Surrounded: America's First School for Black Girls, 1832

In 1832, Prudence Crandall opens a school for young girls in Canterbury, Connecticut. The town welcomes it, thinking educating girls is harmless. But when Crandall announces she will welcome Black girls, the community erupts in hostility.

Thirty years before the abolition of slavery, fifteen young Black women face insane prejudice. Surrounded tells the story of Crandall's school and its legal legacy for civil rights. Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) became the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history, influencing Supreme Court decisions like Dred Scott v. Sandford and Brown v. Board of Education. Discover how Prudence Crandall became a civil rights pioneer.