African American Education

There has always at least two groups of deaf people. You have the African Americans, then you have the “community”. This refers to everyone else. Black deaf students were always separated from the white deaf students. In the early 1950’s, there were thirteen states that had separate and segregated schools. It wasn’t till the late 1960’s when states began to integrate black students into the mainstream by law. One of the first black students to enter a white school for the deaf was Mae Crook. Crook lost all her black friends and the whites wouldn’t accept her. African American deaf people are part of two different cultures. For one, they are apart of the African American culture. In the past, the African American culture struggled to accept

Race schools affected all blacks. They were excluded from education. Black Deaf individuals were not accepted in either the Deaf or the African-American community. It was over one hundred years that black deaf had to attend separate schools. Integration of black and white students did not happen until the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case. During this case they decided that the racial segregation that occurred at schools interfered with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Sometime around 2011 black deaf students that attended the Kentucky School for The Deaf were given long overdue diplomas. The Kentucky Board of Education believed that these students deserved representation of what they had accomplished. After finishing their courses, the black deaf people were never given recognition for the courses they completed while attending the school, till then. Blacks were denied at most schools because of their skin color. They were also prohibited to interact with teachers and students at a white deaf campus. This separation caused the development of Black ASL, a dialect of American Sign Language that is different from those of white deaf students’ signs. Though the different signing systems between the blacks and the whites came as a surprise to some people, it should not have. There is more types of sign language than just American, meaning there

Deaf communities across the country recognize achievements of Black Deaf people who made a difference in the Black Deaf Community, including the African American Community as well. Black deaf leaders such as Dr. Andrew Foster, Charles V. Williams, Dr. Ernest Hairston, Linwood Smith, Dr. Glenn Anderson, Dr. Shirley Allen, Pamela Lloyd-Ogoke, Claudia Gordon, Esq., Duane Halliburton, Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, Dr. Nathie Marbury and many others have been remembered during Black History Month. The White House appointed Claudia Gordon, Esq. as the Associate Director for the Disability Community in the Office of Public Engagement. She is the first Black Deaf woman in America to become an attorney. She recently served as the Vice-President of the National Black Deaf Advocates from 2002-2005. She was also a Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Federal Contracts and Compliance Programs at the U.S. Department of Labor.She later became a senior policy advisor for the U.S. Department of Homeland