Full Description
Founded in 1833 by white teacher Prudence Crandell, Canterbury Academy educated more than two dozen Black women during its eighteen-month existence. Racism in eastern Connecticut forced the teen students to walk a gauntlet of taunts, threats, and legal action to pursue their studies, but the school of higher learning flourished until a vigilante attack destroyed the Academy. Jennifer Rycenga recovers a pioneering example of antiracism and Black-white cooperation. At once an inspirational and cautionary tale, Canterbury Academy succeeded thanks to far-reaching networks, alliances, and activism that placed it within Black, women's, and abolitionist history. Rycenga focuses on the people like Sarah Harris, the Academy's first Black student; Maria Davis, Crandall's Black housekeeper and her early connection to the embryonic abolitionist movement; and Crandall herself. Telling their stories, she highlights the agency of Black and white women within the currents, and as a force changing those currents, in nineteenth-century America.
Insightful and provocative, Schooling the Nation tells the forgotten story of remarkable women and a collaboration across racial and gender lines.
Contents
Foreword Kazimiera Kozlowski
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction. A Luminous Moment
Crandall and Canterbury: The (Un)Steady State of the Standing Order
The Women and the Issues Are Joined: Maria Davis, Prudence Crandall, and Sarah Harris
Activating the Abolitionist Networks
Martyrs in the Classroom: The Whip and he Prison
Young Ladies and Little Misses: The Black Students and Their Contexts
Ripples and Reflections in the Abolitionist Networks: Conventions and Curriculum
Students on Trial: Thrice inside the Courtroom
Patriarchal Marriage and White Violence: The Closing of the Canterbury Academy
You Are Trying to Improve Your Mind in Every Way: Lives after the Academy
Conclusion. Hearing All the Voices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
