Prudence Crandall

Life & Legacy

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 known school for African American girls ("young Ladies and little Misses of color") in the United States led by a white woman. She was the sister of Reuben Crandall, the defendant in the Trial of Reuben Crandall.
In 1832, when Crandall admitted Sarah Harris, a 20-year-old African American woman, to her school, she created what can be considered the first known integrated classroom in the United States. Following the decision, parents of white students began to withdraw their daughters. Rather than ask Sarah to leave, she decided that if white girls would not attend with the Black students, she would focus on educating African American girls to become teachers. She was arrested and spent a night in jail. Repeated trials for violating a Connecticut law, passed explicitly 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. She died a few years later, in 1890.
She was named the State Heroine of Connecticut by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1995.