TV Reviews : A White Hero in the Black Struggle

As part of its contribution to Education 1st! Week, NBC reaches back to 1830s Connecticut for one of those too-rare tales about the too-few white heroes in the too-slow civil rights movement.

“She Stood Alone,” airing at 9 tonight, portrays stalwart, hard-headed white teacher Prudence Crandall (Mare Winningham), who let young black girls into her schoolhouse despite surly opposition by locals, then decided--even worse--to start the first school in these United States for black girls!

The heart of the story is the state’s “Black Law,” obviously directed at Crandall. It legislated jail for anybody teaching black children from another state. She, of course, lost.

There are wonderful historical polemics here as espoused by Boston abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (Ben Cross), editor of the legendary Liberator paper.

Even though the plot and the playing plod, it doesn’t matter. The harassments of stubborn Prudence and her earnest students were probably more awful than can be imagined, let alone shown. This doesn’t matter either. What matters is that these are matters worth the re-telling.