In The News | First Toni Morrison bench in state honors Prudence Crandall and Black students

Canterbury (The Bulletin, September 20, 2021) — Poets, activists and community leaders gathered outside the Prudence Crandall Museum Sunday afternoon under the bright, late summer sunshine to unveil the first Toni Morrison Society bench in the state.

Toni Morrison Society member Cheryl Gooch, society founder Carolyn Denard, society Chairman Craig Stutman, Canterbury First Selectman Chris Lippke and Windham Judicial District State’s Attorney Anne Mahoney unveil the newest Toni Morrison "Bench by the Road" at the Prudence Crandall Museum on Sunday in Canterbury.

The newest Toni Morrison Society “Bench by The Road” unveiled at the Prudence Crandall Museum on Sunday In Canterbruy. John Penney

The 6-foot steel Toni Morrison “Bench by the Road” sitting area was dedicated to the memory of Prudence Crandall, an educator and 19th century local civil rights icon, and her Black students, a group whose story traces a direct line to the modern civil rights era and beyond.

The bench, fronted by a black plaque inscripted with gold lettering, was brought to Canterbury through a fundraising effort spearheaded by Windham Judicial District State’s Attorney Anne Mahoney with the help of the Sustainable CT group and local donators.

“My hope is the next generation can find inspiration here and seek out the works of (Morrison) and become more morally enhanced,” Mahoney said.

Mahoney said she was inspired by the Bench by the Road Project – a memorial history and community outreach initiative of the Toni Morrison Society, named for the Black author, essayist and Nobel Laureate for Literature – to bring a similar bench to the museum.

The international society project works to add benches and plaques at sites commemorating significant moments, individuals and locations related to Black slavery. Since 2006, the Toni Morrison Society has placed 32 benches at sites across the world.

The bench project was launched in 2006 on the late author’s 75th birthday and took its name from remarks she made in an interview during which she decried the lack of historical markers memorializing the lives of Black slaves.

“There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves. … There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby,” Morrison said in the 1989 interview. “There’s no 300-foot tower, there’s no small bench by the road.”

The plaque slated to be added to the new Toni Morrison Society “Bench by the Road” unveiled at the Prudence Crandall Museum on Sunday in Canterbury, John Penney

Carolyn Denard, founder and board chairman of the Toni Morrison Society, said the late author would have been “especially pleased” with the newest bench placement, though admitted to being a tad taken back when she received a certified letter from a state’s attorney explaining the project.

“At first I wondered, ‘What ticket didn’t I pay?’” she said, noting the dedication marked a “momentous occasion” that extends the society’s mission.

The state-owned museum is a former private academy, the Canterbury Female Boarding School, that Crandall ran out of her home. Donald E. Williams Jr., executive director of the Connecticut Education Association and author of a book on Crandall’s legacy, said the school’s opening in 1831 was initially a cause of celebration among town elders.

“They were excited thinking this would put Canterbury on the map,” said Williams, a former state Senate president. “They saw this as a smashing success.”

In 1832, Crandall was approached by Sarah Harris, a young Black woman who wanted to become a teacher, and admitted her as a student. When residents protested the school’s integration and parents threatened to withdraw their students, Crandall closed her school and reopened the following year with all Black students, the first such institution of its kind.

Williams said that decision soured the previous enthusiasm shown by town leaders and led the state in retaliation to pass the “Black Law” forbidding out-of-state Black students from attending schools in Connecticut without town approval.

Williams said Crandall was willing to shoulder the role of pariah and outcast and she and her charges were threatened with “tremendous” legal and physical risk.

Crandall, who was white, endured a night in jail and three court trials before the case was dismissed in 1834. Later that year, Crandall was forced to shutter her school after a nighttime mob attacked the building, now a National Historic Landmark and State Archaeological Preserve. Crandall was named Connecticut State Heroine in 1995.

The boarding school incidents and subsequent trials galvanized the burgeoning Abolitionist movement and the court case dismissal served as precedent for the several later civil rights cases, while also laying the framework for the passage of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted citizenship to former slaves while also giving them equal protection under the law, according to a project fundraising statement.

Eboni Nelson, the first permanently-appointed Black dean of the UConn School of Law, said during her dedication address she was unaware of the legacy of Crandall and her students until moving to the state from South Carolina but quickly discovered how the story intersected with her own life.