Author’s Note: Courage rarely announces itself. It forms through risk, resistance, and consequence long before history chooses names to remember. The Courage They Didn’t Teach moves decade by decade from the mid-1700s onward, setting aside hero worship to focus on moments when retreat looked safer but resolve demanded sacrifice. Please note that, since these people weren't readily celebrated, historical information may be light at times.
Each entry follows one life that faced danger, opposition, or erasure and stood firm without promise of reward. Some endured violence in the open. Others absorbed pressure in silence. Together, these stories show courage as a skill shaped by striving and refined long before applause, if applause comes at all.
A door opens
A schoolhouse looks harmless from the road: four walls, a few desks, chalk dust in the air, and lessons waiting for young minds. Yet, in the wrong town, in the wrong year, and with the wrong student sitting inside, a schoolhouse makes powerful men feel as if the foundation under their boots has cracked.
Prudence Crandall: 1803 - 1890
In the 1830s, Prudence Crandall found out in Canterbury, Conn. She didn't march into town with a banner or build a movement from a podium. The only thing she did was open a school, teach young women, and make one decision that turned an ordinary classroom into a public test of confidence.
Sarah Harris, a young black woman, wanted more education so she could become a teacher. Crandall admitted her, and Centerbury reacted as if the roof had caught fire.
The town pushes back
Crandall had already built a respected school for young white women. Her curriculum carried weight: reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, history, chemistry, astronomy, and moral philosophy.
Families paid extra for drawing, painting, music, and French. Crandall had done what towns usually claim to value: teaching seriously, demanding effort, and giving young women more than ornamental polish.
Then she admitted Harris, and many neighbors showed what they genuinely valued more than learning.
Parents threatened to remove their daughters as town residents objected with open anger. Crandall refused to expel Harris, and after speaking with William Lloyd Garrison, she chose a harder road: she closed the original school and reopened it in 1833 for black and brown girls.
Students came from several states. Canterbury didn't cool down; it grew meaner, and Connecticut answered with a “Black Law” aimed at blocking out-of-state black students from attending schools in Connecticut towns without local approval.
In 1832, Crandall, the white principal of the Canterbury Female Boarding School, was approached by a young Black woman named Sarah Harris asking to attend the school. Encouraged by conversations with both Harris and Maria Davis, a Black woman who worked for Crandall and shared copies of the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator with her, Crandall agreed to admit Harris. When residents protested the school’s integration and parents threatened to withdraw their students, Crandall closed her school and reopened in 1833 for Black and Brown students. Students traveled from several states to attend the school. Connecticut responded by passing the “Black Law,” which prevented out-of-state Black and Brown people from attending school in Connecticut towns without local town approval. Crandall was arrested, spent one night in jail, and faced three court trials before the case was dismissed. In September 1834, a nighttime mob attack closed the school. These events made national and international news in the 1830s and galvanized the burgeoning abolitionist movement. Many of the students, such as Julia Williams, Mary Miles, and Mary Harris, went on to become educators, reformers, and leaders in their communities. Crandall v. Connecticut impacted two U.S. Supreme Court decisions: Dred Scott v. Sandford and Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka and laid the framework for the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The law joins the mob
Crandall's opponents didn't settle for gossip or icy stares; the state arrested her, and she spent a night in jail and faced three trials before the case ended.
Harassment kept coming
A nighttime mob attack in September 1834 finally forced the school to close. For her students, the message was supposed to feel final: learn your place, lower your eyes, and don't reach for books reserved for others.
Crandall was arrested, spent a night in jail, and faced three trials as her case became a cause célèbre throughout the country. While awaiting trial, she continued to operate her school despite threats of violence and denials of service on the part of the townspeople of Canterbury and even despite the poisoning of the school’s drinking water well. Her continued defiance drew sharp criticism not only from local citizens but also from politicians, religious leaders and others from across the state. State Senator Andrew T. Judson, who spearheaded the passage of the “Black Law,” even went so far as to state, “...we are not merely opposed to the establishment of that school in Canterbury; we mean there shall not be such a school set up anywhere in our state. The colored people can never rise from their menial condition in our country.”
Yet her story didn't end with a locked door. The Canterbury fight drew attention far beyond one Connecticut town and strengthened the growing abolitionist cause. Students connected to the school, including Julia Williams, Mary Miles, and Marry Harris, later became educators, reformers, and leaders in their communities.
Following a mob assault two months after the case dismissal, she was forced to close the school. She and her husband, the Reverend Calvin Phillio, moved to Illinois. She did not, however, abandon her commitment to education. There she opened a school in her home and continued to work to further the rights of women.
Crandall continued her interest in the reform movement throughout the rest of her life. At the urging of Mark Twain and others, the Connecticut Legislature did penance for its earlier prosecution of Crandall by granting her a small pension in 1886. Prudence Crandall died in Elk Falls, KS in 1890, leaving behind a legacy of equal education and the fight for reform.
Connecticut later recognized Crandall as its official state heroine, a fitting honor from a state whose earlier leaders had once treated her classroom as a threat.
What courage looked like
Crandall's courage didn't wear a uniform; it looked like a woman standing between girls and the town determined to disgrace them. Her courage seemed like keeping the door open after respectable people demanded its closing. Crandall's courage seemed like accepting jail, trial, insult, and danger because a young woman named Sarah Harris wanted to teach.
That kind of courage often gets softened over time. People turn it into a pleasant school lesson and forget the ugly part. Canterbury didn't merely disagree with Crandall; it tried to isolate, punish, and make an example of her.
Her offense wasn't violence; it was instruction because she believed black girls deserved the discipline, dignity, and future education it could provide.
In that age, such courage and belief carried a price.
A town can board up a schoolhouse and believe it's won. It can chase away the teacher, scatter the students, and sleep better under the false comfort of her order restored. But some doors never fully close once opened.
Produce Crandall's school lasted only 17 months, but its lesson kept walking.
Next up in the series: Maria Stewart
Maria Stewart carries the fight from the classroom into the spoken word. Born free in Hartford in 1803, she became one of the first American women to publicly speak before mixed audiences on race, faith, slavery, and moral duty. She challenged a country that praised liberty while denying dignity to millions.
Stewart spoke when women were expected to stay quiet, and black women faced even harsher contempt. She refused both limits and demanded education, self-respect, and action.
Other columns in this series
- Franklin Before the Break
- The Woman Who Printed the Names
- The Man Who Refused to Stay Quiet
- Measured by the Stars
- Courage Measured in Seconds
- Margaret Corbin’s Stand Under Fire
- Hidden in Plain Sight—Deborah Sampson
- The Man Who Listened
- A 16-Year-Old Against an Army
- The Shot That Steadied a Revolution
- Mum Bett and the Law
- Phillis Wheatley and the Cost of Freedom
- Ona Judge Chose Freedom Over Comfort
- Richard Allen, A Faith That Wouldn’t Sit in the Balcony
- John Fitch: Steam Before the Spotlight
- The Night Dolley Madison Refused to Run
- Tecumseh, the Shawnee Who Refused to Think Small
