America Selby

Who is the Great Prudence Crandall America Selby

There is no shortage of amazing women in our world's history. The problem of too few knowing their names or faces, may partly be that history was written by men. But there are some lives that shine too strongly for even the loudest, most adamantly outraged voices to dim. Prudence Crandall was one of these women. Her voice shown strong amidst the terrible darkness of racism because she defied the social structures of the time. Her powerful testimony to the promise of an end of segregation allowed for one of the first integrated classrooms of the time. Not only was her witness to the power of compassion strong, she firmly believed in everyone's right to gain an education. It is this strongly held belief that resulted in her example making her known as Connecticut's state heroine. It is not easy to defy the powers of your day, and when Prudence Crandall, who was raised a Quaker, admitted a seventeen-year-old African-American student into her classroom, she struck the first note in a song that would rage through the country like wildfire, a song that would be taken up by others and that would soon blaze a trail through American cultural history the like of which few else ever has. All it takes is one action to change the world. Prudence Crandall firmly spit on all that she was told was right and proper and decided to follow her heart instead. This bold move that could have ended her career and her reputation, was what thrust her firmly into the ranks of America's greatest of women.