Prudence Crandall - Integration of The Boarding School

Integration of The Boarding School

In the fall of 1832, a young woman by the name of Sarah Harris, the daughter of a free African American farmer in the local community, asked to be accepted to the school to prepare for teaching other African Americans. Her father owned a small farm near Canterbury, and Harris even attended the same district school as the white girls who were attending Crandall's school as teenagers.

Although she was uncertain of the repercussions that this would cause, Crandall eventually allowed Harris to attend her school. Many prominent townspeople objected and pressured to have Harris dismissed from the school, but Crandall refused. Families of the current students removed their daughters.

Consequently, Crandall ceased teaching white girls altogether and opened up her school strictly to African American girls. Crandall temporarily closed the school and began openly recruiting students on March 2, 1833, when William Lloyd Garrison, a supporter of the school, placed advertisements for new pupils in his newspaper The Liberator. Her advertisement announced that on the first Monday of April 1833 she would open a school “for the reception of young ladies and little misses of color, ... Terms, $25 per quarter, one half paid in advance.” In the list of references were Arthur Tappan, Samuel J. May, William Lloyd Garrison, and Arnold Buffum.

As word of the school passed up and down the Atlantic seaboard, African American families began sending their daughters from out of state to the school. On April 1, 1833, twenty African-American girls from Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, and surrounding areas in Connecticut arrived at Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color.