In 1833, in Canterbury, Connecticut, Prudence Crandall, a white, Quaker-bred schoolmistress, opened the first private boarding school for black girls in New England. The village was outraged and tried to discourage Crandall with threats, boycotts, and vandalism. When these methods failed, the village elders persuaded the state legislature to pass the "Black Law," which made it a crime for blacks who were not residents of Connecticut to go to school there. Liable as the students' teacher, Crandall went to trial three times before a judge finally dismissed her case.Though the Black Law did not succeed in forcing Crandall to close the school, vigilante violence finally did, in 1834. In the wake of the hostilities, which has tragic consequences for her family, Crandall "took to the prairie," where she spent the remainder of her remarkable life as a pioneer educator, feminist, and free-thinking spiritualist.
This richly documented biography draws on the Crandall family papers and includes Prudence's correspondence with such abolitionist luminaries as William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Tappan. Susan Strane brings the abolitionists' struggle to dramatic life in the story of one woman's incredible courage.
