COMING FEBRUARY 11, 2025
Wilfrid Lupano (writer), Stéphane Fert (art)
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.
REVIEWS:
"Surrounded is a moving graphic novel about the first integrated school in the US, its founder, and her students."
- Peter Dabbene, Foreword
"A deeply relevant and enthralling book."
- Tom Murphy, Broken Frontier
"Stupendously capture[s] American history in gorgeously cinematic, often wordless panels of muted browns, blues, and pinks, supplementing verifiable, recorded facts with could-have-been contemporaneous events..."
- Terry Hong, Booklist, starred review!
"A harrowing glimpse into the trials and tribulations a school of trailblazing Black students faced in antebellum America...Readers will be inspired by this ultimately hopeful take on a shameful history."
- Publishers Weekly
"Surrounded – America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832 is a disturbing yet uplifting account every concerned citizen should read and remember. After all, learning is a privilege, not a right… unless we all defend and advance it…"
- Win Wiacek, Now Read This!
"Because only historians will know the outcome in advance there’s a suspense throughout Surrounded, which is an intelligent and passionate evocation of inhumane behaviour opposed to what’s plainly right."
- Frank Plowright, The Slings & Arrows
"Fert’s art is lively and colorful."
- Sarah Boslaugh, theartsstl.com
"...aptly rescues a small piece of African-American history that had a major impact in American law, culture, and society. Informative and fascinating."
- James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review
"doesn't shy away from showing the ugliness of the racism and hatred and the cruel acts, but is also shows them in a tactful way that keeps this all-ages appropriate."
- Sheena McNeil, Sequential Tart
8 ½ x 11, 144pp., full color HC, $24.99
ISBN 9781681123486
Buy the ebook: $16.99
ISBN 9781681123493