THE FORBIDDEN SCHOOLHOUSE,
The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students
By Suzanne Tripp Jurmain
Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005
Many years ago, I wrote a story about a girl who tries to rescue a bird that flew into her church and couldn’t find its way out. While the adults around her abandoned the rescue, the girl wouldn’t hear of giving up. When someone asked her why, she replied, “Because it feels like the right thing to do.” I have since discovered that this sentiment lurks in many of the books I write, the idea that each of us has a moral compass that we must obey, come what may. I think this is why THE FORBIDDEN SCHOOLHOUSE resonated with me.
In 1831, Prudence Crandall opened The Canterbury Female Boarding School in Connecticut. Although she ran her own school, Prudence was not in a good position to comment on one of the most outrageous social practices of the time: slavery. She was, after all, single … and a woman. Prudence couldn’t vote. Prudence couldn’t even stand up in public and defend her abolitionist views. Nonetheless, Prudence found a way to make her views known: she admitted a black student to her school. When the parents of her white students protested, and the town around her rose up in arms, Prudence stood her ground. She closed her elite school for white girls and created in its place a school “for the reception of young Ladies and little Misses of color.”
Prudence Crandall did “the right thing.” THE FORBIDDEN SCHOOLHOUSE is her story. I highly recommend it.