Meet Prudence Crandall

 

They told her to expel the Black student or lose her school. She expelled every white student instead, reopened for Black girls only—and the state made it illegal. She went to jail anyway.

Canterbury, Connecticut, 1832. Prudence Crandall ran one of the state's most prestigious girls' boarding schools. Daughters of wealthy Eastern Connecticut families studied arithmetic, Latin, science, geography, history, astronomy, chemistry, drawing, painting, piano, and French in her rigorous curriculum—comparable to the best boys' schools.

Then twenty-year-old Sarah Harris knocked on her door.

Sarah, the daughter of a successful African American farmer, had completed primary school and wanted to continue her education to become a teacher for Black children in Norwich. 

But no school would accept Black students beyond elementary level.

Prudence Crandall was a twenty-nine-year-old Quaker who read William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper The Liberator. She believed in equal educational opportunities—a core Quaker value that had shaped her own education.

She admitted Sarah Harris.

The reaction was instantaneous.

White parents appeared at her door demanding Sarah be expelled. They threatened to withdraw their daughters if the Black student remained.

Crandall refused.

The parents made good on their threats. One by one, families pulled their daughters from the school, withdrew financial support, and turned their backs on the woman they'd once celebrated.

Crandall's school collapsed. Not enough students. No income.

Most people would have capitulated.

Apologized. Quietly closed and moved on.

Prudence Crandall traveled to Boston instead.

She met with William Lloyd Garrison and Reverend Samuel J. May, prominent abolitionists. She asked: What if instead of admitting one Black student to a white school, she opened a school exclusively for African American girls?

Garrison was enthusiastic. He gave her letters of introduction to prominent Black families across the Northeast. He published advertisements in The Liberator announcing the school's new mission.

On March 2, 1833, Garrison's newspaper declared Crandall would reopen her Canterbury academy "for the reception of young ladies and little misses of color." Tuition: $25 per quarter. Curriculum: identical to what she'd taught white students—reading, writing, grammar, philosophy, chemistry, astronomy, painting, music, French.

By April 1833, enrollment reached twenty-four students, mostly boarders from New York, Boston, Providence, and Philadelphia.

Canterbury's white citizens were horrified.

They didn't just oppose integration—they opposed educated Black women existing in their town at all.

A committee of four prominent white men visited Crandall: Rufus Adams, Daniel Frost Jr., Andrew Harris, and Richard Fenner. They warned her the school would be "detrimental to the safety" of white people.

Daniel Frost claimed the boarding school would encourage "social equality and intermarriage of whites and blacks."

Crandall's response? "Moses had a black wife."

The men left furious.

Canterbury held town meetings "to devise and adopt such measures as would effectually avert the nuisance, or speedily abate it."

The harassment escalated quickly.

Townspeople refused to sell food to the school. Crandall was banned from church. When her students ventured into town, white residents pelted them with eggs, stones, and manure. They shouted threats and insults.

Local boys threw rocks through windows.

Someone poisoned the school's well.

Crandall kept teaching.

Andrew Judson, one of Crandall's most vehement opponents, took his campaign to the Connecticut General Assembly. He lobbied for legislation specifically designed to close Crandall's school.

On May 24, 1833, Connecticut passed the "Black Law"—making it illegal for any school to teach African American students from outside Connecticut without explicit local permission.

It was the first law in American history explicitly prohibiting the education of Black people.

Judson's vision was sweeping. He wanted the Black Law to be a model for other states, declaring: "There shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state" and "The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country."

Crandall believed the law was both immoral and unconstitutional.

She ignored it and kept teaching.

On June 27, 1833, authorities arrested Prudence Crandall for violating the Black Law.

She spent one night in the county jail.

Abolitionist Arthur Tappan of New York donated $10,000 to hire the best lawyers to defend her. Additional collections raised thousands more. The case became a national cause.

Her first trial began August 23, 1833, at Windham County Court.

Her defense attorneys argued that African Americans were citizens in other states, so they should be considered citizens in Connecticut. The Black Law violated their constitutional rights to education and equal treatment.

The first trial ended in a hung jury.

The second trial proceeded in October 1833. This time, Judge David Daggett ruled that African Americans were not citizens and therefore had no constitutional right to education.

Prudence Crandall was convicted.

She appealed to Connecticut's Supreme Court.

Throughout both trials, she continued operating her school.

The harassment never stopped. Daily taunts, threats, violence against her students. One seventeen-year-old student, Ann Eliza Hammond, was arrested—though abolitionists quickly posted bail.

The national press covered the saga extensively. The Liberator thundered against the injustice. People across America debated abolition, citizenship, and education rights because of Canterbury, Connecticut.

The conflict allowed abolitionists to demonstrate that racism wasn't just a Southern problem—the North actively legislated against Black equality too.

In July 1834, Connecticut's Supreme Court dismissed Crandall's conviction on a technicality—not because the Black Law was wrong, but because of procedural issues.

Crandall had won. Technically.

But Canterbury's white citizens weren't done.

The vandalism intensified. The threats grew more violent.

On the night of September 9, 1834, an angry mob surrounded the school.

They smashed most of the windows with rocks and clubs. They broke furniture. They terrorized the students and Crandall hiding inside, fearing for their lives.

When morning came, Crandall looked at the destruction and made a decision.

She couldn't protect her students. Not from a town determined to destroy them.

Two days later, she closed the school permanently.

Eighteen months of defiance. Arrest. Jail. Trials. Daily harassment. A violent mob attack.

And the racists of Canterbury, Connecticut won.

In 1835, Crandall married Baptist minister and abolitionist Calvin Philleo. They left Connecticut and eventually settled in Illinois, where she opened another school and joined the women's suffrage movement.

After her husband died in 1874, she moved to Elk Falls, Kansas to live with her brother.

She'd left Connecticut fifty-one years earlier as a criminal. Exiled for teaching Black girls to read.

But in 1886, prompted by repentant Canterbury citizens and supported by author Mark Twain, the Connecticut legislature granted Prudence Crandall a small pension.

It wasn't an apology. Just money.

She died in Kansas in 1890, age eighty-six.

Connecticut repealed the Black Law in 1838—four years after Crandall closed her school.

In 1954, lawyers arguing Brown v. Board of Education cited Crandall's trials as precedent for challenging segregated schools.

In 1995, Connecticut named Prudence Crandall the official State Heroine.

In 2008, a statue of Crandall and Sarah Harris was unveiled in the State Capitol.

Her Canterbury school is now a museum dedicated to her legacy.

But none of that changes what happened in 1833: a woman admitted one Black student to her school, white parents destroyed her livelihood, so she opened a school exclusively for Black girls—and her state made it illegal, arrested her, convicted her, and stood by while a mob terrorized children in the night until she had no choice but to close.

The North likes to pretend racism was a Southern problem.

Prudence Crandall proved otherwise.

She admitted one student. They passed a law.

She went to jail. She kept teaching anyway—until violence forced her to stop.

And Connecticut took 161 years to call her a heroine.

*** Reprinted from Astonishing Facts Facebook page. Please share this American history fact with others. From north to south, Black success has always been envied, under attack, and oppressed in the US. 

**** There is a wing of a girls dorm named after Ms. Crandall at Howard University.