ASL: Segregation In The Black Deaf Community

Origins of Black ASL

American History teaches segregation from the perspective of the average black individuals’ perspective. However, there is a subset of the black population that segregation impacted differently than the typical black individual. This subset of the population is known as the Black deaf community. This made the Black deaf community a minority in both the hearing and deaf cultures. This lead to a lack of representation, which lasted long after the Civil Rights Era. When integration finally occurred Black ASL had matured into its own language and culture distinct from mainstream ASL. Since the founding of America various segments of the population have been segregated against. From the Women’s suffrage movement which gave women right to vote, to the formation of worker Unions to protect the safety and security of workers. The Civil Rights Era saw people became more aware of their rights and the violation of others right leading them to fight for the equality they deserved. While groups such as the National Women’s Suffrage Association (NWSA), The National Associates of the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), The National Associates of the Deaf (NAD), were formed to protect rights they did not protect the rights of the black deaf. While NAD was set up to protected the rights of deaf individuals, they like many other groups,

While their white counterparts were spending large portions of their time focusing solely on speech, the African American students used manual signs to learn. Later in Gallaudet University, established in 1864, history they would admit their first African American student, Andrew J. Foster, in 1950. Gallaudet professors, later published the first book about Black ASL being its own language separate from that of mainstream