Surrounded: America’s First School for Black Girls, 1832

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.

Born in 1985, Sté phane Fert grew up in the southwest of France. He obtained a diploma in animation in Paris. It is notably thanks to his taste for role-playing games that he learns to tell stories. As for images, he was first influenced by modern painting and was passionate about working with colors, but he was also interested in animation and in particular the artist Mary Blair. He has received numerous prizes for his remarkably personal and accomplished style. Wilfrid Lupano was born in Nantes in 1971, but it was in Pau that he would spend the majority of his childhood. His was a childhood spent buried in his parents’ comic book collection, even if his wild imagination and interest in writing is due above all to his love for role-playing games. As a young adult, Lupano worked in bars to finance his studies - a combination of philosophy and English. He has since blossomed with a multitude of graphic novels published with many prominent publishers and has been the recipient of a number of awards.