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202. Miss Crandall’s School for Black Women
00:56:17
After a campaign initiated by schoolchildren, Prudence Crandall was designated the Connecticut State Heroine by the Connecticut General Assembly on Oct. 1, 1995. You may not know Connecticut has a state heroine, or you might have some inkling...
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- [00:05]
A
This is Grading the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history brought to you by Connecticut Explored magazine, where one good story follows another. I'm Mary Donahue. After a campaign initiated by school children, Prudence Crandall was designated the Connecticut State heroine by the Connecticut General assembly on October 1, 1995. You may not know that Connecticut has a state heroin, or you might have some inkling that Crandall was maybe a spinster Quaker school marm who had an unsuccessful school in the hinterlands of eastern Connecticut. In today's episode, I talked to Dr. Jennifer Ricinga about her new book, Schooling the the Success of the Canterbury Academy for Black Women, published just this year by the University of Illinois Press. Jennifer Racinga is a professor emerita of Comparative Religious Studies and Humanities at San Jose State University. Founded in 1833, the Crandall Academy educated more than two dozen black women during its 18 month existence. In this episode we'll hear how a trio of like minded women helped get the Academy off the ground and the tremendous impact the school had in its short existence. Welcome to the podcast.
- [01:22]
B
Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here. Very excited about discussing the book.
- [01:27]
A
Jennifer, I could not put this book down and I know that I do say that quite often, but this one I genuinely could not put down because this is a story I've known for a long time and I thought I really was up to snuff on the details. But your book takes a different approach to the whole topic and which was just amazing and you really tried to dig into the specific stories of the women involved. And I want to get us started on this episode by doing that. You talk about this three way partnership or this intersection of three women. And if these three women had not been the core of this idea of a school for black women, it would never have happened.
- [02:17]
B
That.
- [02:17]
A
So who are Prudence Crandall, Maria Davis and Sarah Harris?
- [02:22]
B
So the Prudence Crandall story is of course well known in Connecticut with her being the state heroine. But it's important to see that what she was doing was starting a school for black women. So how did that idea come about? That was the question that I asked myself when I was starting the research. And what became clear is that police Prudence Crandall as a white woman was vetted by the black community. In particular, she had hired a household servant by the name of Mariah Davis who had come from Boston. And Boston was a particularly strong center of African American activism at that time. So here's the young Mariah Davis, she's a teenage woman, and she senses that her employer, Prudence Crandall, who is running a select academy, is someone who has a conscience. And so she starts leaving copies of the radical abolitionist newspaper the Liberator from Boston. She leaves these around the house in places where Prudence Crandall can pick them up and read them, and they have the desired effect. Crandall writes about how in the pages of the Liberator, the true condition of the people of color in the north was told to her. And so, as Maria Davis is watching her employer change, Mariah Davis is also in conversation with her future sister in law, Sarah Harris, who is also a young woman, black woman living in the neighborhood, actually a mixed race woman. Many of the students were with Native American as well as African American heritages. But Sarah Harris had been to the district schools in Norwich, but she wasn't allowed as a black woman to continue her education beyond that. So, with the advice of Mariah Davis, Sarah Harris decides to ask Prudence Crandall if she could be a student at the school in order to become a teacher herself. So Crandall hears that request from Harris and doesn't act on it right away. Sarah Harris is brave enough to come back and ask again. And finally, Crandall opens her Bible randomly, what's called a talismanic reading. And she opens to Ecclesiastes, perhaps the most depressing book in the Bible, and instead finds hope on its pages, the hope being that she opens to Ecclesiastes 4:1 that says, and the oppressed had no one to stand with them. The powerful did, but not the oppressed. And Crandall takes that as a sign from God that she is to admit Sarah Harris. So these three women, all of them quite young, and the two black women teenagers, are able to meet, and it's very unlikely. It took a real meeting of the minds. And so what we have here is a moment in American history when it isn't a white savior coming in and rescuing these black women, it's the black women themselves, judging who among white women might actually be their friend and not be overly patronizing and be open to what is happening and what is happening to the black community. And so from that, the idea of admitting Sarah Harris was born. So to me, this was a moment of women's history, both black women's history and white women's history. And that's a crucial dimension that hasn't really been been told in the story. But then, as the white Canterburians reacted badly to a black Student being in the classroom. It was Crandall's idea to go and find out if there might be enough black women so that she could reopen her academy for black women only. And she writes to William Lloyd Garrison, who is the editor of the Liberator, and says, I've never met you except through the medium of the press, but I was wondering if you think there might be enough black women whose families could afford a boarding school and academy for them. And so again, we see a woman generated impulse that can so easily be turned into a story about white men being heroic. But in fact, it was the women who were leading the way. And when we see the story that way, because the cradle story is important, I think, no matter how you look at it, I think that it's prismatic, like a diamond. You can pick it up and see it from a number of different angles and the light glints differently. But if you're looking at it from the angle of women's history or black history, it starts to have dimensions that really we were unaware of before. The research that's been done this century that has revealed more students, what they did after the school and what it was they endured when they were students and how they remembered and how their communities remembered the efforts in Canterbury.
- [07:21]
A
So sets a stage for us a little bit. Crandall gets invited in, what, 1831 or 32, to open a really kind of a finishing school academy for white women, white girls, young women. And that was welcomed by the powerful families in Canterbury because it showed that they had a certain amount of kind of class, and it would be an attractive thing to have other people move to town and would be kind of a showplace sort of a situation. But is there ever any. There's never any thought that you could integrate that school at that time, Right?
- [08:04]
B
That's correct. I mean, it never even arose as an idea. When Crandall admitted an African American student, it was referred to by her outraged enemies as this novel experiment. And they felt blindsided by it, that literally the question had never arisen in their minds. And that shows us, I think, part of the very problem indeed. Not only did the town officials welcome Grendel School, they set it up, they endorsed it. They even made sure that she got the most prominent house right by the green to conduct the school. And these schools were really a trend in New England at that time, Katherine Beecher's being the most famous in Connecticut, although there were very important ones, too, in Litchfield and one in Troy, New York. But what Crandall right from the start, did things a little differently. She had more of an academic interest for her students than was common in these. It wasn't only about preparing these women for marriage. And that came from Crandall's own Quaker heritage. The Quaker education she had received had also been more academic than was common at the time for women. So even though she was leaving the Quakers at that very moment, she still retained that emphasis. And when she changed the school to be for black women, the idea of training women for useful professions, in particular teaching, was also gaining currency. But it was probably not part of what the original selectmen of Canterbury had been hoping for. And obviously they had never been hoping for what they saw as a social experiment. As I mentioned in the book, a lot of these academies were meant to be not only finishing schools, but schools that were leading to the Mrs. Degree, as it used to be called, that were leading directly to marriage, but also to networks of friendship. And the idea of social equality for African Americans was so far off the radar of most white people in America at that time that the idea that a black woman might be part of your social network was unthinkable. And it was that third rail, really, that Grandal tripped up on when she attempted to change her school.
- [10:29]
A
I was really struck by the fact that Prudence travels from Canterbury to Boston, New York, Philadelphia. Those are a big drive nowadays. And so I presume she's going by kind of the stagecoach situation. But here she is at that time a an unmarried woman and she's traveling to meet people in these big cities by herself, which was kind of unheard of, I think. And she's convincing enough to families in Boston, New York and Philadelphia in particular, that they will send their daughters, their young black women to Canterbury, Connecticut, which was off the beaten path then, and it's still off the beaten path. What do you think about her agency in developing a school and inviting students?
- [11:25]
B
I think it's quite remarkable. And I had made reference earlier to how Mariah Davis and Sarah Harris vetted Crandall to make sure that she was really going to be anti racist in her thinking. And that had to happen even faster. But with the people who Crandall visited, after she visited Garrison, he gave her a list of contacts and the first place she went was down to Providence. And the first person she met with there was a woman, Elizabeth Hammond, who was a widow and who ran a boarding house. And of course, for Elizabeth Hammond, as an African American woman running a boarding house, respectability and making sure that there would be no Aspersions upon your character had to be utmost in her mind. And not only did she immediately take a liking to Crandall, she gave Crandall a guided tour of the black families of Providence, from which a number of students came. And then she sent two of her own daughters to the school. So that was pretty fast. But then I agree, it's even more radical that Crandall. And by the way, she probably traveled by a combination of ferry and stagecoach to New York City. For an unmarried white woman to travel to New York City was already questionable enough. But then to meet with every leading black male clergy person of New York City, that was unprecedented. And the fact that she got their trust is demonstrable by the fact that those clergy members, parishioners, did send their daughters to the school. And it is interesting to me to reflect upon the bravery of the parents. They didn't know Canterbury, Connecticut. They did have some connections to the seafaring ports like New London. They may have known some African American men who were part of the seafaring industry. But for the most part, I'm sure that black families in New York and Providence and Boston and Philadelphia were not hyper aware of Windom County. So it was a stretch. And these parents were themselves attempting to gain respectability and a sense of belonging in an America that was apparently resolutely set against them. And their daughters were now going to become real case studies in the struggle for citizenship, which is an intense burden to place on any teenager. But in this case, the parents had likely prepared them and. And certainly, as we can see from how they behaved in the trials, they had been prepared in terms of discipline to know how to carry themselves, what kind of comportment would drive a winning argument. And it's really, it's awe inspiring, but it's also disappointing that it has taken generations of brave parents and brave teenagers to simply show to America the humanity that ought to be obvious to every thinking adult of any race. And yet we can see so many generations of young black teenage women, the civil rights era being full of them, and the young woman who taped the beating of George Floyd being another. We have so many examples of the bravery of the young. And again, it's both an honor and a reproach at the same time.
- [14:59]
A
Now, in New England, the town I live in, sometimes there'll be these really pitched battles about things like, oh, should we allow a big development over on this corner? Or oh, do we need to build a new elementary school? And you know, you see signs all over town and people go to public hearings and complain and put their opinion out there, and then it gets decided and life goes on. But in Canterbury, Connecticut, when she decides to open a school for young black women, the opposition to this school continues to escalate beyond the just the complaining or opposition part. Tell us a little bit about how that opposition escalates and, you know, shows itself.
- [15:45]
B
Well, at first, they attempt to simply talk her out of it. First some mothers of the white students come by, Then the town officials come by, and they're just like, you don't really want to do this, you know, and we have your best interests at heart. That kind of talk. But. And this is where it's important that we started by discussing the three women getting to know each other and trusting each other. At this point, Crandall felt an obligation to Sarah Harris as a friend, as someone she knew as well as a student, and she refused to let Sarah go from the school. She was going to make her statement on that. She wasn't going to do it. And that was when she conceived of the idea of changing the character of the school. Once that change was revealed, which happened at the beginning of the year, probably end of January, beginning of February of 1833, at this point, the town leaders really escalated their battle, and they had one of those angry town meetings at the beginning of March of 1834. They were trying to replicate what had happened a few years previous in New Haven, where there was an African American college proposed and that was defeated by a raucous town meeting with the infamous vote of 700 to 4. The people of Canterbury wanted to produce a similar result of unanimity and. And made sure that Crandall herself could not be there because she was a woman. So they wouldn't have let her be there to speak. But also she had sent some representatives in her stead, and those men were not allowed to speak. So there was every effort to make it appear utterly unanimous that the town was against this. However, there was nothing illegal about it, so they could only shut it down by outrage. That was their. Their hope was that the mere outrage of the population and the fact that the people clearly didn't want it there would be enough. But they weren't counting on the stubbornness of Prudence Crandall, nor the vision of Prudence Crandall and the young woman who she was inviting to study there. So when the beginning of the school happened in April, the town's leaders pulled out old laws that called for corporal punishment for anyone breaking a vagrancy law, and they declared any African American from out of state who was attending the school to be a vagrant. And so they actually threatened to whip the daughter of Elizabeth Hammond and Eliza Hammond. They threatened to whip her on the naked back. And again, we're talking about a young woman, we're not talking about a girl. It would have been just as bad for a girl. But we can't discount some kind of a prurient interest in wanting to strip these women before whipping them. And the stakes in that contest grew. And Crandall and her allies were counseling Ann Eliza Hammond that they would protect her. She was like, I'm ready to do this if that's what's needed to show what's happening.
- [18:54]
A
That's just unbelievable. I would have folded up by then.
- [18:58]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It is unbelievable. At the last moment, apparently the selectmen realized that that was going to be very bad PR for them. And so they decided that they wouldn't do that, but instead escalate fines against the school. One of Crandall's allies was the very wealthy New York financier Arthur Tappan. And so he started paying the fines. So that wasn't going to work either. So they went to their ultimate plan, which was the so called black law, which of course is infamous in Connecticut history. To summarize quickly, the law was that it was illegal to harbor out of state black people for purposes of education. And that purposes of education was important because they certainly didn't want to prohibit southern gentlemen who might be coming to Connecticut to enact business from bringing their enslaved African Americans with them or bringing an enslaved mistress with them or something. So if it was for some other purpose, that's fine, but not to actually stay there and be educated. And this black law was passed with a great deal of institutional support from the state. When its passage was announced in Canterbury, it was celebrated. The students heard that from the school. They heard the Canterbury law.
- [20:16]
A
Jennifer? Yes, this is a state law. This isn't even just a Canterbury law. This is a State of Connecticut general Assembly law that you're talking about.
- [20:25]
B
You got it. A State of Connecticut general Assembly law. And it was, again, it was a targeted law. I mean, I believe that it's unconstitutional on many grounds because it was clearly targeted at Grandel. But the idea of making sure that there would never be another attempt, even for an African American institute like that, was what was in their minds. And so with that, we now move into the legal sphere. And Crandall herself was arrested for violating the law. And in a big public relations error, the Selectman decided to put her in jail. And when she approached the jail cell, her ally Samuel J. May said, are you sure you want to do this? And she said, I'm just afraid they're not going to put me in jail. It's like she understood that this was going to amplify the cause, which it did quite effectively. She spent one night in jail. No one would bail her out until the next morning. All of her allies had agreed, but then there was going to be a trial. Now that she'd been arrested, this is when the students really shine. The first trial was held in August of 1833. At that trial the students were present as witnesses, but they're in a kind of triple jeopardy here because they have to witness against the school of which they are a part. And so they're kind of self indicting, so the, you know, the standard idea of double jeopardy. But they also have to be sitting there and not reacting to these arguments being made against their citizenship, against their ability to learn, against their parents and everything their parents had tried to achieve. And, and again I remind us, these are 16 year olds, not the age best known to be able to refrain from an eye roll or a sigh at an inopportune time. And yet these students didn't do that. Instead they followed their lawyer, the great William Ellsworth. Ellsworth had counseled them not to testify on the grounds that they would be self indicting. So Fifth Amendment protection. But the law had been written to force them to testify and yet they still refused. Yeah, the law had been specifically written to force them to testify. The cruelty was the point. And the students still refused. And one was going to be carted off to jail herself for refusing to speak when finally they were able to find a Connecticut born student who couldn't use the fifth Amendment as her reason. And she had to admit. And she said, here's what we do in the school. We start every day with the Lord's Prayer, we take our lessons together. And so she rightly played the card of we're not hurting anybody and what we're doing is exactly what you would want to have done in a school. The result of that first trial was a hung jury. The student's testimony.
- [23:35]
A
Interesting.
- [23:35]
B
Yes. The students testimony and their remarkable fortitude because Crandall, even though she's the defendant, couldn't speak. The students had to. And so they carried the day and they led to the next trial which happened in October. And that one was chaired by Chief Justice David Daggett, the founder of the Yale Law School, and he was a decided opponent of the school, and he decided against the school. But Crandall's lawyers immediately appealed to the Supreme Court, and it wasn't decided by the supreme or it wasn't going to be decided by the Supreme Court until July of 1834. So the school had some operating room. Again, the townspeople in Canterbury were simply astonished that Grandel didn't stop teaching, knowing how illegal her school was and all of this. But technically, as long as the. As the appeal process was going, she could keep going, and thus she did so. The students were incredible in that first trial. And it was commented on by the reporter for the Connecticut Post, who became an advocate of the school as he watched the trial. And he said, you know, anyone would be proud of how those young women performed. That's. I think.
- [24:52]
A
Let's just review for a second. Let's just review the. Gosh, they're such cliches now. But there's two or three kind of standard reasons that the white male citizens in Canterbury give for not wanting to have young black women at this school. Of course, the underlying thing is just white supremacy and that, you know, you can't. Why educate black women? And, you know, we don't think that that's appropriate. But what are some of those, like, standard cliches, two or three of them that they use to say this would be a bad idea?
- [25:28]
B
One was that essentially unknown black people would be coming to the town, and we don't know what their habits are, and everybody knows how bad African American people are, and we will be overrun. And even if these girls are fine, who knows about their relatives? So that was one of the lines was, we will be overrun. And Andrew Judson, the lead selectman and the grand architect behind the black law, Andrew Judson, even said that Connecticut would be the Liberia of America if the school was allowed to stand, meaning it would become a haven for African Americans. And that's not what the village wanted. Another reason that was given was that these young women would be looking to marry Canterbury's fine young white men. And this is so laughable. The students themselves even made fun of it, One being a letter that a student wrote about her first few weeks in Canterbury. And she said, you know, the ride here was difficult, but everything in the school is great. We have such a wonderful time. I'm learning a lot. It's a beautiful village. The only thing it lacks is civilized men.
- [26:43]
A
Well, that takes care of that.
- [26:45]
B
That takes care of that. Right there is. I mean, the way the Canterbury men were behaving. The idea that they would be at all attractive to these women was some kind of bizarre fantasy. They had made themselves very unattractive indeed. So that was another one of the reasons. But the other one is one that you referenced, which is that it wasn't in the job description for black people to have to have an education. African Americans were allowed to attend the district schools here in Connecticut, so literacy skills at the basic level was something that was part of many jobs that African Americans would hold in Connecticut at the time. But higher learning, actual academic subjects? Nah. And of course there's even a question, do women need those? But certainly there was no question but that African Americans didn't need that. There was an editorialist for one of the New York papers, vicious racist, who said, of what use can it be for a coachman to know Horace or mathematics? So it just obviously the jobs for which they are intended do not require it and you will be giving them errors and taking them above their station if you do that. And there was a lot of mockery made of African Americans who had aspirations for higher learning or for more cultured life. And that mockery was often cruel and bantered around quite freely in the press.
- [28:16]
A
We'll be back in a minute with my guest. Want to have a say about what you love about Connecticut history? With a $500 donation to Grading the Nutmeg, you can dedicate one episode to a person or an organization of your choosing and have a 30 second mid reel ad in the podcast to say what you you love about Connecticut or Connecticut history. Go to ctexplore.org and look for the Donate button at the top. Hope we'll be hearing from you soon.
- [28:46]
B
Ready to start your podcast? Need help with theme music, recording, editing, uploading your episodes to all the major podcast outlets? Or are you ready to make some killer videos for your brand and get some high quality content out there? High wattage media can help. Contact Patrick@HighWattageMedia.com the link is in the show Notes Praised as an ambitious and insightful book, African American Connecticut Explored is the first collection to delve into the African American experience in Connecticut from the earliest years of the state's colonization into the 20th century. Celebrating its 10th year of publication, this award winning book is used in schools across the state and prominently features the voices of of Connecticut's African Americans through its 50 essays. Explore more about the black governors of Connecticut, prominent Black abolitionists, the 29th Regiment of Colored volunteers in the Civil War, and even baseball great Jackie Robinson by Purchasing your copy. Published by Wesleyan University Press, this book represents the collaborative effort of Connecticut Explored and the Amistad center for Art and Culture, with support from the State Historic Preservation Office and Connecticut's Freedom Trail. Copies are available at Wesleyan University Press.
- [30:06]
A
I want to move into the phase where we've got the. We've had the. We've got the legal cases going forward and prudence is maintaining her school, but the level of actual physical violence, and this is what just hit me again. Reading this goes from just sort of name calling and taunting of these women when they're out doing their shopping or taking a walk or whatever they're doing just outside of the school building is one thing. But then we move into actual vandalism and physical violence. Tell us about that.
- [30:42]
B
Yeah, First I want to just make a quick note on the name calling, which is that, yes, whenever the young women would be outside, people would come and say nasty things to them. But the students never revealed each other's names. Neither did Crandall and her allies reveal the names of who their students were. The names that we know of, students come to us through the court documents and through later memoirs and letters and reminiscences and in some cases obituaries. And I think that's really remarkable. And just as the book was going to press, we discovered a student who we hadn't known about before, who turns out to be rather from a well known Philadelphia family, Elizabeth Webb Iredell. And the fact that we didn't even know that she had been a student until 2025 has something to do with that code of anonymity that the students knew they needed to do, which I think is very powerful as a statement of their own sisterhood with each other. But yes, the violence started, the vigilante violence was absolutely constant, absolutely constant. And it involved soiling the water in the well at the same time that local merchants wouldn't sell water to the school or sell any supplies. And so putting cow manure down the well is certainly an act of violence. And then rocks were thrown at windows. And of course, you know, these are all glass windows. So that's both an expense and a danger. And there were, nearing the end of the school, there was a particularly ugly incident which was the killing of a cat. That was a cat with black and white fur. And I compare it to a mafia message. It's like, this is what's going to happen to you if you persist. The only known fatality in this struggle, but still as a cat lover, I feel it. And then, and Obviously the students would have too. They knew what the message was saying. But the worst attack on the school was one where again, the townspeople were so aghast that Crandall just went on with their school as if nothing had happened. That in one of the local newspapers an editorial was printed saying this school is going to get put down. And about a month later, there was an African American man by the name of Frederick Olney, who's a very important figure in Connecticut history. He was one of those African Americans associated with maritime trades out of New London. And he married one of Sarah Harris's sisters. And so he has a deep connection to the family. And he was visiting the school one day in late January and helping around the house when one of the students said, I smell smoke. And another student said, there's smoke throughout the room. And it turned out someone had tried to set fire to the school. And only being a rather well built former sailor, knew just what to do. He went outside and located where the fire was coming from and was able to put it out quite quickly. And obviously the students were all delighted, as was Crandall and the white officials arrested only three days later, charging that he and Crandall had conspired to start an arson fire to bring more attention to the school. So it's a very typical story of deflection, but also of the railroading of a young black man, a story that our era is also familiar with. And so with these trumped up and obviously false charges against Olney, he was put on trial in late February and early March of 1834. And once again, it is the students who are outstanding in the trial. They knew what was going on and they were able to tell the story of exactly what had happened when, where Olney was and many things that went to exonerate him beyond the question of a doubt. But the clinching argument is the best demonstration I can give of the bravery of the parents and of the support of the whole black community for the school. Olney was at the school that day delivering a care package. One of the cutest things that any we can imagine, right? It's one of those things that marks the continued affection between parents and children whenever the children are at a distance school. And in this case the mother was a woman named Elizabeth Marshall who lived in New York City. And her daughter who was attending the school was Gloria Catherine Marshall. And Elizabeth Marshall had tried to send her daughter a care package once before, but it hadn't reached its destination. I don't want to think about why, but I can guess. But it hadn't reached the school. So this time Elizabeth Marshall sent the package with Olney and said, as soon as you deliver it to my daughter, please send me a letter telling me that you saw her and that she's fine and that she got the package. So Olney had done that before he came back to the school and saw the fire. When Elizabeth Marshall found out that Olney was going to be put on trial, she still had half the letter that he had sent. And she made the trip to Canterbury. And knowing how hostile it was by then, you know, we're talking a year into the school. Nobody was. Was naive. And so she showed up and she gave the testimony that cinched it. Let me add, too, she was illiterate. So she had to bring another one of her daughters, Mary Marshall, with her to read this and to help translate for her mother. And that's just incredible. I mean, wow, the jury, this like any jury in that time, it was an all white male jury. They didn't even take 15 minutes. They were embarrassed at this point that they had brought that case. So only exonerated. Yeah, it's quite a story.
- [37:00]
A
Yeah, that's just. It's to that jury's credit. It's a shame that it was even brought, to say the least. It is an embarrassment. But then we get to a moment, an evening of serious violence that really gives Crandall pause and makes her think about whether she's going to continue her school.
- [37:20]
B
Yeah, the school had persisted through a lot, and for a time it appeared that she might be able to. To win this case. Her lawyers were brilliant. I mean, William Ellsworth is a very important figure in Connecticut history. Their arguments for citizenship for African Americans and by the way, for women as well, are strong enough that they reappear in order to be defeated in the Dred Scott and then in order to be affirmed in Brown v. Board. So there had been a third trial about the black law, but the justices decided to not make a decision, but to remand it back to the lower court. And in so doing, they would have restarted the whole judicial proceeding. But the vigilantes weren't having any of that. And the vigilantes were empowered because in July of 1834 and in August of 1834, there were terrible anti black and anti abolitionist riots, first in New York City and then in Philadelphia and in New York City, this had destroyed some of the churches whose ministers had sent students to Canterbury.
- [38:35]
A
And Jennifer, I kept thinking when I was reading this that this is a full 30 years, just about before the Civil War. And it's that tense. And we're having race riots decades before the Civil War even.
- [38:52]
B
Yes, exactly. And for some of these families, they will live through the terror of what happened in New York in that July of 1834, and then relive it in the Draft Riots 30 years later. The. The infamous Draft Riots of 1863 that destroyed many of the institutions that the alumna of Canterbury had helped build. So, yes, the. The tension was running very high and continued to run very high. The riots in New York had not, to our knowledge, resulted in any fatalities, but we do know that it resulted in sexual assaults. And that had to be very terrifying to a beleaguered school filled with African American women who were teenagers. I mean, that had to be sobering. And the riots in Philadelphia did have some loss of life attached to them. So those were two of the places that students had come from. And now the vigilantes are feeling, well, hey, nothing happened to the people who caused those riots, so why don't we just take care of the school once and for all? So they go on the night of September 9, 1834, and they break every window in the school and then just slink back into the night. Crandall, by this time, had married the Reverend Calvin Filio. And Filio went across the street to talk to Andrew Judson, and Judson slammed the door on him, essentially said, I'm not talking to you. I'm not going to help you. And so it was clear that to wait for the next attack would be to invite a sexual assault or death. And at that point, the school did close, and it was quite precipitous. I mean, things had been going pretty well. More and more students were appearing. Many scholars have wondered why the school closed. And I really think it was the danger. I think it was the increased ferocity of mobs. And Crandall's great ally, William Lloyd Garrison, was nearly killed just nine months later, a year later, excuse me, in what was an attempted lynching of him in Boston. So the danger was real, and it was just too much to risk the lives and safety of those young women. The students were very sad about the school ending. We have a few of their reports on what the school was like, and they all expressed sadness, but none of them express anger at Crandall or at her allies. That it had to close. And the continued respect for Prudence Crandall in the African American community, both during her life and after, would indicate that the trust that Mariah Davis and Sarah Harris had placed in her was not ill founded. So in that sense it is a shame. And Crandall's marriage turned out to be one that was not particularly good for her. And it somewhat crushed her ability to participate in the abolitionist movement to the extent that she had previously. And some scholars have looked at that and just think, well, it was her husband that ruined it all. But I really, as much as I'm not that fond of Calvin Vilio, I don't blame him for the closing of the school. I blame him for keeping his wife away from the cause that she had served so well. But I don't blame him for the catastrophe at the school. I blame the mobs for that.
- [42:18]
A
In the book, you kind of say that prudence goes into a period, a 40 year period of really almost obscurity. But then there's a movement in, I think, the 1880s to recognize her and get her a Connecticut state pension. Tell us about how she gets a.
- [42:36]
B
Pension after the first of all. I just want to say that after her husband died, she came out of that forced obscurity. She and her brother decided at age 80 that there'd be nothing better than to move to Kansas and take up farming in Kansas. So she re blossoms then and she becomes very active in women's suffrage and in the temperance movement, which she had always been a part of. But as you know, Kansas was a place that was particularly into temperance. It's what gave us Carrie Nation. And so she also was monitoring what was happening in the African American communities and reading the African American press in Kansas, which is unusual for most white women at the time, let alone now. So she was already becoming active, but she didn't have a lot of money. And this was recognized by an old neighbor and friend of hers by the name of John Smith, who was a distant relation by marriage. And he said, well, you were so injured by what the state of Connecticut did to you. And the black law had been long repealed by then. It was repealed in 1837. Said the state owes you something for what they cost you. And so an effort to get a pension was started. And it was a wonderful. The campaign had its ups and downs. And as you can imagine, state budgets being what they are, it was like, well, can we really afford this kind of thing? But it's like this is a pittance and you owe it and you're going to look better in the historic record for doing it. But the key moment, the moment that made the difference and swung the public relations in favor of this pension was when Mark Twain joined forces. As I say in the book, Mark Twain could recognize a good story when he saw one. And this, obviously, the Canterbury story, is America's Canterbury's tale. And he recognized right away the importance of what she had done. And with his name and renown added to all of the other people speaking in her favor, which included, by the way, the descendants, the children of William Love Garrison and many other old abolitionists or descendants of abolitionists. With all of that, they finally did give her a small pension. And with that pension, she was able to move into the town rather than living out on a farm in the part of Kansas where she was. And she was able to pay for her own transportation when she would go to other towns. And I'm happy to report that her area of Kansas was so far in advance on women's suffrage that she got to vote in a school board election, oh, my gosh, in her last years. And they, by pride of place, let her vote first, knowing how famous she was. So it did work out that she got the pension, and that did, in fact, give her the ability to not end her days in poverty. And that was very nice. But, of course, nothing was ever done for the students, who also had had their future stolen from them by this law and by the destruction of the school. School. And so it's important to note that at the same moment that Twain is lending his support to Prudence Crandall and her need for the pension, he is also helping to pay the tuition of a young African American student at Yale who is not as well known as he should be today. His name was Werner McGuinn, and Werner McGuinn was studying in the law school and actually was studying alongside one of the descendants of Judge Daggett, which is a remarkable thing to think about. And Maguin, when he graduates, gets his first job editing a newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas. And he must have heard about Crandall from Twain, who had supported his education, because when Crandall dies, McGuinn writes two very long stories about her greatness and about all she had done and that she had continued to do to support the cause of African American civil rights. Now, that's a wonderful story, but it gets better because McGuin goes on to, after his time in Kansas, he moves to Baltimore, where he becomes a major civil rights lawyer and argues cases for women's rights as well as African American rights. And he becomes the mentor to one Thurgood Marshall. And so that is amazing. Yes. So we have this kind of through line From Mark Twain to Crandall and connecting Crandall and McGuinn and then Maguinn to Marshall. And so it's not an accident that in the suite of cases that includes Brown v. Board, that Ellsworth's arguments in favor of the Canterbury School and black citizenship show up again.
- [47:21]
A
One of the strengths of your new book and one of the things I found so engaging was of course we've got the dramatic story, 18 month story of the school. But instead of thinking of the school as a failure because it only lasted a year and a half, you've kind of spun that around and you're looking at what happened to the students and their descendants. And I encourage listeners to get the book because the connections that those students who were teenagers or maybe up to about 20 years old, the amount of education they get in that small amount of time and what they do with it and how they go forward with it has this continuing ripple effect, which is just what you want to see communities get from education is this ripple effect. So tell us a couple of stories. You've just told us the one about the black student that Mark Twain supported, but tell us a couple stories about these phenomenal students of Prudence Crandall and what they go forth to do.
- [48:29]
B
There's so many, and I think we're only going to discover more. I'm hoping that the book will in fact get some other people who are descendants to speak up and share their stories. But on the COVID I have three women, Sarah Harris, who married named Sarah Harris Fairweather, and many. She had many children and they made a huge impact, particularly in education as well as. On the opposite end of the COVID is her sister, Mary Harris. And Mary Harris married a man named Pelhaman Williams and they ended up moving to New Orleans and were helping in the education of the newly freed people in the south, even as the war was still raging, but New Orleans had fallen to the Union forces. So they're in with the area that's building Straight University and the preparatory schools. And their descendants, Mary Harris and Pelham and Williams, their descendants, make significant contributions to the history of jazz. They're in the same school network that's going to give us Louis Armstrong and other artists. So that leads to, I think, a very rich vein of music. For instance, two of Mary Harris's grandsons are, are in an orchestra called the Robichaux Orchestra. The percussionist in that orchestra is the first to invent what we now consider to be the modern drum set. So that's only what powered all of 20th and 21st century music, near as I can tell. Right. So that's. And then another descendant marries Cab Calloway. So the, the connection with. With jazz keeps going. Another one of those descendants of Mary Harris is involved in the school desegregation cases in New Orleans and also in the women's liberation movements of New Orleans. So a very powerful heritage from Mary Harris. And then another one of the students, Amy Fenner, she ends up moving to Rhode island where she marries Ransome Parker. And their descendants include one granddaughter who marries a man named Fritz Pollard Jr. Excuse me, Fritz Pollard, who. Who ends up being one of the first African American coaches in the National Football League. He's actually in the NFL hall of Fame. There was a time when the NFL wasn't segregated, and then it segregated. So we're talking the 1920s. But their child, Fritz Pollard Jr. Is a track and field star who ends up becoming an Olympian in of all The Olympics, the 1936 Olympics, Hitler's Olympics in Berlin, where Hitler is trying to prove white supremacy, and instead Jesse Owens happens to Hitler. So the opposite happens. And at the same Olympics where Jesse. We think of it as the Jesse Owens Olympics now, but in one of the events where Owens gets the gold, Fritz Pollard Jr. Gets the bronze. So I just love the picture of one of the descendants of the students and basically thumbing their nose at Hitler. I mean, that's just talk about continuing the legacy. And what we've been able to demonstrate, not just me, but other scholars too, is that at least half a dozen of these students go on to become teachers themselves, and another half dozen become leading activists in the abolition movement. One becomes a newspaper editor herself with her husband. That's Mary Elizabeth Miles Bibb, who is one of the celebrated founders of Afro Canadian history. And she helps to edit a newspaper with her husband, Henry Bibb, who was someone who self liberated from slavery. So she's a very powerful voice. And then another one was Julia Williams Garnett, who had studied with Crandall and then went to another, even more ill fated school, the Canaan Academy in New Hampshire, which was multiracial and coeducational. And the townspeople there reacted so badly, they actually pulled the school off of its foundations and dumped it into a nearby body of water. So, you know, again, this white hostility to black education was so general at the time that you couldn't find incidents like that. But it was at Canaan that Julia Williams met her future husband, Henry Highland Garnett, who was in many ways, I refer to him as the Malcolm x of the 19th century. He was more militant than Frederick Douglass. Garnett and his family had also self liberated from slavery and they had been injured in the attempt as they were fighting back for their freedom. Garnett himself had a lifelong limp because of a fall from a window as the family was escaping. And so Julia Williams married Garnett and was actually his closest advisor when it came to his most famous speeches about how the slaves had every right to fight back. And so that is very powerful that she's actually part of the intellectual history of the ongoing African American discourse of violence, nonviolence. And so when we think about all of the contributions that these students and their descendants have made, it's really quite astounding that it's taken till now to reunite them. But I sometimes feel as though that has been my job is organizing the class reunion. We're just, you know, 200 years after class let out. That's all. Not quite 200 yet, but we're getting there. So 192 years later, we have a class reunion.
- [54:05]
A
Well, it's a wonderful chapter to read and even in like my, my Irish family. What propelled my family into College was the GI Bill after World War II. And that has changed everything about what my family has been able to do educationally and professionally. And so for a Crandall school to be thought of as a successful starting point instead of a failed attempt I think is so powerful. Well, on that note, I want to thank you so much, Jennifer, for joining me today. And we will have all the information in the show notes about the book and how to get the book. I hope you continued success on your book tour.
- [54:49]
B
Thank you so much, Marina. I've really enjoyed talking with you.
- [54:57]
A
My thanks to Jennifer Rusinka for being my guest today. We'll have the link for ordering the book from the University of Illinois Press in our show notes or look for the book at your favorite bookstore. Dr. Raisinga is available for book talks and lectures both remotely and in person. Her contact email is in the show notes. For this episode, we have a serious funding gap for 2025. You can help us continue to tell the important stories from Connecticut's history by donating a fixed dollar amount monthly. It's easy to set up a monthly donation on the Connecticut explored website@ctexplore.org click the donate button at the top and look for the Grading the Nutmeg link. We need and appreciate your support. This episode of Grading the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donahue and engineered by Patrick o'. Sullivan@HighWattageMedia.com Follow GTN on our socials, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram threads and Blue Sky. Follow host Mary Donahue on Facebook and instagram @wehasidewalkhistorian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grading the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history. Thank you for listening.