Conversations at Noon: The Legacy of the Canterbury Female Boarding School

Online Event … Join Joanie DiMartino, Curator of the Prudence Crandall Museum, for a thought-provoking presentation on the successes and legacy of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, a groundbreaking school for young African American girls that found itself on the forefront of civil rights in the early nineteenth century. 

In 1832, Prudence Crandall, the white principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, was approached by a young Black woman named Sarah Harris asking to attend the academy. When residents protested the school’s integration and parents threatened to withdraw their daughters, Crandall closed her school and reopened in 1833 for non-white students, welcoming students from several other states as well. Connecticut responded by passing the “Black Law,” which prevented out-of-state Black students from attending school in Connecticut towns without local town approval. Crandall was arrested, spent a night in jail, and faced three court trials before the case was dismissed. In September 1834, a nighttime mob attack closed the school.

Years later, many former students became nationally-renown educators and reformers. The case of Crandall v. State of Connecticut impacted two U.S. Supreme Court cases and a Constitutional Amendment. This talk will focus on the lives of several of the students after they left Canterbury, and the legal significance of the Crandall v. State decision. 

Please register here: https://forms.gle/4Gj1RsfpQF7b2j8c8

Watch on Facebook Live: https://fb.me/e/1rUQ6ToY8