When Crandall admitted Sarah Harris, a 20-year-old African-American female student in 1832 to her school, she had what is considered to be the first integrated classroom in the United States. Parents of the white children began to withdraw them. Prudence was a "very obstinate girl", according to her brother Reuben. Rather than ask the African-American student to leave, she decided that if white girls would not attend with the blacks, she would educate black girls. She was arrested and spent a night in jail. Soon the violence of the townspeople forced her to close the school. She left Connecticut and never lived there again.