144 pgs. color | $24.99 hardcover | W: Wilfrid Lupano; A: Stéphane Fert
I was today years old when I learned that Connecticut was the last New England state to abolish slavery. Yes, they passed an act of Gradual Abolition in 1784, but slavery continued to be practiced in Connecticut until 1848. I came across this fun fact (#sarcasm) while preparing this review of Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832, written by Wilfrid Lupano and illustrated by Stéphane Fert.
The school in question was Prudence Crandall’s Canterbury Female Boarding School in Canterbury, Connecticut, which was originally founded to teach white girls (teaching girls was controversial enough, given that a lot of people at the time considered it a waste of time and money). Then one day Crandall was so impressed by the intelligence and curiosity of a local black girl, Sarah Harris, that she decided to admit her as a pupil. The other students are astonished when Sarah shows up in class, and the townspeople do not take kindly to the idea of a black girl being educated in their town.
Undaunted, Crandall ups the ante, advertising in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator that her school would accept “young ladies and little misses of color.” That really didn’t go over well in Canterbury, with townspeople offering the kinds of justifications you’ve probably heard before when people balk at remedying an injustice but don’t want to say so directly. Such as: It’s fine if they want to study, but why in our town? Changing things will result in violence (nice use of the passive voice there). Next thing you know, they’ll want to marry white men. And so on and so forth because some things never change. Unfortunately, the townspeople of Canterbury did more than talk, and used both legal harassment and the always available alternative of violence to try to shut the school down.
Surrounded is not a straightforward historical treatment of its subject (more factual details are offered in a prose appendix) but includes stories that are tangentially related, including an apparent witch who lives in the woods near the school and a young boy people call “Feral” who also lives in the woods, survives by his wits, and acts as a sort of court jester who tells the truths others are afraid to speak aloud, whether it’s spreading news about the Nat Turner rebellion or pointing out that the education offered at the Crandall school means learning about what white people have deemed worth knowing. At the school, the story centers on four black girls who have come to study, their contrasting personalities and motivations demonstrating that all kinds of people seek an education for all kinds of reasons. Most of the white characters outside the Crandall family, in contrast, are little more than stereotypes who act out of blind prejudice, a choice that preempts any possibility of nuance in examining the historical events portrayed.
Fert’s art is lively and colorful, a choice that seems appropriate to the story when it is focusing on the eagerness of the students to further their education, the pleasure they take in being alive, and the optimistic spirit of all who helped keep the school running. It’s less successful in the scenes of hate and violence that are also unfortunately part of the story (although there’s a two-page spread signaling impending doom that is genius). | Sarah Boslaugh
You can see a sample of the artwork for Surrounded here.
