New England

CONNECTICUT

One of the most disturbing elements of the Uniting and Strengthening of America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, better known as the USA PATRIOT Act, is a provision allowing federal authorities to search library and bookstore records of patrons and customers without their knowledge and without a court order. What's more, when librarians (or bookstore owners) are served with a National Security Letter (NSL) requesting this information, they are legally restrained from revealing that agents ever set foot in their buildings, to say nothing of what they didn't take when they weren't there.

In August 2005 the Library Connection, a resource-sharing cooperative serving 26 Connecticut libraries, was served with an NSL demanding access to its computer database. It refused. An NSL was not a warrant under the Constitution, it said, and the ACLU concurred. Four librarians — Barbara Bailey, Peter Chase, George Christian, and Jan Nocek — filed suit against the NSL provision of the act. A federal judge agreed with the plaintiffs, and ruled they could go public with their lawsuit. But the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the gag order stood.

While the high court sat on the appeal, the Bush administration lobbied for reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act. Alberto Gonzales told Congress that the NSL had never been used at any library ... but wanted to keep the provision anyway. (Remember when perjury was a crime?) Six weeks after the act was renewed, in April 2006, the government dropped its appeal and allowed the plaintiffs to speak about their case. One month later the FBI abandoned its demands for the original information listed on the NSL. The ACLU has vowed to continue its battle to unseal records of NSL abuse by the Justice Department.

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LEARN MORE

How Would a Patriot Act? by Glenn Greenwald (Working Assets, 2006)

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Canterbury

Prudence Crandall's Forbidden Schoolhouse

Prudence Crandall School and Museum, Routes 14 and 169, PO Box 58, Canterbury, CT 06331 • (860) 546-7800

Prudence Crandall was running the Canterbury Female Boarding School in January 1833 when she admitted a young woman named Sarah Harris. Parents and locals were outraged at Crandall's decision. Why? Sarah Harris was black and the other students were white.

Crandall had a choice to make. Rather than submit to the racist pressure she closed her doors in February, then traveled around New England recruiting "young ladies and little misses of color." Seventeen students arrived through the spring of 1833 when the school — the first of its kind in New England — reopened.

Crandall and her pupils were harassed from the opening day. Windows were smashed, manure was thrown down the school's well, and businesses refused to sell her food and supplies. The Canterbury Congregational Church, just across the street from the school, turned away the students who wanted to attend services, so the girls walked miles to the Packerville Baptist Church. Crandall was charged with contributing to vagrancy under an antiquated law, but the charge was thrown out of court. When the bullying didn't work, locals went to the state legislature. Connecticut passed a bill dubbed the Black Law making it illegal to instruct black nonresidents, and Crandall was arrested and thrown into the nearby Brooklyn jail. Though she could have posted bail she stayed behind bars for a night in protest ... twelve years before Thoreau engaged in a similar action in Massachusetts (see page 20).

After three trials a court overturned the Black Law on technical grounds, and Crandall returned to teaching. But a year and a half after she started, arsonists torched the school's cellar. And on September 9, 1834, a masked mob descended on the school, broke in with a battering ram, and trashed the main floor as Crandall and her students hid upstairs. Fearing for her students' safety, Crandall reluctantly closed her doors and fled Canterbury.

Crandall would eventually settle in Elk Falls, Kansas. Well into her 70s, she helped former slaves, known as "Exodusters," settle into new lives on the prairie. In 1886, prodded in part by Mark Twain, the Connecticut legislature tried to make amends by voting Crandall a $400 pension. She died on January 28, 1890, and was buried in the Elk Falls Cemetery. Today her former Connecticut school is a museum.

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LEARN MORE

www.chc.state.ct.us/crandall%20museum.htm

The Forbidden Schoolhouse by Suzanne Jurmain (Houghton Mifflin, 2005)

Prudence Crandall by Marvis Olive Welch (Jason Publishers, 1983)

* * * Farmington

The Amistad

Farmington Historical Society, 71 Main Street, Farmington, CT 06032

In the early morning of July 2, 1839, off the coast of Cuba, a slave named Sengbeh Pieh and two others broke free of their chains and seized control of the Honduras-bound Amistad. All but two of the Spanish crew were killed or escaped in lifeboats, and the remaining 50 captives were then unshackled. Sengbeh Pieh, also known as Joseph Cinque, demanded that the crew set the ship on a course toward the rising sun, back to Africa. Over the next 63 days the Amistad sailed eastward by day, but was redirected west at night. It landed off Long Island where it was boarded by a navy patrol. The former captives were arrested and brought to New London, Connecticut.

The Africans were imprisoned in a New Haven brig while awaiting their trial in Hartford for murder, mutiny, and piracy. On January 23, 1840, Judge Andrew Judson ruled that the group were free men, not property, and that they could return to Africa. But the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. They were defended by former president John Quincy Adams, who secured their release on March 9, 1841. Justice Joseph Story ruled they had been "illegally kidnapped and had the right to self defense from their captors."

But how would they get back home? On March 19, residents of Farmington, many of whom were abolitionists, welcomed the Africans, all Mende, into their community until funds could be raised for passage back to their homeland. The Mende attended morning classes six days a week, and in the afternoon farmed a 10-acre plot given to them by the community. On Sundays they were welcomed at the First Church of Christ, Congregational (75 Main Street).

The Mende lived in Farmington for eight months. When sufficient funds were raised, they departed for Sierra Leone on November 25, 1841, after a tearful farewell at the church. Their experiences with the Amistad refugees led many in Farmington to become more active in the abolitionist movement, including work as conductors on the Underground Railroad.

A half-hour reenactment of the Amistad trial is performed on Tuesdays and...