Surrounded: America's First School for Black Girls, 1832

In 1832, in Canterbury, Connecticut, a " charming and picturesque" little school for young girls opens to accommodate around twenty residents. Educating girls is a bit ridiculous and useless, they think in the area, but harmless enough. Until the day when the " charming school", led by Prudence Crandall, announces that it will now welcome Black girls... . Thirty years before the abolition of slavery, some fifteen young people in the Crandall school are greeted by a wave of hostility of insane proportion. White America is afraid of some of its children. The story of this school and its legal legacy for civil rights cannot be understated. Crandall v. State (of Connecticut) was the first full-throated civil rights case in U.S. history. The arguments by attorneys in the Crandall case played a role in two of the most fateful Supreme Court decisions, Dred Scott v. Sandford, and the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. It catapulted Ms. Crandall into a Civil Rights pioneer.

Author: Stephane Fert,Wilfred Lupano
Publisher: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
Published: 02/11/2025
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.60lbs
Size: 11.10h x 8.60w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781681123486


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/03/2025
Booklist 02/01/2025 pg. 53
School Library Journal 01/31/2025 pg. 1
Foreword 02/17/2025

About the Author
Born in 1985, Stéphane Fert grew up in the southwest of France, near the Pyrenees mountains. He obtained a diploma in animation in Paris but nevertheless defined himself as self-taught. It is notably thanks to his taste for role-playing games that he learns to tell stories. As for images, he was first influenced by modern painting and was passionate about working with colors, but he was also interested in animation and in particular the artist Mary Blair. He made his debut in the world of illustration through the Café salé collective before launching into comics. In "Morgane" (Delcourt, 2016), as in "Peau de mille bêtes" (Delcourt, 2019), for which he received the Imaginales prize, he deconstructs tales and legends by questioning the position of female characters. With screenwriter Wilfrid Lupano, he signed the children's comic strip "When the circus came" (Delcourt, 2017), which received the Tibet Prize, and the highly acclaimed "Blanc Autour"("Surrounded") winner of numerous other prizes. In 2023, he illustrates the new covers of the "Harry Potter" saga for Gallimard. 2-time Eisner Award nominee Wilfrid Lupano was born in Nantes in 1971, but it was in Pau that he would spend the majority of his childhood. His was a childhood spent buried in his parents' comic book collection, even if his wild imagination and interest in writing is due above all to his love for role-playing games. As a young adult, Lupano worked in bars to finance his studies - a combination of philosophy and English. He has since blossomed with a multitude of graphic novels published with many prominent publishers and has been the recipient of a number of awards.