Intolerance sometimes wins -- at least in the short term -- but how will things look once time has passed?
Today I stopped by the Prudence Crandall museum in Brooklyn, Conn., and I couldn't help but wonder how the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque will look down the road. Will you be proud of the stand YOU took?
Intolerance sometimes wins -- at least in the short term -- but how will things once time has passed?
Today I stopped by the Prudence Crandall museum in Canterbury, Conn., and I couldn't help but wonder how the controversy over the so-called Ground Zero mosque will look down the road. Will you be proud of the stand YOU took?
Miss Prudence Crandall was a young woman in her late 20s running an elite school for well-to-do young women in the early 1830s in what is now Canterbury, Conn. Educating women was somewhat controversial in those days, but if you had money you could find a quality education for your daughter. No doubt Miss Crandall could have had a long. comfortable career teaching such a clientele and who knows, there might today have been a Crandall College in northeastern Connecticut if she'd taken the safe road.
But a young black woman named Sarah Harris applied for admission to the school. I Miss Harris was a local girl, 17, the daughter of a local farmer. Her aim was to become a teacher of black children. Interestingly the local district school was integrated and Miss Harris had formerly been classmates with some of the girls at Crandall's private academy.
Lest Connecticut Yankees feel too smug in comparison to Little Rock or Birmingham, they should recall how their forbears greeted Crandall's acceptance of Harris. They pressured Crandall to rescind Harris' acceptance and when Crandall refused, they pulled their girls out of the school.
Crandall converted her school into one devoted to teaching black girls and with the help of William Lloyd Garrison recruited all along the eastern Seaboard. On April 1, 1833 the new school opened with 20 students paying $25 per quarter, evidence that they came from well-off families.
The reaction of the local community was swift and ugly Crandall faced heavy criticism, local merchants refused to sell her supplies and threats were made. Local bigwigs even got the state legislature to quickly pass (on May 24!) a special Black Law to make it illegal to teach out-of-state blacks. Townspeople also resorted to things such as poisoning the school well.
Crandall was charged under the Black Law and while supported by abolitionist lawyers she eventually was found guilty, although that verdict was later thrown out on appeal. Meanwhile the school continued to operate in a very hostile environment. On Sept. 9, 1834, a mob attacked the school and set it on fire, although the structure was not destroyed (and it still stands today). Still, it appears the fire was the last straw for Miss Crandall and for the safety of her students she closed the school the next day. A few months later she married a preacher and moved away.
So it appears that the forces of intolerance won on Sept. 10, 1834. Or did they?
The plaque outside the Prudence Crandall Museum notes that a new generation of Connecticut residences were "embarrassed" at how their forbears acted and started to make amends. In 1838 the state had already repealed the Black Law. Connecticut had, of course, played a major role in the Civil War. The notoriety of the incident had brought attention to the cause of freedom and many of the arguments raised at Prudence Crandall's trial figured prominently in future debates. Crandall's defense had argued that her black students were citizens of their respective and entitled, under the U.S. Constitution, to be treated equally with Connecticut's citizens.
Crandall lived long enough to see herself vindicated. She lived to see the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. In 1886 the state legislature voted to give her a $400 yearly stipend. She died in 1890. In 1995 the state legislature voted to name her Connecticut's official state heroine.
No one remembers the names of the members of the mob that attacked her school in 1834. There's no monument honoring their violent expression of the majority of the community's sentiment that day. There are no plaques commemorating the parents who pulled their girls out of Miss Crandall's school rather than share a classroom with a young black girl. The state legislature has not seen fit to honor its members who voted to pass the Black Law. Indeed, I've never been to Little Rock or Birmingham but I don't believe there are monuments to the jeering crowds there either.
I don't know if the Park 51 site will ever be built. There are reports that financing may be an issue and there are innumerable obstacles that can arise in the path of any ambitious project, even without national politicians getting into the act.
But I am sure that there won't be a monument praising Newt Gingrich, Harry Reid or Sarah Palin for their opposition to the project.