Grating The Nutmeg

  After a campaign initiated by schoolchildren, Prudence Crandall was designated the Connecticut State Heroine by the Connecticut General Assembly on Oct. 1, 1995. You may not know Connecticut has a state heroine, or you might have some inkling that Crandall was maybe a spinster Quaker schoolmarm, who had an unsuccessful school in the hinterlands of eastern Connecticut.  Founded in 1833, the Crandall Academy educated more than two dozen Black women during its eighteen-month existence. In this episode we’ll hear how a trio of like-minded women helped to get the academy off the ground, and the tremendous impact the school had in its short existence.   Many of the Black women who attended the Canterbury Female Academy went on to be teachers, activists, and leaders in the Black community. Likewise, the important white and Black Abolitionists drawn to the struggle in Canterbury made lasting contributions across the decades leading to emancipation.   The story of the Canterbury Female Academy is replete with court