Three Who Dared: Prudence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, Myrtilla Miner–Champions of Antebellum Black Education

Against a pre-Civil War backdrop of violence and antagonism, three courageous women, in different parts of the country, undertook to teach black children. Prudence Crandall, Margaret Douglass, and Myrtilla Miner lived, respectively, in Connecticut, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.: they each found that racial prejudice is not limited by geography and that people will go to great lengths to prevent the teaching of blacks. Of the three schools they established, only one–in the nation’s capitol–proved more or less permanent, but all three had a significant impact on American life. Because they chose to teach black children, Miner, Douglass, and Crandall all endured persecution and hardship. Foner and Pacheco’s important biographical study portrays three women of unusual courage who deserve to take their places with the many brave women of nineteenth-century America.