Canterbury Female Boarding School
| Canterbury Female Boarding School | |
|---|---|
Site of Canterbury Female Boarding School, now the Prudence Crandall Museum. | |
| Location | |
1 South Canterbury Road Canterbury, Connecticut 06331 United States | |
| Coordinates | 41°41′53″N 71°58′18″W / 41.698130°N 71.971610°W |
| Information | |
| Other name | School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Color |
| Type | Boarding |
| Established | October 1831 |
| Founder | Prudence Crandall |
| Closed | September 10, 1834. Closed briefly in March 1833 as it converted into a school for African-American "young ladies and little misses of color", which reopened April 1833. |
| Principal | Prudence Crandall |
| Staff | Mariah Davis |
| Faculty | Prudence Crandall, her sister Almira Crandall, Samuel May, William Burleigh: 660 : 62–66 |
| Gender | Female |
| Enrollment | 24 |
| Campus type | Large house on Canterbury town square |
| Supporters | William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Simeon Jocelyn, Rev. Samuel J. May, Arthur Tappan |
| Enemies | Andrew T. Judson |
| Relevant legislation | Connecticut Black Law, passed May 24, 1833, repealed 1838, prohibiting educating African Americans not from Connecticut, who were not citizens and did not have rights. |
| Legal issue | Whether African Americans were citizens |
| Supreme Court references | Dred Scott v. Sandford, Brown v. Board of Education |
| Website | Prudence Crandall Museum, state of Connecticut |
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The Canterbury Female Boarding School, in Canterbury, Connecticut, was operated by its founder, Prudence Crandall, from 1831 to 1834. When townspeople would not allow African-American girls to enroll, Crandall decided to turn it into a school for African-American girls only, the first such in the United States. The Connecticut legislature passed a law against it, and Crandall was arrested and spent a night in jail, bringing national publicity. Community violence forced Crandall to close the school.
The episode is a major incident in the history of school desegregation in the United States. The case Crandall v. State was "the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history.... The Crandall case [in which a key issue was whether blacks were citizens: 144 ] helped influence the outcome of two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857[] and...Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.": xi