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Keene Chautauqua 2009 to explore themes of education and equality

This year two icons of American educational history will appear at Keene Chautaqua 2009 in celebration of the theme “Steps to Freedom and the Right to Education for All.” Living history presenters Marianne Donnelly and Gwendolyn Quezaire-Presutti will portray, respectively, Louisa May Alcott and Sarah Harris on Thursday, August 6 at 7 p.m. at Heberton Hall in Keene.

While most of us know Louisa May Alcott as the author of the American classic Little Women and its sequels, Alcott was also a leader in the suffragist and abolitionist movements. Alcott’s father, Bronson Alcott was an early innovator in American education, founding schools that welcomed students of both genders and all races and stressed critical thinking over the rote memorization that was the norm in the late nineteenth century.

Alcott featured that educational model in her novels. Heroine Jo March opens a school where there was “room for everyone who knocked” regardless of gender, race or poverty.

Sarah Harris was an African-American woman seeking an education in 1830s Connecticut. Barred from attendance at virtually all American colleges due to both her race and her gender, Harris approached Prudence Crandall, founder of the Canterbury Female Boarding School in Connecticut, where Harris enrolled in 1833, creating the first integrated classroom in the United States. Local residents were outraged by Harris’ enrollment at the school and white parents withdrew their children, leading Prudence Crandall to found a school for “Young ladies and Misses of color.” The townspeople ostracized Crandall and her students and Crandall was arrested and jailed for teaching African-American students. In 1834 a mob tried to set the school on fire and Crandall was forced to close the school to protect Sarah Harris and her other students. Harris became a teacher and moved to Rhode Island where her home became a center of abolitionist activity and a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Keene Chautauqua will begin early with a series of three book discussions on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. that will shed light on the lives of these extraordinary women. The first discussion is slated for July 1 at the Keene Public Library and will examine two books: a biography of Crandall, Prudence Crandall: Woman of Courage by Elizabeth Yates and Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Misses of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson. The second discussion will take place on Wednesday, July 15 at the Horatio Colony House Museum and will focus on Alcott’s classic Little Women and Invincible Louisa by Cornelia Meigs. The topic for the final discussion will be Alcott’s little-known novel Work: A Story of Experience on July 29 at the Horatio Colony House Museum. Books are available to borrow from the Keene Public Library.

For more information, contact the library at 352-0157.