After a Shrouded Month Dear Prudence Finally Comes Out To Play

Thursday October 23, 2008

It’s a big public day this morning, as hundreds of people have filled the Capitol’s south lobby, which is unfortunately not wheelchair accessible, for the unveiling of the new statues commemorating Prudence Crandall, the state heroine.
The smallish, life-sized bronze of Crandall includes an image of one of her African-American students. Crandall, in case you don’t know, was a Quaker whose Canterbury academy for girls included both blacks and whites. Parents withdrew their white kids, so in April of 1833, a full 30 years before the battle of Gettysburg, she started a school for “young ladies and misses of color.”
Anyway, the art work has been in the works for years and finally the bronzes of Brooklyn sculptor Gabriel Koren that have been covered most of the month with a thick blue sheet, are being shown off officially for the first time.Just another reason to visit the Capitol.