with her sister Almira Crandall, to establish the Canterbury Female Boarding School , at the request of Canterbury's aristocratic residents, to educate young girls in the town. With the help of her sister and a maid, she taught about forty children in different subjects including geography, history, grammar, arithmetic, reading, and writing. As principal of the female boarding school, Prudence Crandall

1264-641: The New England Yearly Meeting School, a Quaker boarding school in Providence, Rhode Island . That the school existed was due to the generosity of Moses Brown , an abolitionist and co-founder of Brown University ; in 1904 the school renamed itself the Moses Brown School . After graduating, Prudence Crandall taught a school in Plainfield. She became a Baptist in 1830. In 1831 she purchased

1343-660: The United States Constitution . By contrast, the prosecution denied the fact that freed African-Americans were citizens in any state. The county court jury ultimately failed to reach a decision for the cases. A second trial in Superior Court decided against the school, and the case was taken to the Supreme Court of Errors (now called the Connecticut Supreme Court ) on appeal in July 1834. The Connecticut high court reversed

1422-472: The "Black Law." Although she was later released on a technicality, the school was forced to close after being harassed and attacked by a mob. She moved with her husband Reverend Calvin Philleo to Illinois. After her husband died in 1874, she and her brother moved to a farm near Elk Falls. Prudence taught throughout her long life and was an outspoken champion for equality of education and the rights of women. In 1886, supported by Mark Twain and others, an annuity

1501-419: The "anxious, angry citizens intent to devise some scheme of escape from the crushing calamity of 'a school of nigger girls'" are outlined in the previous section. The town reaction was panic. Urged on by Judson, a colonizationist whose position was that free blacks should leave the United States and go to Africa, by what means he failed to propose. The racist townspeople believed that Canterbury would become

1580-542: The Black Law in 1838. At the suggestion of William Garrison, who raised the money from "various antislavery societies", Francis Alexander painted a portrait of Crandall in April 1834. She had to go to Boston for the sittings, where she "became the center of attention at abolitionist parties and gatherings each evening. The Boston abolitionists honored her as a true heroine of the antislavery cause." In August 1834, Crandall married

1659-414: The Connecticut legislature, stunning his supporters and causing jubilation among abolitionists. Windham County became the most anti-slavery part of Connecticut. Sortes Sanctorum#Protestant examples Sortes Sanctorum ( incipit Post solem surgunt stellae ) is a late antique text that was used for divination by means of dice . The oldest version of the text may have been pagan, but

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1738-741: The Rev. Calvin Philleo, a Baptist minister in Canterbury, Connecticut. The couple moved to Massachusetts for a period of time after they fled the town of Canterbury, and they also lived in New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois. Crandall was involved in the women's suffrage movement and ran a school in LaSalle County, Illinois . She separated from Philleo in 1842 after his "deteriorating physical and mental health" led him to be abusive. He died in Illinois in 1874. After

1817-498: The Windham County Court on August 23, 1833. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Connecticut law prohibiting the education of African Americans from outside the state. The defense argued that African Americans were citizens in other states, so, therefore, there was no reason why they should not be considered as such in Connecticut. Thus, they focused on the deprivation of the rights of African-American students under

1896-700: The accomplishment of the design. In order for the school to survive while keeping Sarah as a student, Crandall realized that something must be done. Her idea, and it was hers alone, was to convert her school into one serving "young Ladies and little Misses of color", as she put it in a subsequent advertisement. There was no such school in the United States. To see if this was viable she travelled to Boston to meet with William Lloyd Garrison , editor of The Liberator . Encouraging her, he supplied her with letters of introduction to philanthropist Arthur Tappan and to leading black families in New York and Providence, Rhode Island, both of which she visited to assess interest in such

1975-409: The boarding school would encourage "social equality and intermarriage of whites and blacks." To this, her response was "Moses had a black wife." At first, citizens of Canterbury protested the school and then held town meetings "to devise and adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nuisance, or speedily abate it." The town response escalated into warnings, threats, and acts of violence against

2054-468: The books that he himself read, but I did read them. I read all sides, and searched for the truth whether it was in science, religion, or humanity. I sometimes think I would like to live somewhere else. Here, in Elk Falls, there is nothing for my soul to feed upon. Nothing, unless it comes from abroad in the shape of books, newspapers, and so on. There is no public library, and there are but one or two persons in

2133-587: The center of a vast and lustful colony of free blacks, and that alone would be a threat to the very survival of the United States: [T]he establishment or rendezvous falsely denominated a school was designed by its projectors as the theatre , as the place to promulgate their disgusting doctrines of amalgamation [intermarriage, miscegenation ] and their pernicious sentiments of subverting the Union. Their pupils were to have been congregated here from all quarters under

2212-409: The civil authority and selectmen of Canterbury. Therefore, the Supreme Court held that the information was fatally defective because the conduct which it alleged did not constitute a crime. The Court did not address the issue of whether the citizenship of free African Americans had to be recognized in every state. The judicial process had not stopped the operation of the Canterbury boarding school, but

2291-439: The community even further. Crandall's students also suffered. Ann Eliza Hammond , a 17-year-old student, was arrested; however, with the help of local abolitionist Samuel J. May , she was able to post a bail bond. Some $ 10,000 was raised through collections and donations. Arthur Tappan of New York, a prominent abolitionist , donated $ 10,000 to hire the best lawyers to defend Crandall throughout her trials. The first opened at

2370-645: The complete support of the community" and was soon a success. "The cordiality and friendliness of her reception were gratefully acknowledged by Miss Crandall, her relations with pupils and patrons were most agreeable and harmonious, and it seemed likely that this much-needed institution would become permanently established." Subjects taught included reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, chemistry, astronomy, and moral philosophy. Basic tuition and room and board cost $ 25 (equivalent to $ 715 in 2023) per quarter. Students paid extra fees for instruction in drawing, painting, piano, and French. "Crandall

2449-428: The consent, in writing, first obtained of a majority of the civil authority, and also of the selectmen of the town in which such school, academy, or literary institution is situated ; and each and every person who shall knowingly do any act forbidden as aforesaid, or shall be aiding or assisting therein, shall, for the first offence, forfeit and pay to the treasurer of this State, a fine of one hundred dollars, and for

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2528-436: The current white students removed their daughters from the school. Consequently, Crandall devoted herself to teaching African-American girls, after traveling to Boston to consult with abolitionists Samuel J. May and William Lloyd Garrison about the project. (Both were supportive, and gave her letters of introduction to prominent African Americans in locations from Providence, Rhode Island, to New York.) She temporarily closed

2607-467: The death of her husband, Crandall relocated with her brother Hezekiah to Elk Falls, Kansas , around 1877, and it was there that her brother eventually died in 1881. A visitor of 1886, who described her as "of almost national renown," with "a host of good books in her house", quoted her as follows: My whole life has been one of opposition. I never could find anyone near me to agree with me. Even my husband opposed me, more than anyone. He would not let me read

2686-399: The decision of the lower court, dismissing the case on July 22 because of a procedural defect. The Black Law prohibited the education of black children from outside of Connecticut unless permission was granted by the local civil authority and town selectmen . But the prosecution's information that charged Crandall had not alleged that she had established her school without the permission of

2765-538: The earliest surviving example—a 4th- or 5th-century Greek fragment on papyrus—is Christian. The original version had 216 answers available depending on three ordered throws of a single die. It was later revised down to 56 answers for a single throw of three dice. This version was translated into Latin by the time of the council of Vannes (465), which condemned its use. The Latin version was subsequently revised to render it more acceptable to ecclesiastical authorities. This Latin version survives in numerous manuscripts from

2844-563: The early 9th century through the 16th, as well as in Old Occitan and Old French translations. Beginning in the 13th century, the text was sometimes known as the Sortes Apostolorum , a title it shares with at least two other texts. The term Sortes Sanctorum has a long history of being misunderstood and misapplied. It was once believed to be identical with the practice of sortes biblicae , whereby one would seek guidance by opening

2923-504: The effect of this part of their folly; and therefore I am the more anxious that they should be exposed, if not caught in their own wicked devices.' ...[The sheriff] was ashamed to do it. He knew it would cover the persecutors of Miss Crandall and the State of Connecticut with disgrace." This proved to be the case, as seen in the following quote from the Boston Advocate : This young lady, who

3002-452: The establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our State. The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country; they ought not to be permitted to rise here. They are an inferior race of beings, and never call or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites." "He predicted the destruction of the town if Crandall's school for colored children succeeded." Judson

3081-478: The establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our State. The colored people never can rise from their menial condition in our country; they ought not to be permitted to rise here. They are an inferior race of beings, and never can or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites. Africa is the place for them. I am in favor of the Colonization scheme. Let

3160-503: The fact that more blacks lived in Connecticut, its southernmost state, than in the rest of New England combined. So the white inhabitants of Windham County, Connecticut , were concerned, as they were at the sites of anti-abolitionist riots. Prudence offered to move the school, but this was not sufficient. According to Judson, who was a life member of the American Colonization Society , [W]e are not merely opposed to

3239-402: The false pretence of educating them , but really to SCATTER FIRE-BRANDS, arrows and death among brethren of our own blood." Town leaders believed that Crandall's school would "tend to the great increase of colored population", or as Ellison put it, "educating them will fill our state with a vicious and pauper population." Behind this are two beliefs, at the time widespread: Add to this

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3318-522: The instruction of colored persons belonging to other States and countries, which would tend to the great increase of the colored population of the State, and thereby to the injury of the people : Therefore, Sec. 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened, That no person shall set up or establish in this State any school, academy, or literary institution, for

3397-401: The instruction or education of colored persons, who are not inhabitants of this State, nor instruct or teach in any school, academy, or other literary institution whatsoever in this State, or harbor or board, for the purpose of attending or being taught or instructed in any such school, academy, or literary institution, any colored person who is not an inhabitant of any town in this State, without

3476-686: The local public school, he paid for her to attend the Black Hill Quaker School in Plainfield , 5 miles (8 km) east of Canterbury. Her teacher there, Rowland Greene, was opposed to slavery, and much later gave an address, published in William Lloyd Garrison 's The Liberator , on the necessity of education for blacks, and commended Isaac C. Glasgow for sending two of his daughters, "exemplary young women", to Crandall's school for young ladies of color. When 22, for one year she attended

3555-847: The niggers and their descendants be sent back to their fatherland. Prudence "went on her way making preparation for her pupils, with a firmness of design and a decision of action worthy [of] the holiest cause." The school reopened as announced with "some ten or twelve quiet, harmless little colored girls or young ladies, from the very best colored families in the Northern cities." A visitor in June reported "17 girls, as well behaved as any 17 you can find". Enrollment soon rose to 24 students, from as far away as Philadelphia. While Crandall never listed them publicly, testimony in her trial and other documents reveal that non-Connecticut students came from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. The names of

3634-497: The pervading excitement to actual frenzy." The school immediately lost the support of the townspeople, which it had enjoyed, and parents began to withdraw their daughters, with the apprehension that a dire calamity was impending over them; that Miss Crandall was the author or instrument of it; that there were powerful conspirators engaged with her in the plot; and that the people of Canterbury should be roused by every consideration of self-preservation as well as self-respect to prevent

3713-571: The physician of the village refused to minister to any who were sick in Miss Crandall’s family, and the trustees of the church forbade her to come, with any of her pupils, into the House of the Lord. When the town's physician was asked to treat a student that was ill, not only would he not see her, he "looked upon the request as a personal insult". "Vandals loosened or cut the harnesses that attached horses to

3792-595: The place that I can converse with profitably for any length of time. No one visits me, and I begin to think they are afraid of me. I think the ministers are afraid I shall upset their religious beliefs, and advise the members of their congregation not to call on me, but I don't care. I speak on spiritualism sometimes, but more on temperance, and am a self-appointed member of the International Arbitration League. I don't want to die yet. I want to live long enough to see some of these reforms consummated. In 1886,

3871-524: The position that free blacks should be encouraged and helped to "return to Africa". But "its enduring significance lay in the impetus it gave to antislavery constitutional thought." The case raised issues concerning the rights of free Northern blacks, not Southern slaves; it avoided the debate surrounding slavery and raised the question of the rights of free blacks, finally settled in the Fourteenth Amendment . Judson lost his 1834 bid for reelection to

3950-466: The public to know she was being jailed. (A Vermont newspaper reported it under the headline "Shame on Connecticut".) The next day she was released under bond to await her trial. Under the Black Law, the townspeople refused any amenities to the students or Crandall, closing their shops and meeting houses to them, although they were welcomed at Prudence's Baptist church, in neighboring Plainfield . Stage drivers refused to provide them with transportation, and

4029-537: The question at issue." But "the Court evaded [a decision] ...by finding that the defects in the information prepared by the State’s Attorney were such that it ought to be quashed; thus rendering it 'unnecessary for the Court to come to any decision upon the question as to the constitutionality of the law.'" "They stretched to find, if not invented, a technical defect in order to avoid overruling Justice Daggett and deciding

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4108-415: The same quotation is on the title page of Charles Crawford's Observations upon Negro-slavery , 1790] She then admitted the girl, establishing the first integrated school in the United States. Prominent townspeople objected and placed pressure on Crandall to dismiss Harris from the school, but she refused. Although the white students in the school did not openly oppose the presence of Sarah Harris, families of

4187-462: The school and began directly recruiting new students of color. On March 2, 1833, Garrison published advertisements for new pupils in his newspaper The Liberator . Crandall announced that on the first Monday of April 1833, she would open a school "for the reception of young Ladies and little Misses of color, ... Terms, $ 25 per quarter, one half paid in advance." Her references included leading abolitionists Arthur Tappan , May, and Garrison. As word of

4266-425: The school and left Connecticut, never to live there again. Samuel May wrote that: "I felt ashamed of Canterbury, ashamed of Connecticut, ashamed of my country, ashamed of my color. Thus ended the generous, disinterested, philanthropic, Christian enterprise of Prudence Crandall." The events surrounding Prudence Crandall's school were widely reported. A letter from England of October 1833 calls Crandall "glorious", and

4345-402: The school spread, African-American families began arranging enrollment of their daughters in Crandall's academy. On April 1, 1833, twenty African-American girls from Boston , Providence , New York , Philadelphia , and the surrounding areas in Connecticut arrived at Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color. Leading the opposition to Crandall's school for black girls

4424-400: The school, townspeople shortly thereafter attempted unsuccessfully to set the building afire. Finally, on September 9, 1834, about midnight, a mob with heavy clubs and iron bars broke into the school and terrorized the students. "Five [windows] were destroyed, and more than ninety panes of glass were dashed to pieces." Afraid for the safety of her students, on the advice of May Prudence closed

4503-409: The school. Crandall was faced with great local opposition, and her detractors had no plans to back down. On May 24, 1833, the Connecticut legislature passed a " Black Law ", which prohibited a school from teaching African-American students from outside the state without town permission. In July, Crandall was arrested and placed in the county jail for one night—she refused to be bonded out, as she wished

4582-514: The second offence shall forfeit and pay a fine of two hundred dollars, and so double for every offence of which he or she shall be convicted. Townspeople thereafter refused to deal with anyone teaching or enrolled at the school. They insulted and annoyed her and her pupils in every way their malice could devise. The storekeepers, the butchers, the milk-pedlers [ sic ] of the town, all refused to supply their wants; and whenever her father, brother, or other relatives, who happily lived but

4661-535: The several States ," "the persons contemplated in this Act [the Black Law] are not citizens". The jury rapidly returned a "guilty" verdict. This was immediately appealed to the Connecticut Supreme Court ( Court of Errors ), and was argued on July 22, 1834. Attorneys were the same as previously. "All who attended the trial seemed to be deeply interested, and were made to acknowledge the vital importance of

4740-511: The state of Connecticut honored Prudence Crandall with an act by the legislature, prominently supported by the writer Mark Twain , providing her with a $ 400 annual pension (equivalent to $ 13,600 in 2023). Prudence Crandall died in Kansas on January 28, 1890, at the age of 86. She and her brother Hezekiah are buried in Elk Falls Cemetery. Prudence's younger brother Reuben was a physician and

4819-490: The students include: The curriculum was the same as previously, except that rhetoric was omitted. On May 24, 1833, the Connecticut General Assembly enacted a Black Law , drafted by Crandall's leading enemy Judson, which prohibited anyone from operating a school teaching African Americans from outside of Connecticut without the permission of the town in which the school was to be located. WHEREAS, attempts have been made to establish literary institutions in this State, for

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4898-414: The substantive issues." "The court could not brave the storm of unpopularity by deciding in her favor and could not go on record as declaring an unconstitutional law as constitutional." She continued to operate the school. She traveled to Philadelphia to explore relocating the school there, but was discouraged by locals because of recent anti-black violence there. When the legal measures did not close

4977-478: The sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [ King James Version ] She then admitted the girl as a day student , establishing the first integrated school in the United States. Prominent townspeople objected and placed pressure on Crandall to dismiss Harris from the school, but she refused to "dismiss 'the nigger girl'". Prudence related in

5056-427: The town doctors refused to treat them. Townspeople poisoned the school's well—its only water source—with animal feces, and prevented Crandall from obtaining water from other sources. Not only did Crandall and her students receive backlash, but her father was also insulted and threatened by the citizens of Canterbury. Although she faced extreme difficulties, Crandall continued to teach the young women of color which angered

5135-547: The townspeople's vandalism against it increased. The residents of Canterbury were so angry that the court had dismissed the case that vandals set the school on fire in January 1834, but they failed in their attempts to destroy the school. On September 9, 1834, a group of townspeople broke almost ninety window glass panes using heavy iron bars. For the safety of her students, her family and herself, Prudence Crandall closed her school on September 10, 1834. Connecticut officially repealed

5214-534: The village families awakened parental solicitude". She agreed, and purchased for the school a mansion, now a museum, on the town square. It was next to that of lawyer, politician, and town clerk Andrew T. Judson , one of her first supporters, who would be at the center of the opposition to the school, once a black girl was admitted. "The idea of having a school of nigger girls so near him was insupportable." The school opened in November, 1831, and in 1831–1832 "enjoyed

5293-421: The wagons or carriages of visitors to help the horse escape or to cause a potentially fatal accident." Crandall ignored the law and was arrested, spending one night in jail. She could have avoided jail if a small fine had been paid, and supporters would have paid it, but she refused: "'I am only afraid they will not put me into jail. Their evident hesitation and embarrassment show plainly how much they deprecate

5372-483: The writer, Charles Stuart , says he is preparing "little parcels of presents" for the girls. In addition to The Liberator , May, on the recommendation and with the funding of Arthur Tappan, began publishing in the county seat of Brooklyn, Connecticut , a newspaper, The Unionist, specifically to cover the situation. The widely publicized episode was one of the first acts of antiabolitionist mobbing that hardened antislavery commitment and discredited colonization ,

5451-617: Was able to pay off the $ 1,500 mortgage (equivalent to $ 42,919 in 2023) within a year." The school soon was at its capacity of 24 students. In late 1831 Prudence hired as servant help "a young black lady", Mariah Davis. Her fiancé, Charles Harris, was the son of the local agent for the new abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator , published in Boston. Mariah read the paper, which she loaned to Prudence, who also read it, reporting that "My sympathies were greatly aroused." She also sometimes sat in on classes, which did not attract attention as she

5530-441: Was also involved in efforts to capture David Garrison and turn him over to Southerners; there was a $ 10,000 reward. In response to the new school, a committee of four prominent white men in the town, Rufus Adams, Daniel Frost Jr., Andrew Harris, and Richard Fenner, attempted to convince Crandall that her school for young women of color would be detrimental to the safety of the white people in the town of Canterbury. Frost claimed that

5609-409: Was an employee and not enrolled as a student. Mariah introduced Prudence to Charles' sister, Sarah Harris . In November, 1832, she asked Prudence to admit her to the school; she wished to become a teacher of black students. At first hesitant, Prudence consulted her Bible , which, as she told it, came open to Ecclesiastes 4:1: So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under

5688-481: Was arrested in 1834, but the charges were dropped when the school closed. Crandall's first trial began on August 23, 1833. She pled "not guilty". Her lawyers were William W. Ellsworth , Calvin Goddard , and Henry W. Strong ; they were recruited by Samuel May and paid by Arthur Tappan . Judson led the prosecuting attorneys. The jury was unable to reach a verdict. A second trial began on October 3, 1833, but now at

5767-447: Was deemed successful in her ability to educate young girls, and the school flourished until September 1832. Although Prudence Crandall grew up as a North American Quaker , she admitted that she was not acquainted with many black people or abolitionists. She discovered the problems that plagued black people through the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator , which she learned of through her housekeeper, "a young black lady", whose fiancé

5846-584: Was granted to her by the Connecticut Legislature. She purchased a house in Elk Falls where she died January 27, 1890. Over a hundred years later, legal arguments used by her 1834 trial attorneys were submitted to the Supreme Court during their consideration of the historic civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. The Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives, at Connecticut College , in New London, Connecticut , has

5925-558: Was her neighbor Andrew Judson , an attorney and Canterbury's leading politician, having represented it in both the Connecticut House and Senate, and would soon be Connecticut's at-large member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the national debate that was awkwardly taking place over "what to do" with the freed or soon-to-be-freed slaves, Judson supported "colonization": sending them to (not "back to") Africa (see American Colonization Society ). He said: "We are not merely opposed to

6004-810: Was later set so high that he could not meet it, and he was jailed for 8 months before his trial. It was the first trial for sedition in the history of the country, and being in Washington it attracted a large audience, including members of Congress and reporters. Francis Scott Key was the District of Columbia prosecuting attorney. The jury acquitted Reuben of all charges; this was a major public embarrassment for Key and ended his political career. However, Reuben contracted tuberculosis while in jail and died shortly thereafter. Prudence's sister Almira died in 1837. In 1838 her father Pardon died, followed days later by her sister-in-law Clarissa, who had just given birth. MlSS CRANDALL, of Canterbury, Connecticut, This small offering

6083-471: Was the son of the paper's local agent. After reading The Liberator , Prudence Crandall said in an earlier account that she "contemplated for a while, the manner in which I might best serve the people of color." Prudence Crandall's chance to help people of color came in the fall of 1832. Sarah Harris, the daughter of a free African-American farmer near Canterbury, asked to be accepted to the school to prepare for teaching other African Americans. Although Crandall

6162-419: Was to be superseded by something so anomalous and phenomenal that it could hardly be comprehended." A delegation of townspeople "found her as before, firm as a rock." When a spokesman "delicately hinted at the danger that might ensue from 'these leveling principles and intermarriage between the whites and blacks,'" she bluntly replied "Moses had a black wife." "Reports of these unsatisfactory interviews increased

6241-404: Was uncertain about whether to admit Harris, whom she liked, she consulted her Bible , which, as she told it, came open to Ecclesiastes 4:1: So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. [King James translation;

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