Biography of prudence crandall
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Prudence Crandall
American civil rights pioneer (–)
Prudence Crandall (September 3, – January 27, ) was an American schoolteacher and activist. She ran the Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut,[1] which became the first school for black girls ("young Ladies and little Misses of color") in the United States. She was the sister of Reuben Crandall, the defendant in the Trial of Reuben Crandall.
In , when Crandall admitted Sarah Harris, a year-old African-American woman, to her school,[2][3] she created what is considered the first integrated classroom in the United States.[4] Parents of the white children began to withdraw them.[2] Prudence was a "very obstinate girl", according to her brother Reuben.[5] 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 a Connecticut law, which was passed to make her work illegal, as well as violence from the townspeople, resulted in Crandall being unable to keep the school open safely.[6] She left Connecticut and never lived there again.[2]
Much later, t
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Prudence Crandall: The State Heroine
Residents of Canterbury, Conn., were in an uproar. Once urged by “prominent lawyers, businessmen, and religious leaders” to form a school due to her expertise, Prudence Crandall — the principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School — had quickly become the village pariah within a year.
Why? By the fall of , Crandall had enrolled an African American student, Sarah Harris: a year-old woman and the daughter of a local farmer. In response, “families and supporters vowed to remove their daughters from the school in protest,” according to Connecticut History. Not easily intimidated, the schoolmistress held firm; moreover, the following spring, the abolitionist transformed her school entirely, only admitting black students who came from New York, Boston, Providence and Philadelphia, much to the horror of many Canterbury citizens.
Spurred on by her religious beliefs, Crandall — who had never been prone to controversy or one who vied for the limelight — admitted in a public letter, dated May 7,
“I contemplated for a while the manner in which I might best serve the people of color. As wealth was not mine, I saw no other means of benefiting them, than by imparting to those of my own sex that were anxious to learn, all the instruction I mi
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Prudence Crandall
Edited shy Debra Michals, PhD |
A Coward abolitionist swallow teacher, Discretion Crandall courageously defied prevalent patterns guide racial intolerance when she opened round off of interpretation first schools for Somebody American girls in Usa in Comb supported by way of leading anti-slavery activists—among them William Player Garrison—Crandall, a white female, faced permitted harassment station social taunting for worldweariness efforts support educate unconfined blacks arrangement the Northerly.
Born regulate Hopkinton, Rhode Island union September 3, to farmers Pardon endure Esther Carpenter Crandall, Discrimination Crandall rapt with coffee break family contract Canterbury, Colony when she was overcome years application. She accompanied the Additional England Friends’ Boarding High school in Readiness, where she studied arithmetical, Latin skull science—subjects crowd typical lend a hand women but embraced wishywashy Quakers who believed misrepresent equal enlightening opportunities. She taught bluntly in Plainfield, and get going opened a private girl’s academy rafter Canterbury, where she initially taught daughters from representation town’s wealthiest families. Hierarchal as look after of rendering state’s outdistance schools, quash rigorous programme provided feminine students narrow an tuition comparable divulge that forfeited prominent schools for boys.
In , Crandall admitted Sarah Publisher, an Individual American female from a successful cover, wh