Canterbury, Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut's official state heroine was jailed overnight for teaching Black girls in this town.
In 1832 a schoolteacher named Prudence Crandall opened a boarding school for girls here and admitted Black students. One of the town's most prominent men, the state attorney Andrew Judson, led the campaign to shut her down. The state legislature obliged. It passed what was called the Black Law, banning the education of Black children who came from out of state. Crandall kept teaching. In 1833 she was arrested and spent a night in jail. The court cases dragged on and got nowhere. What finally closed the school was a mob of her own neighbors, in 1834. Crandall left Connecticut and never came back. Four years after she left, the legislature repealed the Black Law. In 1995 the same body named her the official heroine of the state, because the school she opened in Canterbury was the first in the country for Black girls. The building is still standing, at the junction of Routes fourteen and one sixty-nine.
This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.
In 1995, the Connecticut General Assembly designated Prudence Crandall as the state's official heroine because she opened the first school in the United States for black girls.
Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Nearby, on the same roads
- Israel Putnam Monument 6.5 mi Critics said the horse on this Revolutionary War monument looked like it had a leg disease.
- Old Furnace State Park 8.9 mi Horseshoes for George Washington's army came out of a furnace here, built from iron ore dug out of swamps.
- Mount Hope River 10.5 mi A herd of free-roaming cattle trampled the banks of this river until it grew too wide, and it took a restoration project to shrink it back.
- Eastern Connecticut State University 11.3 mi This university began with thirteen women taking classes on the third floor of a savings bank.
- Lebanon, Connecticut 13.2 mi Connecticut's whole Revolutionary War effort was run out of a house and a small office on this town's green.
- Foster, Rhode Island 15.6 mi Foster's town hall was built in 1796 and the town still meets in it, making it the oldest government meeting house of its kind in the country.