Prudence Crandall’s Legacy. Donald E. Williams
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were far outside the mainstream of public opinion in the 1830s, but a perceptible shift was under way.
At the end of 1829, David Walker published a book that created a fierce debate about the role of blacks in the effort to end slavery. Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World created great interest in the black community and a firestorm of protest elsewhere; it also influenced those who worked with Prudence Crandall, including William Lloyd Garrison. What caught the public imagination was Walker’s sensational call to arms; he said slaves should take up weapons and fight for their freedom just as American colonists fought for their independence from Great Britain. “Kill or be killed,” Walker said.48 One Boston newspaper noted the popularity of the Appeal in the black neighborhoods of Boston. “They glory in its principles as if it were a star in the east, guiding them to freedom and emancipation.”49 The editors of the Boston Daily Evening Transcript did not believe that a black man wrote the Appeal and speculated that the author was “some fanatical white man.”50 The Niles Register summarized Walker’s book as “fanaticism, tending to disgust all persons of common humanity.”51 The Richmond Enquirer called it “the most wicked and inflammatory production that ever issued from the press.”52
In the Appeal, Walker attacked a movement that had gained widespread popularity in the 1820s and purported to solve the problems of slavery and discrimination. Many of Prudence Crandall’s supporters, including William Lloyd Garrison, initially supported the American Colonization Society (ACS) and its goals. The ACS was formed by a group of white citizens in 1817, including Senator Henry Clay, Reverend Robert Findley, and Francis Scott Key. The ACS sought to slowly liberate and “colonize” blacks in the United States by sending them back to Africa to the newly created country of Liberia. The ACS proposed a gradual end to slavery with an undetermined end date in order to placate the South and preserve the union of the states. Colonization gained significant support throughout the 1820s and 1830s.53
The ACS won supporters in both the North and South. Slave owners understood that removing the free black population would strengthen the institution of slavery by eliminating a competing source of cheap labor, thereby increasing the value of slaves. Slave owners successfully shifted the focus of colonization from ending slavery to sending free blacks back to Africa. They helped transform a movement that began as a means to free slaves into an enterprise that suited the needs of both slavery opponents and slave owners.54
The fierce opposition to colonization by David Walker and other black leaders, however, gave William Lloyd Garrison and other abolitionists reason to question the ACS. Walker equated colonization with banishment and surrender to the idea that those of a different race could never expect equality in America. “Will any of us leave our homes and go to Africa? I hope not,” Walker wrote. “Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country.”55 Walker’s direct influence on Prudence Crandall is uncertain. She had access to some of his writings through the Liberator, but she most likely would have disagreed with Walker’s willingness to embrace violence. Crandall’s views, however, mirrored Walker’s regarding the pursuit of equality through education. “For coloured people to acquire learning in this country makes tyrants quake and tremble on their sandy foundation,” Walker wrote. “The bare name of educating the coloured people scares our cruel oppressors almost to death.”56
Crandall drew on her Quaker roots and her new Baptist fervor to do God’s will when she agreed to enroll Sarah Harris as a student. She considered whether Christians should “treat one with unkindness and contempt, merely to gratify the prejudices of the rest.”57 The articles and essays in Garrison’s Liberator helped refine and stimulate Crandall’s sense of right and wrong pertaining to racial prejudice.58 Crandall acknowledged that the Liberator strongly influenced her decision to admit Sarah. She specifically noted how it exposed the “deceit” of the American Colonization Society’s plan to return blacks to Africa, and convinced her of the wisdom of immediate emancipation of the slaves.59 Crandall concluded, “Education was to be one of the chief instruments by which the condition of our colored population is to be improved.”60
Maria Stewart likely influenced Crandall in her decision to admit Sarah Harris. “Shall it any longer be said of the daughters of Africa, they have no ambition, they have no force? By no means,” Stewart wrote. “Let every female heart become united, and let us raise a fund ourselves; and at the end of one year and a half, we might be able to lay the corner stone for a building of a High School, that the higher branches of knowledge might be enjoyed by us; and God would raise us up …”61
In addition to the considerations of faith and equality, Crandall truly liked Sarah Harris as a person. Crandall wrote that Sarah was “correct in her deportment … pleasing in her personal appearance and manners.”62 Crandall was moved by Sarah’s desire to become a teacher.
At first, there was no significant change at the school. Sarah enrolled and joined the other students in class. The students knew Sarah not only through her visits to the school, but also through her family’s membership in the local Congregational Church at Westminster, where “racial background seems to have offered no barrier to Sarah’s acceptance as a member of the predominantly white congregation.”63 No one objected when young black children attended the local district school, in part because of the young age of the children and the small number of black students.64 The white women at Crandall’s school accepted Sarah as a fellow student without incident or complaint.65
It did not take long for word of the school’s new black student to spread among the adult population of Canterbury. Crandall expected some criticism, but thought it “quite as likely that they would acquiesce, if nothing was said to them on the subject, as most of them were acquainted with the character of the girl.”66 The parents of the other students did not react favorably. Some approached Prudence’s father and said they would remove their daughters from the school.67 Crandall’s older brother, Hezekiah, told Prudence that business at his cotton mill had declined because of her decision to admit Sarah Harris.68 The patrons of the school told Crandall that, unless she dismissed Sarah Harris, the school would lose many students.69 “By this act,” Crandall conceded, “I gave great offence.”70
As townspeople increased pressure on Crandall to reverse her decision, she responded with greater determination to keep Sarah as a student. The wife of an Episcopal minister told Crandall that she must dismiss her black student or else her school would fail. Crandall replied, “that it might sink, then, for I should not turn her out!”71 Crandall presented herself with firmness and certainty when publicly challenged, but privately she had grave doubts about the survival of her school. “I very soon found that some of my school would leave not to return if the colored girl was retained,” Crandall wrote.72
Only twelve months had passed since the citizens of Canterbury had embraced Prudence Crandall’s school with enthusiasm. Now Crandall faced limited and troubling options. She could dismiss Sarah Harris or wait for the parents to withdraw their daughters and close her school. Under mounting pressure she thought of an alternative. She would not dismiss Sarah Harris. “Under the circumstances,” Crandall said, “I made up my mind that, if it were possible, I would teach colored girls exclusively.”73
The decision to remake the school and teach only black women was made by Prudence Crandall alone. She did not seek input from her family, friends, or the school’s patrons.74 She knew, however, that she could not pursue this change by herself. Crandall needed help recruiting black students from throughout New England. Her plan demanded great effort and courage, and she did not have much time.
Crandall reached out to a person she had never met but who had influenced her greatly. On January 18, 1833, she wrote to William Lloyd Garrison, “I am to you, sir, I presume, an entire stranger, and you are indeed so to me save through the medium of the public print.”75 She explained that she served as principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, and asked Garrison what he thought of her idea of “changing white scholars for colored ones.”76