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

**This review was created for an assignment at Texas Woman's University**

Book Review: The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jurmain, Suzanne. 2005. THE FORBIDDEN SCHOOLHOUSE: THE TRUE AND DRAMATIC STORY OF PRUDENCE CRANDALL AND HER STUDENTS. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
ISBN: 0618473025

2. PLOT SUMMARY
The Canterbury Connecticut Female Boarding School owned and run by Prudence Crandall officially opened in October of 1831. Crandall’s school quickly gained a reputation as one of the best boarding schools for girls with its pupils coming from prominent and wealthy families until the day an African American girl named Sarah approaches Prudence asking if she can attend classes. Prudence knows that teaching an African-American student in her all white school would be a highly controversial move. She is willing to teach Sarah, but fears how supporters of her school and community members will react to this radical change to her school.

Jurmain writes, “Prudence wanted to help black people. She believed education was important. There were lots of good emotional reasons to say yes to Sarah. There were also a lot of sensible reasons to say no. First, admitting a black student was almost certain to cause an uproar. Although free blacks lived in the North, they weren’t welcome.”

Prudence chooses emotion over sensibility deciding she will teach Sarah in spite of the fears she has about the wrath that may follow when the townspeople find out the news. What follows is a story about a woman who perseveres in the face of adverse racism, attacks on her school, and angry townspeople who are determined to do everything possible to ruin and destroy her school.

Crandall enlists the help of several prominent abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison (publisher of the Liberator), Samuel May, and Arthur Tappan to help fight the legal system that proposed the Connecticut Black Law making it illegal for Crandall to allow students of color from out of state to attend school. Prudence is arrested and her team of supporters helps her fight the charges against her that are eventually dropped. When the charges were dropped, the team of townspeople that vigorously prosecuted Crandall for her school continued to torment Prudence and her students vandalizing her school beyond the point of repair.

It is with a heavy heart that Prudence closes down the school in 1835 just two years after it’s opening moving to upstate New York with her family. Prudence continued to teach working in prairie schools in Illinois and Kansas later in life, and also worked actively in the abolition movement.

Fifty years after the closing of her school in Connecticut at the age of eighty-four after Prudence Crandall received a formal apology from the Connecticut State Legislature, which included financial compensation for her losses and suffering. Prudence Crandall died in 1890 at the age of eighty-six. Her brave and fighting spirit lives on through history and The Forbidden Schoolhouse is just one way her memory is kept alive.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The Forbidden School House is an attractive and inviting book that will pull readers into the historical and social forces that impacted Prudence Crandall’s life living in Connecticut during the 1830’s. Jurmain uses descriptive and emotional language to help readers understand the depth of adversity Crandall faced. She includes harsh elements of racism that existed as Crandall attempted to educate young African American girls at a time when most people felt threatened by blacks becoming educated. Readers can sense the social tension and fear that Crandall felt as she bravely accepted African American students into her school.

“To many northerners, African Americans were no better than animals or criminals. Some viewed free blacks as a “curse and a contagion.” Prudence didn’t believe that blacks and whites ought to be treated differently. But what if the parents of her white students did?”

It is evident from the emotional elements of Jurmain’s writing that she was passionate about researching and sharing Prudence Crandall’s life story. Her clear and descriptive writing is supported by photographs that give readers the ability to see inside Crandall’s school in addition to photographs of people who were important to her story.

Jurmain’s goes to great lengths to provide a historically accurate account of Prudence Crandall’s life and the adversity she faced when she opened her boarding school to African American female students. She sites her sources throughout the book and includes a section for notes at the end of the book, which is carefully organized by chapters. A thorough bibliography, index, photo credits section, and appendix is included detailing the lives of the students who attended the school as well as “friends and enemies” who were crucial to Prudence Crandall’s story.

Readers will find themselves wanting to read more about this period of time in history after reading Jurmain’s work. This book is a historical treasure that should be included in the study of African American history during the 19th century. Prudence Crandall’s story will leave a memorable imprint in the heart of readers.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
Booklist *starred review*: “Jurmain has plucked an almost forgotten incident from history and has shaped a compelling, highly readable book around it.

School Library Journal: “This book offers a fresh look at the climate of education for African Americans and women in the early 1800s. Report writers and recreational readers alike will find it informative.”

5. CONNECTIONS:
*This book would be a great companion to use for students studying slavery, black history, and the abolitionist movement.

*Students can read other social history informational books about black history from more recent times and discuss if and how historical and social contexts changed from one story to another.

*Students can study and read about women who showed great courage like Prudence Crandall during the 19th and 20th centuries during the Woman’s Suffrage Movement or Civil Rights Movement.

AWARDS:
Orbis Pictus Honor Book 2006,
National Council of Teachers of English, 2006