Prudence Crandall

About Prudence Crandall

Who is it?: Connecticut's official State Heroine
Birth Day: September 18, 1803
Birth Place: Rhode Island, United States

Prudence Crandall

Prudence Crandall was born on September 18, 2003 in Rhode Island, United States, is Connecticut's official State Heroine. Prudence Crandall was an American teacher who established one of the first schools for African- American girls. She was one of the first abolitionists to protest against the inhuman slavery of the African American community by the white people of America. Born into a Quaker family, she was educated in a boarding school and later ran her own girls’ school where she taught peacefully until she admitted an African-American girl. Her decision to support an integrated school for everyone raised flames of objection and opposition from the white people. She responded with the decision of operating a school only for African-American girls which led to a legal battle between her and the state of Connecticut.. She was eventually acquitted but was forced to shut down her school because of the violent acts of citizens harassing her and the students. She fought for a noble cause throughout her life with an indomitable spirit and audacity which was supported by many abolitionists around the world. Her struggle against all odds was a proof of the strength of her character and willpower. She fought hard to create a society that would be free of discrimination based on race and class, and became an inspiration for future generations around the globe.
Prudence Crandall is a member of Civil Rights Activists

Does Prudence Crandall Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Prudence Crandall has been died on January 28, 1890.

🎂 Prudence Crandall - Age, Bio, Faces and Birthday

When Prudence Crandall die, Prudence Crandall was 87 years old.

Popular As Prudence Crandall
Occupation Civil Rights Activists
Age 87 years old
Zodiac Sign Libra
Born September 18, 1803 (Rhode Island, United States)
Birthday September 18
Town/City Rhode Island, United States
Nationality United States

🌙 Zodiac

Prudence Crandall’s zodiac sign is Libra. According to astrologers, People born under the sign of Libra are peaceful, fair, and they hate being alone. Partnership is very important for them, as their mirror and someone giving them the ability to be the mirror themselves. These individuals are fascinated by balance and symmetry, they are in a constant chase for justice and equality, realizing through life that the only thing that should be truly important to themselves in their own inner core of personality. This is someone ready to do nearly anything to avoid conflict, keeping the peace whenever possible

🌙 Chinese Zodiac Signs

Prudence Crandall was born in the Year of the Pig. Those born under the Chinese Zodiac sign of the Pig are extremely nice, good-mannered and tasteful. They’re perfectionists who enjoy finer things but are not perceived as snobs. They enjoy helping others and are good companions until someone close crosses them, then look out! They’re intelligent, always seeking more knowledge, and exclusive. Compatible with Rabbit or Goat.

Some Prudence Crandall images

Famous Quotes:

Mr. May, we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our State. The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country; they ought not to be permitted to rise here. They are an inferior race of beings, and never call or ought to be recognized as the equals of the whites.

Biography/Timeline

1803

Prudence Crandall was born on September 3, 1803, to Pardon and Esther Carpenter Crandall, a Quaker couple in the Hope Valley area in the town of Hopkinton, Rhode Island. When she was 17, her Father moved the family to Canterbury, Connecticut. In Providence, Rhode Island, Crandall attended Friends' Boarding School. After graduating, Prudence Crandall taught a school in the nearby town of Plainfield, Rhode Island.

1831

In 1831, she purchased a house, with her sister Almira Crandall, to establish the Canterbury Female Boarding School, at the request of Canterbury's aristocratic residents, to educate young girls in the town. With the help of her sister and a maid, she taught about forty children in different subjects including geography, history, grammar, arithmetic, reading, and writing. As principal of the female boarding school, Prudence Crandall was deemed successful in her ability to educate young girls, and the school flourished until September 1832.

1832

Prudence Crandall's chance to help people of color came in the fall of 1832. Sarah Harris, the daughter of a free African-American farmer near Canterbury, asked to be accepted to the school to prepare for teaching other African Americans.

1833

Arthur Tappan of New York, a prominent abolitionist, donated $10,000 to hire the best lawyers to defend Crandall throughout her trials. The first opened at the Windham County Court on August 23, 1833. The case challenged the constitutionality of the Connecticut law prohibiting the education of African Americans from outside the state.

1834

In August 1834, Prudence Crandall married the Rev. Calvin Philleo, a Baptist preacher in Canterbury, Connecticut. The couple moved to Massachusetts for a period of time after they fled the town of Canterbury, and they also lived in New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois. It was later, in Illinois, that Rev. Calvin Philleo died in 1874.

1835

Other members of the family had difficulty with authorities during the 1830s. In May 1835, their brother, Reuben Crandall, who had studied Medicine at Yale and taught botany, had moved from Peekskill, New York to Washington, D.C. He received a medical license there, and began giving lectures and cataloging plants. His trunks held many Anti-Slavery Society tracts and newspapers (some of which he used to wrap plants). On August 10, 1835, two constables arrested him on the charge of possession of abolitionist tracts with the intent to distribute them. A lynch mob gathered at the jail and U.S. Attorney Francis Scott Key prosecuted him. This was a short time after rioting by whites against blacks that had followed the alleged attempted murder of a white woman by a mentally ill slave, Arthur Bowen. Crandall was jailed for eight months before the two-week trial, but the jury acquitted him of all five charges. However, Crandall had contracted tuberculosis (TB), which had no known treatment. After returning briefly to Connecticut, he moved in 1836 to the milder climate of Jamaica in the Caribbean, where he died of the disease, at age 30.

1838

Connecticut officially repealed the Black Law in 1838.

1890

After the death of her husband, Crandall relocated with her brother Hezekiah to Elk Falls, Kansas around 1877, and it was there that her brother eventually died in 1881. In 1886, the state of Connecticut honored Prudence Crandall with an act by the legislature, prominently supported by Writer Mark Twain, providing her with a $400 annual pension (equivalent to $10,900 in 2017). Prudence Crandall died in Kansas on January 28, 1890, at the age of 86. She and her brother Hezekiah are buried in Elk Falls Cemetery.

2014

Under the Black Law, the townspeople refused any amenities to the students or Crandall, closing their shops and meeting houses to them. Stage drivers refused to provide them with transportation, and the town doctors refused to treat them. Townspeople poisoned the school's well—its only water source—with animal feces, and prevented Crandall from obtaining water from other sources. Not only did Crandall and her students receive backlash, her Father was insulted and threatened by the citizens of Canterbury. Although she faced extreme difficulties, Crandall continued to teach the young women of color which angered the community even further.

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