The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students Elizabeth Bush Jurmain, Suzanne The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students. Houghton, 2005 [160p] illus. with photographs ISBN 0-618-47302-5$18.00 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6 When a light-skinned African-American student sought admission to Connecticut's Canterbury Female Boarding School in 1832, owner and headmistress Prudence Crandall rightly guessed that the parents of her all-white student body would rebel. Instead of dismissing Sarah Harris or attempting to create an integrated school community, Crandall sent her white pupils away and, with the assistance of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, convened an entirely new set of black students. [End Page 140] Neighbors who predicted social decay and doom at once launched a vicious campaign to have the school closed, employing tactics that included vandalism, arson, threats of public whipping, curtailing food and water supplies, and a hasty rewrite of state law to prohibit out-of-state black children from attending school in Connecticut. Since little information is available on the students themselves, Jurmain wisely focuses her account on the battle between Crandall and the Canterbury community. Even without the children's point of view, however, the story moves along with startling speed, and points of law are explained clearly enough to keep young readers engrossed in the escalating attacks on the academy. Ann Rinaldi has offered a fictionalized reconstruction of these events in The Education of Mary: A Little Miss of Color (BCCB 1/01), but fiction devotees who can be coaxed to a nonfiction treatment may discover that even a book with such daunting accoutrements as source and quotation notes, black-and-white period illustrations, a bibliography, biographical data, and an index can be a captivating read. Copyright © 2005 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois