"The progress of America can be measured by our success in the fight for equality. Prudence Crandall was a pioneer in an essential battle that continues today.”  

Author Donald E. Williams, Jr served as the President of the Connecticut State Senate from 2004 through 2014, and represented the 29th Senate District of Connecticut from 1993 through 2014. In addition to his career in public service, he has worked as an attorney, educator, journalist, and is the Executive Director at the Connecticut Education Association. He graduated from Syracuse University and earned his law degree from Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Virginia. He is married to Laura Williams and has a daughter, Nina. Prudence Crandall's Legacy was an eight-year project of research and writing.

“Prudence Crandall’s Legacy views the struggle to free America from the legacy of slavery and racial prejudice from the perspective of a nineteenth century Connecticut schoolteacher and her supporters. Her story of creating a school for black women in the 1830s, while well known in its day, is largely unknown in the history of civil rights.


In order to better understand Crandall's fight for equality in the face of violent opposition, I've examined her creation of a controversial school for black women and subsequent legal battles within the context of her life story, including the experiences of key abolitionist allies such as William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, and Maria W. Stewart. The abolitionists of the 1800s were a diverse ensemble of leaders from throughout the country, black, white, male, female, not unlike those in civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.


In assessing Crandall’s influence on civil rights law through Dred Scott and Brown v. Board of Education, I've included the details of Crandall’s life after the closure of her school as well as those who directly assisted her; all of those who worked with Crandall at her school and in her fight to integrate her school continued in activist roles throughout their lives.

The Crandall case was cited in the arguments of Brown in 1954, the case that prohibited school segregation. Historian Howard Jay Graham--who worked with Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP in Brown--credited the arguments in Crandall v. State as providing the genesis of the 14th Amendment, and helped inspire Graham's view of a ‘living constitution.’" 


Prudence Crandall is recognized in Connecticut as the State Heroine; she lived her last years in Kansas and is buried in Elk Falls.​