Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
of the ground that is covered here has been documented elsewhere. In that regard, Susan Strane’s A Whole Souled Woman provides an excellent overview of Crandall’s life. William Lloyd Garrison’s life story has been well told beginning with the four-volume biography written by his sons and more recently in Henry Mayer’s All on Fire. When describing the better-known aspects of the lives of Crandall and those who assisted her, I include new details or perspectives wherever possible. The story of her school and the controversy that ensued is informed by a thorough review of documents, letters, and news accounts in an effort to establish a definitive timeline of events and to separate fact from the speculation and fiction that was promoted by Crandall’s opponents (and often passed in error into historical accounts).
Crandall’s effort toward the end of her life to secure compensation from the State of Connecticut for the loss of her school is told for the first time with attention to the considerable legislative obstacles and opposition. The relationship between the Crandall case and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s argument in Brown v. Board of Education, particularly in how the plaintiffs framed their interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, is discussed for the first time in significant detail. The arguments in Crandall v. State presaged the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment and inspired historian Howard Jay Graham’s view of a “living constitution.”
It is my hope that Prudence Crandall’s Legacy will assist in understanding the work and life of Prudence Crandall and her unique role and influence in the fight for equality in America.
I would like to thank Kazimiera Kozlowski, the curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum in Canterbury, for bringing the Prudence Crandall story to my attention many years ago. In addition to helping to preserve Crandall’s schoolhouse for future generations, she has played a critical role in documenting Crandall’s life, and she and her staff have provided me with great assistance in navigating the resources of the museum. Thank you to the Friends of the Prudence Crandall Museum for their work in organizing events and publicizing the programs of the museum. Peter Hinks, author of To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance, provided important encouragement; his work regarding David Walker is an inspiration. Mel E. Smith and the staff of the Connecticut State Library were especially helpful in locating original letters, legislative records, and the court proceedings in the Crandall case. I am grateful to Laurie M. Deredita and the staff of the Charles E. Shain Library at Connecticut College for access to the Prudence Crandall Collection in the library archives. Thank you to Eisha Neely at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University, Rebekah-Anne Gebler at the U.S. Supreme Court, Christine Pittsley at the Connecticut State Library, Steve Fry in Elk Falls, Kansas, and Betsy M. Barrett, city clerk for Norwich, Connecticut, for their help in securing photos and images for the book. For assistance in tracking down key law review articles by Howard Jay Graham concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, I thank Lee Sims, head of reference services at the University of Connecticut School of Law Library. Matthew Warshauer, author of Connecticut in the American Civil War: Slavery, Sacrifice, and Survival, provided important advice. In Hopkinton, Rhode Island, thank you to Hope Greene Andrews, Scott Bill Hirst, Richard Prescott, and the Hopkinton Historical Association, and to Emery Mako, who in 2011 allowed me to tour the privately owned Hezekiah Carpenter House, where Prudence Crandall was born. In Elk Falls, Kansas, I am indebted to the knowledge and hospitality of Margery Cunningham. When my wife and I visited historic Elk Falls in 2013, many residents turned out to greet us; thank you to all who shared stories and to Gloria Jones-Wolf for documenting our visit in the Prairie Star. With Margery’s assistance and the persistence of Steve and Jane Fry, we found the spot where Prudence Crandall’s three-room farmhouse stood before it was destroyed by a tornado in 1916—a cellar hole in the middle of a vast and stony farm field.
Thank you to my staff at the Connecticut State Senate for heeding my plea not to promote the idea that I was writing a book so as to avoid the recurring question, “Is it finished yet?”
A special thank-you to Suzanna Tamminen, director and editor-in-chief of Wesleyan University Press, and her staff for their excellent suggestions and help in framing Crandall’s legacy and to their external readers, who assisted through their insights and recommendations.
Finally, and most important, Prudence Crandall’s Legacy could not have been written without the encouragement and understanding of my wife, Laura. This has been a journey we have traveled together. Thank you for your patience and inspiration.
Prudence Crandall’s Legacy
1 : Fire in the Night Sky
Throughout her life, Prudence Crandall wanted to teach. Education offered the potential for opportunity, self-sufficiency, even freedom, especially for women, blacks, and the poor. Crandall discovered, however, that educating the oppressed involved risk and clashed with deep-rooted traditions in American society.
In 1833 Crandall’s school for black women in Canterbury, Connecticut, attracted hostility and national attention. Newspapers throughout the country reported on the opposition to Crandall’s school and the danger of emancipating blacks. On the evening of November 12, 1833, as Crandall’s twenty black female students went to sleep, a natural phenomenon—some thought it was the end of the world—briefly overshadowed the controversy surrounding Crandall’s school.
In the slave quarters of the Brodess farm in Bucktown, Maryland, thirteen-year-old Harriet Tubman slept soundly. Tubman was still recovering from a severe head injury that nearly had killed her; a slave owner had thrown an iron weight that hit her in the head after she had refused to restrain a fellow slave.1 That November evening, her brother Robert stood guard watching for the white men known as the “slave patrol,” who often harassed the slaves. Robert saw numerous bursts of light and shouted for Harriet to come outside. She watched silently as hundreds of stars broke free from their anchors and poured down from the sky.2
On the same November night, twenty-four-year-old Abraham Lincoln returned to a tavern in New Salem, Illinois, where he boarded. Lincoln, a struggling merchant who managed a general store and surveyed land, read the law books he had borrowed from a friend in the hope of becoming a lawyer and went to bed.3 “I was roused from my sleep by a rap at the door, and I heard the deacon’s voice exclaiming, ‘Arise, Abraham, the day of judgment has come!’”4 Through the glare of light streaming through his window Lincoln saw the sky ablaze with a thousand fireballs.
In the early morning hours of November 13, 1833, a meteor shower of extraordinary brilliance and intensity—“one of the most terrorizing spectacles” ever witnessed by Americans—turned night into day throughout North America.5 One man compared it to a gigantic volcano exploding and filling the horizon with flying molten glass.6 In many communities, including Natchez, Mississippi, and Baltimore, Maryland, residents believed that their cities were engulfed in flames, and sounded alarms. Tourists at Niagara Falls directed their attention to the flashes of light that descended “in fiery torrents” over the dark and roaring water.7
Yale Professor Denison Olmstead said no other celestial phenomenon in history had created such widespread fear and amazement. He calculated that he had seen hundreds of thousands of meteors in New Haven for many hours that night. It was “the greatest display of celestial fireworks that has ever been seen since the beginning of the world,” Olmstead wrote.8
Some saw the meteors as a sign of hope. “I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle and was awe struck,” said Frederick Douglass, who was fifteen years old and a slave in Maryland. “I was not without the suggestion, at the moment, that it might be the harbinger of the coming of the Son of Man; and in my then state of mind I was prepared to hail Him as my friend and deliverer.”9
Others were certain that the meteors foreshadowed a time of great conflict. A minister in Winchester, Kentucky, opened his church in the middle of the night to accommodate frightened parishioners who feared they were witnessing the end of the world.10 A columnist in Maine at the Portland Evening Advertiser concluded that the meteors signaled the beginning of the “latter days”