Review by Frank Plowright

What’s the first civil rights case in American history? Well, Wilfrid Lupano and Stéphane Fert are about to fill you in…

In 1834 the case of Prudence Crandall vs. the State of Connecticut reached the state’s supreme court. Crandall founded a boarding school for girls in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1832, and saw no reason to adhere to the US convention of excluding Black pupils. Accepting them changed the local perception of Crandall from respected teacher to pariah.

Her initial impetus was a conversation with Sarah Harris, who worked in the town store, and wondered why when a stick was placed upright in the river, it seemed to look broken. Crandall’s response was to recognise Sarah’s curious mind and admit her to the school.

Lupano could take the easy route of violent outrage from the start, but instead opts for a more nuanced presentation. In the context of the times, while slavery had been abolished in Connecticut, the idea of a Black girl as anything more than a servant was so far removed from societal norms as to be literally unthinkable, and that’s what’s presented. Rather than back down in the face of opposition, Crandall decides to make her school exclusively for Black girls, and Lupano passes on salient information as subtly as he tells the story. The support of Crandall’s father is noted, for example, in conversation passing on he’s collecting supplies from another town when the locals refuse to serve his daughter.

In some ways Fert’s attractive art works against the conditions of the time and against what happens. There’s an accomplished cartoon vitality, but as it’s resolutely charming throughout it diminishes absolute poverty and doesn’t arouse outrage at sinister deeds, but a sugar coated message is better than an ignored message. Fert gives people character and ensures they’re different rather than using variations on the same body type, and when it’s needed they can be menacing or sinister. The quality of his storytelling is recognised by frequent scenes of several pages supplied without words, and there’s a nice line in symbolism, especially a spread of the schoolhouse surrounded by bats, vultures and wolves.

An authoritative essay in the back fills in the circumstances and cast Lupano uses, but while basing his story on factual events he concentrates on people, yet sidelines Crandall herself as we learn more about her from the reactions of others. She’s not shown working her way through legal process, which is revealed via the reactions of the girls attending her school to their surroundings and incoming news. The points are made, though, most prominently that of people who consider themselves Christians indulging in cruel and heartless acts. The pity is that plenty would do the same today.

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.