Notable Peace & Justice Activists Posters “Cr...-”
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Prudence Crandall
Stephen Crane

A. J. Cronin

Prudence Crandall
b. 9-3-1803; Hopkinton, RI
d. 1-28-1890; Elk Falls, KS

Quaker Prudence Crandall founded a school for “Young ladies and Misses of color” in Canterbury, Connecticut, creating what is generally regarded as the first integrated classroom in the United States (1833). Her school was not without controversy: she spent a night in jail for breaking “The Black Law” passed in 1834 which prohibited such a school. After violence closed the school she married Rev. Calvin Phileo and moved from the state, finally living with a brother in Kansas.

The law was repealed in 1838, Mark Twain supported an effort to provide Prudence Crandall with a yearly pension in 1886, and she was declared State Heroine by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1995.

• The Forbidden Schoolhouse: The True and Dramatic Story of Prudence Crandall and Her Students

Stephen Crane
b. 11-1-1871; Newark, NJ
d. 6-5-1900; Germany - tuberculosis

Quote Appearing on This Print:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
”The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
War is Kind

Stephen Crane's novel, The Red Badge of Courage, is a conscious raising story about the promise of glory and the reality of battle.

• more Stephen Crane posters
• more 19th Century American Authors

A. J. Cronin
b. 7-19-1896; Cardross, Scotland
d. 1-6-1981; Switzerland

Physician and author A. J. Cronin is noted for his deep social conscience. His novel “The Citadel” questioned occupational hazards of mining and resulted in a free public health service in Britain.

FYI - the film Billy Elliot is inspired in part by Cronin's 1935 novel The Stars Look Down.

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
b. 11-12-1651; Mexico
d. 4-17-1695

Self-taught scholar and poet Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz was an early feminist, choosing to live as a nun in a convent, the only refuge for a female who wished to study. Eventually silenced by the church and forced to sell her library, she died of a plague epidemic.

Quote on poster: “Ah stupid men, unreasonable in blaming woman’s nature, oblivious that your acts incite the very faults you censure.”

• Poems, Protest, and a Dream: Selected Writings