What is the history of Canterbury, Connecticut?
In 1832, Prudence Crandall, a schoolteacher raised as a Quaker, stirred controversy when she opened a school for black girls in town. The Connecticut General Assembly passed the “Black Law” which prohibited the education of black children from out of state, but Crandall persisted in teaching, and was briefly jailed in 1832. Mobs forced the closure of the school in 1834, and Crandall married and moved out of state. Connecticut repealed the Black Law in 1838, and later recognized Crandall with a small pension in 1886, four years before her death. The school still stands in Canterbury, and currently serves as the Prudence Crandall Museum.
