Grating the Nutmeg 202. Miss Crandall’s School for Black Women
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 courtroom dramas and vigilante attacks, bravery in the face of opposition, and the noble work of pursuing education despite constant insult and threat. It is a story of inter-racial cooperation and women’s actions that we as Americans need to know, now more than ever. The initiative for the Academy came from women, Black and white, and its continuity was nurtured by support from the students’ families and a growing white female Abolitionist movement.
Mary Donohue talks to Dr. Jennifer Rycenga about her new book Schooling the Nation, The Success of the Canterbury Academy for Black Women, published in 2025 by the University of Illinois Press. Dr. Jennifer Rycenga is a professor emerita of comparative religious studies and humanities at San Jose State University.
Dr. Rycenga is available for book talks and lectures, both remotely and in-person. Her contact email is jennife.rycenga@sjsu.edu
Her author page on Amazon is here: https://us.amazon.com/stores/Jennifer-Rycenga/author/B06XJRSDV7?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true
Her book can be ordered from the University of Illinois Press here:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p088377
Interested in visiting the Prudence Crandall Museum where today’s story took place? Plan you visit here:
https://portal.ct.gov/ecd-prudencecrandallmuseum
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This episode of Grating the Nutmeg was produced by Mary Donohue and engineered by Patrick O’Sullivan at www.highwattagemedia.com/ Follow GTN on our socials-Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and BlueSky.
Follow host Mary Donohue on Facebook and Instagram at WeHa Sidewalk Historian. Join us in two weeks for our next episode of Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history. Thank you for listening!