Prudence Crandall and her students

I'm reading America's Women, and it's pretty good.  It gives a broad overview of women's history in America, touching not only on the famous figures (Susan B. Anthony, etc.) but on lesser known and ordinary women as well.  This story is from the chapter "Women and Abolition."  I'd never heard about it before.  God bless the bravery of these women.

Prudence Crandall, a 27 year old Quaker schoolteacher, was invited to open a "genteel female seminary" by the wealthy residents of Canterbury, Conneticut in 1831 to educate their daughters.  The school was a success, and "at that point, Sarah Harris applied.  'A colored girl of respectability....called on me some time during the month of September and said, in a very earnest manner, 'Miss Crandall, I want to get a little more learning, enough if possible to teach colored children, and if you will admit me to your school, I shall be under the greatest obligation to you...If you think it will be the means of injuring you,' she added, 'I will not insist on the favor.'"

As a Quaker, Crandall believed in abolition and educating African Americans.  She accepted Sarah Harris into her school.  A group of women, led by the Episcopal minister's wife, met with her to warn against this move.  They threatened to withdraw their daughters and ruin the school.  "Then let it sink.  I will not dismiss her," Crandall replied.

So she turned it into a school for "young ladies and little Misses of color.'  The curriculum would be the same, including the teas and piano recitals.  The idea of young black women being educated in a manner appropriate for upper class whites enraged people further."

A town meeting was held to discuss the matter, but as a woman Crandall was not permitted to attend.  Her male delegates were threatened.  Meanwhile, fifteen more African American girls enrolled and were met with violence.  "When the girls went out to take their daily walk, people blew horns, fired pistols, and threw chicken heads at them."  One girl was arrested on vagrancy laws and was threatened with whipping "on the naked body" before supporters put up a bond for her release.

The state legislature passed the Black Law, which made it illegal to establish a school for the instruction of out of state black children (many of Crandall's students came from surrounding states).  A month later, Crandall was arrested.  Her first trial resulted in a hung jury, but the second convicted her. 

The school went on, however, during the appeal process and abolitionists from all over the country came to support it.  But "in the middle of the night on September 9, 1834...while the girls huddled upstairs in terror, a mob destroyed the house beneath them."  The girls returned to their homes.

"But over the long run, there was a happy ending.  Sarah Harris did become a teacher, as did some of the girls who endured that traumatic time in Canterbury."  After the Civil War, the state repealed the Black Law and gave Crandall a pension for life.