FREDERICK DOUGLASS. Letter sharing the history of Prudence Crandall and America's first private school for Black girls. Autograph Letter Signed as "Fred'k Douglass" to "My dear friend." 2 pages, 12¼ x 8 inches; worn with some loss of text, toned, old cello tape stains, tape removed and separations professionally repaired, two later inked notes in left margin. With typed transcript. Washington, 20 January 1886
Prudence Crandall (1803-1890) was a Connecticut teacher who integrated her classroom in 1832, resulting in a violent backlash from her town. She was forced to flee the state. She spent her later years in poverty in Kansas, until she became more widely recognized for her heroism. In this letter, Frederick Douglass shares the Prudence Crandall story with a friend who intended to write a paper on the subject, just as efforts to compensate her were coming to fruition. On the day Douglass wrote this letter, a petition was presented before the Connecticut legislature to grant a substantial pension to Crandall. The bill passed on 2 April.
Douglass tells the story with his characteristic cutting understatement. He begins "My dear friend, I sit down to fulfil my promise to narrate the case of Prudence Crandall and her efforts to teach colored youth in the State of Connecticut." Much of his account is quoted and paraphrased from Henry Wilson's book "History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America" (pages 238-245), who Douglass credits appropriately. When Wilson notes about another attempt that "At a town meeting on the 3rd of July 1835, a committee was chosen to remove the academy," Douglass notes wryly that "I suppose they were ashamed to hold it on the 4th of July," adding that "the spirit of pro-slavery and race hate made stern and successful resistance." His summary of Crandall's treatment is also in his own words: "She was subjected to a torrent of abuse and persecution, and was finally arrested and thrown in prison, much to the delight of madmen and devils."
The recipient of this letter may have been Lloyd Garrison Wheeler (1849-1909), who was born into a free Black family in Ohio, active in the Underground Railroad. After the war, he attended law school and became a leading attorney for Chicago's Black elite. Booker T. Washington's letters to Wheeler are offered as lot 166. Wheeler was the founding president of Chicago's elite African-American social club, the Prudence Crandall Club, which launched in 1887. In 1893, Douglass spoke at a meeting of the club, with Wheeler delivering the introductory remarks (Chicago Inter-Ocean, 2 January 1893).
