Center for Black Deaf Studies

CBDS in the News

CBDS embraces the Black ASL and Black Deaf Studies, and the Black Deaf experience.

The Center for Black Deaf Studies (CBDS) was established in 2020. The Center will operate as an outreach center for teaching and learning about the Black Deaf experience and provide easy access to a range of useful content resources.

CBDS will consist of offices for its professional staff, a computer lab, digital library, and a smart classroom. It operates under the leadership of Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, professor in the Deaf Studies program.

The CBDS aligns with the University’s Mission of providing a bilingual, diverse, multicultural institution of higher education that ensures the intellectual and professional advancement of deaf and hard of hearing individuals through American Sign Language and English. Gallaudet maintains a proud tradition of research and scholarly activity and prepares its graduates for career opportunities in a highly competitive, technological, and rapidly changing world.

Goals for The Center for Black Deaf Studies

Offer a minor focusing on the histories and cultures of African Americans with an appreciation for the historical, social and political influences of Africa and the African diaspora.

Sponsor cultural events including dialogues, and celebrations.

Connect students to and/or create research opportunities in collaboration with affiliated faculty and campus partners.

Employ staff members committed to student advocacy, advising and mentorship centered on positively impacting student retention and graduation.

Provide an environment of care and support for GU students, faculty and staff and community members.

Monitor, coordinate, support, and encourage research in the community.

Raise funds to support programs for the center.

Featured in USA Today

“Black, deaf and proud: Gallaudet University embraces commitment to diversity with student center”

This article from USA Today discusses the Center for Black Deaf Studies, Black ASL, and the Black Deaf experience, while highlighting the voices of key leaders of the Center and the Black Deaf community.

Black, Deaf and proud.

Play Video

Events hosted by the Center for Black Deaf Studies, including interviews with the Miller family.

Play Video

Video Transcript

[Video Transcript Start]
[Video presented in English and ASL]

hello everyone good afternoon

my name is dr carolyn mccaskill and i'm the founding director of the

center for black deaf studies and a professor in the deaf studies

department i am so excited that i cannot even share

with you it's beyond words ecstatic to welcome you all to the

opening kickoff for the center for black deaf studies

this is our first virtual conversation

and we will be sharing the time with dr glenn anderson can you imagine for the

first time hosting a webinar for the center

and we have over 400 people

who are here with us joining in the conversation first of all we have to tell you all

150 who registered first will get a t-shirt with the center

logo and we will be hosting periodic events

and you will have other opportunities for others of you to get t-shirts as

well the t-shirts will be mailed to your home address

before i actually get started and proceed with the program i want to welcome a few people

to give some remarks for us the first person i'd like to welcome is president

bobby cordano president cordano will make a few remarks

hello there dr mccaskill it is so wonderful to see your energy

just so great to see your energy because i know this is a conversation we've been

talking about this idea for quite some time i know you have held this vision for

many years and here we are you know this is a long time in the making i have to say that and now you'll

probably hear more stories about just how long this journey has been for dr carolyn mccaskill

and with that we as a community owe our deepest sense of gratitude to you dr

mccaskill for your vision for your leadership and for the many people who have worked

alongside of you and been with you throughout this journey you know i am just very excited to be

here today and very excited that all of us are a part of this experience hosting this here at gallaudet university

i know that you and our community our black deaf students our staff and faculty community members all over the

world we all are supporting you and this center on black deaf studies

you have the full support of our board of trustees including of course our chair dr glenn anderson

i think that this will also be one of his most memorable moments as his time as board chair

as president of the university it is indeed an honor and a moment of humility

for me to be able to see this center up and running

the establishment of this black deaf study center is very much in alignment with our new

strategic vision for gallaudet university we call that the gallaudet promise

excellence in learning dis and discovery the center for black deaf studies and of

course the board and myself as president and our executive team at the university

genuinely see how the center is so important in supporting two different parts of that plan

one is the piece of that plan that relates to our equity and belonging imperative equity and belonging and the

imperative around that focuses on the foundation of ensuring that we are providing

visual and in-depth understanding and content about equity and diversity multiculturalism

anti-racism and doing all of that work here at gallaudet making sure that everyone feels that sense of belonging

and where people can discover their own identities and explore and understand new things while here the center for

black deaf studies is already an important place for that work to be happening and to continue to happen as

it has i'll have to admit this is not something new we're just beginning in fact i was in a class yesterday the

dynamics of oppression class and i know dr mccaskill that's just a reflection of the work you've been doing over the

years leaders such as yourself lindsey dunn and many others have been teaching in this capacity in this area for a

number of years and we're just now formalizing your work through the establishment of this center providing

with you resources visibility and really focusing all of that on your work

this achieves the goal that we've set out for there's much more that we can learn from this and of course we'll

learn more about those things as time goes on this is just the beginning around this imperative with the work

here another part of our strategic plan is a priority that focuses on knowledge production and discovery

as we all know the history related to black deaf people

in this country has not yet been fully explored or documented understood nor discussed not

nearly enough of that has happened to date and that argument that dr mccaskill and

others have made about the importance of this center is one that we of course realize is so important and there's much

more work to do what's important for us to see that is while we have this center in place another significant part of that is to

provide support to our continued work on the memorial for black deaf education

and the history around that in our country and the storytelling related to kendall division two memorial that will

be established on our campus this center is now an important part of the knowledge and discovery and creation

as it relates to that memorial and it will continue to be that the infrastructure is now being built with

this center so i want to thank you for your work dr mccaskill this is a commitment that is long-standing for the

university that will deepen the work and understanding within our community and of course this ties in

very nicely to scholarly work research and community activism all coming

together right here in this brand new center for black deaf studies

for all of our community members individuals who are black and deaf hearing hard of hearing deafblind

many of them want to share their stories of being members of this community and this is a place for them to be able to

do that this is a place that we hope people will call home in the much larger

home that we call gallaudet university i am honored to be here today honored to be a part of this journey with you and i

am ever grateful for the perseverance insistence and tenacity of our community

to work together to do what we've done today in establishing this center i want to recognize that many of our black deaf

leaders many of them have longed for this vision to be a reality it's a long time and are getting to this

moment but we are here now we are here to support this effort now and going

forward so thank you very much thank you president cordano really

appreciate your support for this effort and also your guiding words

absolutely next i'd like to welcome

provost lewis to make a few comments greetings

it's hard to believe that this moment has finally arrived

i had the opportunity to encounter carolyn as a student at gallaudet and at that time we were both students

yet little did we know you know 45 years later or so

we'd be here i truly appreciate your leadership in this center and it's truly an honor

and i'm quite humbled to be in support of your work

the support of everybody is what will allow this work to become successful

myself and economic affairs are in full support of this going forward and truly

look forward to working alongside you and your staff and seeing what you will bring to

gallaudet much love to you carolyn thank you so much jeff i really appreciate all

of your support love you next i'd like to welcome and invite dean

cooby

good afternoon everyone i am dean khadija rasheed and i

am excited about this day it feels like it's a new day that

gallaudet has seen and really today is just an inkling into

a step to that aligns with our mission for the university and so when we think about our mission

here at gallaudet university the university was established

and chartered long ago to educate those students who have

multicultural backgrounds in making sure that they will excel in their careers in

fields we provide bilingual education for our students and as a result i am

thrilled to be here today and thrilled for everyone in this moment

thinking about dr isaac abula and all the work that he did at the university i

am overjoyed in this moment but i just wanted to just say one little tidbit before i leave for today

the activities that the center provides will be um support for what we need to

do and also we think about john lewis in his life he talked about all of us

getting into that good trouble so that's one of the things that we need to do this is the month that we vote in

november so we want to make sure that we are timely in all that we do

and that we continue to work with the vision of the center congratulations dr

mccaskill and all of you who are in attendance today thank you so much i am so excited and i

really feel that dean isaac at bula is looking down on us

and smiling broadly as he always did thank you for your support

so next i'd like to introduce the staff from our center

i am going to introduce now del rio del recia moses and jc smith

if the two of them can join us on screen please

hi jc and hi del rey

delrissia is a graduate student and jc is an undergraduate student assistant

and both of them have been working with me and we'll be doing a lot of

reaching out sending emails doing research

establishing projects and doing outreach you will be hearing from the three of us

very soon thank you to both of you

next i'd like to introduce you to

martrise watson dr matrice watson is the coordinator for our program

hello everyone hi there

i have to say i'm so excited to have involvement in this program it's really been a long time coming

thank you certainly

now i would like to introduce you to the centers the advisory board

as you know every organization has an advisory board to help with

guidance and i have to tell you i have an amazing group of supportive people who are on

our advisory board and i'm going to call them now so you

can meet them dr steele lucas

and dr sandra jowers barber

and cj johnson christopher hello everyone

and daisy wooten

[Music] tim albert

lindsey dunn

dr rezanae mogus rydell

and i believe we're all here [Music]

i think this is where thank you to each of you all our

advisory board members i so much appreciate your help and all of your

support and your guidance thank you to each and every one of you all thank you

and now i'd like to take a moment to explain about our center for black deaf studies

the mission of the center is to prefer preserve the history of black deaf

education community culture and language

we will be doing research on the experiences of black deaf people

and people of african descent and we do have a goal

to offer a minor in black deaf studies and we have a course called black deaf

people studies already which is an opportunity that will allow

us to expand from there to more courses that we will be able to promote and add more courses

for that minor center will also

promote preservation of deaf and hard of hearing students we will organize

lectures films speakers invited guests

who have different areas of expertise to present forums we'll be in collaboration

with different academic organizations we'll sponsor

presentations like you just heard from dean cooby she just mentioned a documentary film good trouble by john

lewis we will be supporting viewing of that we'll be giving more workshops

that will allow us to have a wider and broader understanding of black deaf

people and the socio-economic and political system that they have been

involved with we also will be offering different programs

and raising funds to support programming for the center

at this time i'd like to share my opening statement with you

as we know this year 2020 has been unprecedented

in many different ways we never would have thought

that this year would start with a global pandemic such as covet 19. we never could have

predicted that we never could have imagined

the unfortunate and tremendously

gripping murder that we witnessed of george floyd on television that has

ignited a fire within the black lives matter

movement and incited a heightened demand for black people in america

to be visible even though 2020 has had all of these unfortunate events it has

forced the world to establish a new norm

we've been forced to slow down and re-evaluate

different aspects of our lives

black deaf people are part of a wider and larger population of the deaf community

and black deaf people's history and experience of oppression

the system of oppression the

system of autism that has affected that community

these people have experienced autism and systemic racism within the

wider deaf community and at gallaudet university as well

the life changes that we've seen in 2020 have brought with it

an outpouring of deep emotions for the black deaf community

and other marginalized groups as well

trying to dismantle systemic racism here at gallaudet

as you all know black deaf students at gallaudet have felt very strongly

a sense of concern and raised this about the racism at gallaudet

they have felt that their concerns have been ignored

they have attempted to partner and create partnerships and relationships

with the black deaf students which have been supported by some of the faculty and staff members

and advocacy organizations such as nbda national black deaf advocates

and president cordano and the executive team at gallaudet has risen to the

challenge with their anti-racism efforts at gallaudet

and the new center for black deaf studies is one of the programs

that has been created to be able to address the anti-racism efforts at gallaudet

academic affairs the career center the office of equity diversity and

inclusion student affairs are all committed to perpetuating

an anti-racism program to the entire university community

the center for black deaf studies welcomes opportunities to talk with all of you

and with other leaders in our lecture series and to share the

rich experience of the black deaf community

our stories deserve to be heard and to be visible

and i feel our beloved community will have the healing that it needs through

these open and honest and mutually respected respectful transparent

conversations that we are continuing to have through these dialogues

i'd like to close with a quote and this quote is by a very famous

basketball player player kobe bryant

correction to the interpretation kareem abdul-jabbar

and he said that racism in america is like dust in the air

it seems invisible you can't notice it until the sun comes in

and then you begin to see it everywhere

and as long as we keep shining the light

we have a chance of cleaning it

so let's keep shining the light that is important

so now it really is an honor for me to have dr glenn anderson here

he graduated from gallaudet in 1968 and is our first speaker at cbds

he is renowned throughout the community for many brown groundbreaking achievements

he's been a pioneer in the deaf community dr glenn was the first african-american

alumnus of gallaudet to earn a doctoral degree from new york university in 1982.

he was the second african-american deaf person to be appointed to

gallaudet's board of trustees in 1989

another black deaf woman named katie brown served on the board of trustees

for 10 years during the 1970s

dr anderson was the second deaf trustee that was elected chair of the board of

trustees and he served from 1988 to 1993

and was on the board as chair from 94 to 2005.

he is an active member in the deaf community an author a current member of the board of directors of nbda

and a former nbda board member and was on that board from 2004 to 2008

and 2015 to 2019. he's the recipient of many numerous

awards and was appointed by the united states president to serve

on the national council on disabilities oh i said this piece already sorry about

that

i'd like to get started now with my interview with dr anderson

dr anderson i've known you for a very very long time

you're a role model and a leader and a mentor in the deaf community

you were the first black deaf person to earn a phd in the deaf community in our

view and that really encouraged other black deaf people

to go above and beyond the limits that have been set for them by racist

institutions black deaf people historically have been told by institutions that they

were not capable of receiving advanced degrees

and as you know i went to the alabama school for the

negro deaf and i never even thought about attending

college and i was encouraged to think about going to trade school or

vocational school and that was really the choices that i had

cosmetology fixing hair

doing sewing and so forth cooking that was the extent of what i was encouraged

to do fortunately my principal from the alabama

alabama school for the negro death i will never forget her bless her soul

she saw a difference in me and my sister and she introduced to us the idea that

we could push the boundaries miss riser was very encouraging to us

and i clearly remember meeting you when i was an undergraduate student

and i was so inspired because in alabama i had never

met a role model

so i have a question for you what inspired you to push those boundaries

and to become the first black deaf person to get a phd what is that meant to you to know

that your accomplishments have really inspired so many others

dr glenn

i'm wondering if i can change the video here

i'm not able to see dr glenn

ah now we can see you can you see me okay yes i can see you

just fine okay i can see your screen although it's just a little bit smaller now

[Music] first of all i have to say

a heartfelt congratulations to you my sister thank you so much

this is a huge honor for you

my to be the person that inspired you um is just really really heartfelt for me and

i have to say that the timing feels absolutely right it is right for this

and i can see that with your leadership this center will absolutely take off and

flourish it truly will awesome now as far as answering your question

about you know the boundaries when i look back i didn't necessarily

have all the dreams and aspirations that you might think my goal

was to simply get a master's degree and to be gainfully employed

but some of the things that influenced me one of the one of the things that did with the fact that my mom was not

college educated and the story was that the children

always have to do better than their parents my dad had this regular job my mom worked in the kitchen and that's the

kind of upbringing that i had another factor was i arrived at

gallaudet after being a student at a hearing university when i got to gallaudet

i had opportunities to engage in a lot of things that were outside academics you know extracurricular activities

sbg the buffing blue being a part of these student organizations i never imagined i could be in a

leadership role performing those tasks until i got to gallaudet

you know i was thinking about being a pe teacher and wondering about what i can

do to provide to the community and after reflection i realized that i could do more than just in the field of pe

i went to graduate school in arizona and at that time there were not many deaf phd's

you can count on hand how many there were i think i only were i was only aware of

two deaf phds at the time and they told me that you know what you're next and that was the seed that

they constantly planted in me i thought to myself no way

that won't happen but it wasn't until later on when i moved to detroit and i worked for

vocational rehab it just so happened that one of the staff members

approached me and asked if i had any interest in pursuing a phd and working at nyu

so there i got the opportunity and of course to me i had to make sure i

seized every moment that's how it all started

it's interesting how those seeds got planted and then they were planted in you and you planted

them in me as well yeah absolutely correct

i understand that you grew up on the south side of chicago

can you tell us a little bit about your experience growing up in chicago

sure so where i grew up in chicago was really

the heart of the black kind of population we had flourishing black businesses

you know notable churches in the neighborhood there was actually a theater called the

regal theater and at that time no motown had really started to take off

and this is at late 50s early 60s and from my home i was able to walk four

short blocks to that regal theater and i would often attend and watch james

brown the isley brothers the temptations all perform

so it was quite culturally rich to grope in that neighborhood

and in addition to that my father we lived near the chicago white sox

baseball park we were on 46 and it was on 35th in

chicago and once in a while my dad would try to go to the white sox games but

we actually had a different uh area that people sought to go to but there was a

lot of white people there and in that area there were a lot of black pro baseball players at the negro

league so we've got folks like hank aaron other notable athletes and we would drive over

there to where the negro league played and i really cherished that experience

something that meant a lot to me was you know thinking about how there were only a couple of us deaf folks in the

neighborhood and we would come together and play ball and there was one of these guys who was hard of hearing and he

could be on the phone and he would kind of coordinate which playgrounds we would go to and then we

would all get in the car play basketball and face all these neighborhood kids and in doing that we

got to learn how to play as a team it was because we were deaf we knew how to play as a team against hearing

individuals that were kind of um you know selfish and sometimes they would get so upset and

try to chase me off the court you know and i said it's not unfair because we're not necessarily better

than you wow thank you for sharing that experience with us

before you were chair of the gallaudet board of trustees from 1989 to 2005

what are some of the most rewarding and challenging experiences that you had

during that time leading the board of trustees

well as a member from 1989 to 2005 i was board chair from 94

to 2005 and one of the experiences that stays

with me the most is the election i think it was february 94

and then we had a follow-up meeting in march with king over in san francisco california so in

that meeting we got to talk about the agenda uh what we had you know planned in the works as far as it relates to the board

and eventually there was a letter that was given to me and i ended up reading this letter

and realized that you know what he doesn't have time for gallaudet he struck me as you know someone who

would shrug his shoulders and you know said that it doesn't hurt to just try

so a month later after a couple of kings emails

there was one that said glenn

get a haircut the time is coming and i recall my first board meeting that

that was the experience i had i had to stand up and give a presentation in front of everybody

and get honorary degree so you can imagine how nervous i must have been at that time

to have someone with such distinct right next to me absolutely

so i did contribute as a member of the board and as board chair and at least i hope that i did i feel

like i helped at least open the door for opportunity for more of our people of color

to you know join the board and actively engage whereas prior to my involvement

we weren't that noticeable you know there might have been a handful maybe one or two

uh sparingly but it was after my engagement that we were able to open that door up and have more people call

on board

we were able to achieve a capital campaign that's something that gallaudet had never

been able to achieve before that point there was some resistance by members in

the community for that capital campaign and it was a great deal of work that had to be done to convince people that this

was the time to do so and i was successful in that and we got 40 million dollars as a result

and a lot of those funds were earmarked for the ik jordan student academic center and the renovations that

happened there so definitely a positive result to be had and as you can see the benefit is that

we've been able to beautify our campus indeed it is a beautiful campus and do

you feel that those have been some of your greatest contributions absolutely i do

awesome now i know you've experienced

all phases of gallaudet including systemic racism

in 2005 you stepped down from the chair of the board of trustees

to apply to become gallaudet's first black pres black deaf president

however you were interviewed but not invited to the second round of interviews

even though you had supervised the first deaf president i king jordan for so

many many years can you share with us how you felt during that time

what was the most significant impact of that experience on you

as a black deaf leader

sure the fact that king continued for about

18 years as president meant that the board didn't really have

experience you know managing a presidential search and i think that's an important point to

note you know had the cumulative experiences

been different i think we would have seen a different outcome you know i think the feeling of being

stuck was probably normal at that time no one wanted to make any definitive

decisions but you know i felt like we were able to do so and you got to understand that at that time

gallaudet you know did have pressure or a big push towards having more diversity

i think this was 2003 to 2004. and dr isaac igbola was actually a part

of that effort it seemed to me at the time that we were moving the right direction

but then you know we were informed that you know the selection was not made for the final three

another challenge was that a lot of people who applied for that presidential position you know a presidential

position would have 20 to 30

more years of experience

the interview itself only lasted about two hours within that limited time frame how can

you expect to know the whole person after interview in merely two hours

that's not enough time to allow for someone to recognize the values that someone has

and of course you've got to go along with whatever the priorities were at the time but you know i admit that you know

at my experience working in arkansas you know i was willing to just look for the next opportunity you know if i wasn't

selected because i knew that there's a lot of other opportunities out there

you know shortly after i wasn't selected my son made it to the nfl

and you know hometown

oh it was a hometown experience there was a lot of benefits that came to me um

in a lot of positive things despite the fact that i wasn't selected

now you know at that time there were a lot of emotions because the community felt so strongly

about this issue let me move on to another question

though there's been a lot of talk both negative and positive in the

community after the board announced that you were returning as the chair of the

board of trustees and that again has been both positive and negative

some people have been thrilled and there have been different emotions

ranging from elation to bewilderment

about the news that you were returning to the chair's position

other people questioned the board and wanted to know what was the reasoning behind having you return

and your decision to come back particularly after you supported in bda's letter that

called for president cordano to resign

and you and i had quite a lengthy discussion about that and you said that you felt

seeing some of the negative comments was there but can you share your

feelings about that and what that meant to you what would you like for people to know

about your decision to come back to the board what's your vision as chair

so i think the opening remarks you shared today truly captured the essence in the context

of you know everything that's been happening in our community

there's been long-standing struggles um you know we've been seeking breakthrough and

i was invited by the members of the board you know to a retreat and at that

time we were able to engage and it was very obvious to me that they recognized that there had been some

leadership issues that were quite notable in addition to that the board was you

know actively seeking out some leadership so as a result of all of that i was asked i didn't step forward and

volunteer myself but in fact i was asked if i wouldn't mind to return and that's what i did

as we know gallaudet university is you know roughly 156 years old

the notion of systemic racism you know plus the time frame of 156

years you know that's not something that you can quickly just dust off

you know how how we go actually about doing that is the next question and it requires some

level of work to be done at gallaudet and it's not just limited to gallaudet but some work also has to happen

externally because if you just working on it you know internally that doesn't prove

successful and if you only focus on the external aspects that doesn't prove to be successful either

it's by focusing you know on both you know providing that internal support that will allow for that success and i

did so because i'm able to um i've always been one to stand up for the community

and to me you know it's just a matter of fact

now in the work that i've been able to do over the past 50 years you can see that i have that track

record because i stand in line and support the community you know people can always have their

own perspectives which is fine in fact it's normal for people have to have different perspectives

but even with that i feel like you know i i tried my best to ensure that we had

priorities for the board's anti-racism plan

and they are dedicated to this so the hope is that we can achieve a

degree of success and i have a good uh feeling that we will

between the board the university faculty and staff you know everybody who

is engaging and committed to this effort makes me believe that

so you're talking about work both inside and outside in gallaudet and

community exactly understood okay

another question that i have for you and that has been raised within the community is about whether or not you're

functioning simply as a board chair emeritus with no real

voting rights or authority to be able to enact change at gallaudet

how do you respond to those concerns understandable

generally speaking in the board meetings it's not only you know gallaudet but

also chairs of other universities that tend not to vote

usually the chair will foster cohesiveness uh amongst the group and kind of serve as a

guiding resource for those meetings so i could be tied into that role

and ultimately one needs to also recognize that there is a certain authority within the board and the chair

is representation of the board therefore de facto has authority

so that's that's what it is

okay all right i'm nearing the end of my uh formal list

of questions and i could learning much more about you

every day and about the work and contributions that you've made which have been

outstanding to say the least and you are leaving a great legacy

how would you like people to remember you though

well i have to admit i don't usually think that way

i'm the type of person who is known to answer the call to service

that's always been my theme especially uh for the gallaudet commencement in 2017 if you recall

and i used andrew foster as an example at that time you know the reason that he went to

africa is because he felt that he was called to serve and he created

you know a multitude of schools in in that region and

the goal is to ultimately build a strong deaf community and that was his call and i feel like that stands true for myself

too to service

wonderful awesome do you have any final comments that

you'd like to add or things that you want to share with the community well i think now it's your time to serve

all right so i do appreciate you taking the time to respond to my list of questions and to

share your wisdom with us and i think this helps the community to

have a better understanding of your role as chair

and your vision where you'd like to see us go and to help gallaudet to continue to grow

so now i'm going to open up the floor we have time for people in the community who may have

questions for us in the chat

so if anyone has questions it's q a time

so i do see one question that's asked about the website for the center for

black deaf studies and yes that website has been

established and i believe that the email is the

center for black deaf studies at gallaudet.edu

and if you check that you should be able to find it

also i see another question for you dr anderson

and this person says they work with many uh black indigenous and people of color

members of the community who don't aren't doing as well and i'd like to they aren't performing

as well as their white peers many of them have so much potential but what do you say to these children who are not

pushing themselves to grab the opportunities to take their education seriously

and to do their best what message do you have for them as they need motivation

certainly um you know throughout our development in

life obstacles are something that we can never avoid if we try to remove them you know even

still another obstacle will come in its place

in my time at gallaudet i didn't have any support system none at all

you know uh there was no black deaf student union we didn't have organized you know black

faculty or staff everybody was white

everyone's cultural experience was far different than mine and how i was able to survive and

navigate my way through gallaudet you know all four years

was from the realization that i'm driving my own bus

i'm not a passenger in anyone else's vehicle you know because they might be going to a place where i maybe don't like that

destination so internally there was this desire

to be self-sufficient and not have to rely on other people or you know risk someone else kind of

controlling my path or you know someone that i didn't want

to be around influencing the way that i think i had my own train to run and i had to

make sure that you know i was the the commandeer i was driving my own bus

now there's far more people of color on campus compared to at the time that i was at gallaudet all these key positions

have people of color but you got to understand i saw none of that

so things are very different it's a different picture from what happened in the past to now business

diversity when i was here as a student in the 70s to 2020 it's an awes awesome difference

the opportunities are there and i like your metaphor about driving your own bus

i love that mm-hmm absolutely all right i see another question here

there are more questions coming through

i'm actually not seeing other questions where are the next questions

it's two o'clock

yes i see in the q a box i believe the questions for you

if you look at the q a box oh there's a question that's asking me what i would like to see

in terms of contributions and having more courses in black deaf

history and culture definitely i would like to see the black deaf studies center

grow and expand and as i mentioned earlier

i'm working on a proposal to add a black deaf studies

minor to the curriculum at this point we only have one course now but we are now working on

becoming an actual minor that will require 18 credits

and offering courses like black deaf history

black asl we do have a book on black asl

and we have taught a bl i taught a black asl special topics course once and i've

been asked about that course in terms of black asl trying to teach

black asl as a thing in and of itself that language is acquired through

interaction but in terms of the course and explaining the structure of the language

that could be done and that would be one of the courses that would be in the minor

talking about black deaf oral history and literature

having a black deaf seminar in researching the black deaf community

having some electives as well one or two perhaps where students will be able to take through the consortium

having a black deaf education course so we're thinking about about six courses and we do have to go

through program review and approval by our cge our congress of undergraduate

education or graduate undergraduate education to add this minor in black deaf studies

and also the goal will be to add other positions

i would be liking to advertise other positions for example

an assistant director so that position is now being reviewed

by hr and soon it will be posted

on our gallaudet website so people will be able to apply for the assistant director position

yes and i believe there's also another message in the chat box

the goal for the center in the next few months

is to continue to have our lecture series

and as i mentioned before we talked about support and you know that video that i mentioned the documentary from

congressman new lewis called good trouble we will be sponsoring that and i

cannot wait to see it

and i'm going to take advantage of the opportunity to announce to you now some of you have heard about the kindle 2

division 2 event and how

kendall was segregated and the black students were

kicked out of gallaudet and forced to go to school in baltimore

maryland well the mother mrs miller

mrs louise miller had a black deaf son and she filed a lawsuit

against kendall and gallaudet so that her son could be accepted as a student

now this is really historic we have a rich history and so many

people are not aware of how rich this history is this actually

happened before brown brown versus the board of education

our next moment in the history center is going to be having a lecture

from the miller family to be able to talk about what their

experiences were like the mother filed the lawsuit they won

the students were brought back to kendall from

maryland here and brought to washington dc and the miller family

are very grassroots and are really wonderful and they're still

around and they're willing to be a part of our lex next lecture on november 4th

and that'll be from 1 to 2 30 at the same time so please do look for our announcement about that event we're very

excited about that i think there's another question that

came up in the q a

people are asking about workshops or training in summer programs

so that people will be able to continue their virtual education

during the summer we will continue to offer workshops and training

up to june and we'll take a break in june and start again in august and continue through the

end of the year so do look for our announcements about those

i do see another question

so we now have a question for both you and i dr anderson

one of the students who was the former vice president of bsu

said that she's had an opportunity to talk with many

black deaf students and she feels like they have a lack of support at gallaudet for them

and wants to know what advice do we have for those students to continue when their motivation

is nearing its end their motivation is nearing its end and

what advice do we have for them communicate your concerns to the appropriate program

manager make sure to continue uh to express your

concerns or any feelings that you have i say don't give up

look for the resources that are available for you and those students and one of those

one of the goals of our center is to become a resource place where

people are able to be in touch with us for different kinds of support financial

support scholarships glenn we have your scholarship dr

anderson we have the andrew foster scholarship we have isaac agboola scholarship fund

isaac at bula scholarship the linwood smith scholarship so the goal is to help

students continue with their education

and another goal i really when i look back on my own

experience like i mentioned that you were

my role model and anytime i felt dejected or as if i

was ready to give up i felt that i could be in touch with you

and share with what you what was going on and you always helped and encouraged me

and to find someone to whom they could express their feeling

someone who would listen to you and offer you support

because people need emotional and moral support to not give up and so one of our

other goals in the center is to set up a mentoring program because students need guidance

more than just books they need the emotional and moral

support so that is another goal for us let me see what other questions we have

this question is for you dr anderson what do you want to see in black deaf studies

what would you like to make sure is not left out of the discourse

i'd like to see growth in nbda

i think lindsey dunn and i have had the opportunity to write an article you know in sign language studies

and in doing so we talked about the impact that nbda has our community from

the different eras the 80s the 90s and so on and what we witnessed was you know

evolvement people going up the ranks career-wise uh seeing a steady flow of career advancement

publications that's the kind of thing that we would like to see more of we want to see more writing we want to see

more publications and we want to see more videos recorded document of our stories

so that we may pass that on to the next generation and they can continue to influence others in the future

i agree with that one of the other goals for the center

is to be a repository for films and articles and publications

to live in the center in a way that has all of the information

related to the black deaf experience psychologically socially

the entire corpus to live within our center and we do

support that another question

we both have emphasized the importance of the black death experience and how important it is to document that

given the impact of covet 19 on black community members particularly elderly

black people do you have any suggestions for how we can support these members of our

community given their increased risk

in this pandemic there's so much to do

and i hesitate to ask this

given the breadth and depth of your important work during these times

that said do you have any plans to prioritize documenting the narratives of the

elderly black deaf community and if so are there ways we can support such

efforts of cbds

that preservation of history and preserving the stories the oral

histories absolutely that is one of our goals for this center

to document the oral history of black deaf people and their experiences

we need all of the help that we can get so if people have stories

or videos that they want to share we would be very grateful and be happy

to be able to store that in our center

another question again for both of us

this person says that they are indigenous and latinx

and they want to know how their communities and themselves in an individual can

provide support to black communities in the future and what do the black communities want

to see from the indigenous and latinx communities

i think collaboration different efforts in working together

for the indigenous and latinx communities i would like to really open dialogue about how we can work with one

another and what are the needs in your

communities and how we can partner with one another

i agree it makes me think about writing

anytime we're writing our stories you want to make sure that we're mindful of what should be included

so we can co-host workshops together we don't have to just host workshops

focused only on the black deaf experience or focused only on the latinx experience we can integrate both of our experiences

and provide workshops together yes i definitely agree with that

this is a question for you dr anderson do you plan to write your memoir

well you know i might do that maybe i will you have a lot to say

so there is a lot more that you haven't shared so i really you

definitely need to write your memoir

i suppose the first one in line to buy your book

yes um i have given it some thought i have wonderful that's wonderful to hear

you know hopefully at some point in the future i'll have more time to do that

okay let's see

i think that may be pretty much it and we may be finished with the questions

in wrapping up this has really been a wonderful experience and i really want to thank

you dr anderson there are not words to express the depth

of my appreciation to have you as our first speaker for our lecture series thank you for

giving up your time i know you're going to be teaching a class today right

i am wow so thank you thank you thank you

for taking the time to do this and i really do appreciate it thank you

to our audience members for joining us it was a very nice experience

thank you so much to everyone and as i said i very much look forward to the

next next less lecture series next month

and now to wrap it up again thank you stay safe stay healthy

remember we are all in this together thank you yes we are

[End Video Transcript]

Open House

Play Video

Video Transcript

[Video Transcript Start]
[Video presented in English and ASL]

equality has been missing from my life but it's never too late

what we know of segregation jim crow and so forth the black deaf community was not insulated from any of that

it's painful really painful but we have to address this pain and we can't just push it away

if we look the other way then we'll never have the opportunity to heal

what does this memorial mean for the black deaf community

it's really important for the black deaf community especially when black deaf students arrive at gallaudet for many of them it is a part

of their dream and upon seeing this memorial it can be an inspirational force that lets

them know that gallaudet recognizes and values the black deaf community a feeling of welcome

if you are interested in donating here's the link to do so

thank you

hello it is my pleasure to introduce to you the story of the miller family the miller

family includes mother louise b miller and her four children kenneth carol gerald and justin

all three of her sons are deaf and her daughter carol is hearing louise b miller's story

is one of courage and tireless advocacy it changed the history of deaf education in this country

it was mrs miller who decided to enroll her son kenneth in our very own kindle school in 1946

her son was denied enrollment because he was black however mrs miller didn't stop her fight and she

persisted until finally in 1952 she decided to lead a class action lawsuit against the washington

dc board of education to fight for the right of her son to be educated here at kendall school

miller mrs miller won that lawsuit that then forced the establishment of the kindle school

division 2 for negroes which was the name at that time that was the first lawsuit that started the

process of dismantling the doctrine upheld by the supreme court decision plessy versus ferguson

the doctor known as separate but equal by winning the lawsuit it set the precedent

for dismantling that legal argument and lent support to the final decision by the supreme

court in the brown versus board of education in 1954. very few people understand the

connection between louise b miller's fight for her deaf son kenneth and the success of

the supreme court case brown versus board of education this family has shown great patience

and support of this community as we assess and reflect on our past mistakes

and looking at ourselves today to further examine our current actions and supporting our movement

to create a better and more just future for all of our deaf children especially black

latina latino latinx native american asian pacific and those of diverse identities

we are proud that the family is here with us to continue to share their stories

for us to come to understand our history and what we need to continue to wrestle with and reflect

upon and further understand i remain grateful to the miller family for building their relationship

with us during the last few years i am proud that they are here with us as a community

and so very grateful to them i now look to dr carolyn mccaskill to lead this celebration

of the miller family story the center for black deaf studies will be a place to centralize

document and gather the stories of the history of the kindle division ii school thank you

equality has been missing from my life

okay

hi we are ready

yes we certainly are i was waiting for sister carolyn and here we are well good morning sister

liz how are you i'm doing fantastic this morning so what are we doing today my dear

well you know what i am really so excited about the program for today this webinar is the second

one to be hosted by the center for black deaf studies and i'm absolutely over the moon thrilled

that we're here to talk about the kindle division 2 school memorial project

so we're going to talk about what the plan is and that's going to be part of our agenda today

we're also going to introduce the miller family and we'll get a chance to see an interview

as well as some photos and we'll have a chance to interview each one of them actually and then

after that we plan to enter a discussion about the kindle division ii memorial project itself

uh we have a steering committee and we'll learn from that steering committee about the mass design

team and their efforts in terms of the design for the memorial project and another piece of this a

very important piece of it is talking about the naming process for the memorial so we'll spend

some time talking about that and then towards the end we'll have times for questions and so

as i said i'm really excited to get going and oh i didn't even introduce myself to the audience hello

everyone i am dr carolyn mccaskill the founding director of the center for black deaf studies

and professor in the deaf studies department at gallaudet university

uh uh oh it seems that dr moore has her video has frozen give us a moment

all right uh dr carolyn mccaskill thank you

really this is a watershed moment for our community

i know that individuals are very thrilled and so looking forward to this event

and the interpreter no longer has visual access on doctor moore she is experiencing intermittent freezing

yes i'm noticing that as well

hmm um dr moore is asked that i take over perhaps we can go ahead with the portion of the program

the next portion let's proceed with the interview video clip

and we can proceed that with an interview of carol miller please if we can have carol miller

and now i'm absolutely thrilled to be able to interview each individual member of the member of the miller family first of all i have here with me kenneth miller so kenneth

tell me a little bit about your name about yourself this is your name sign correct yes

and are you deaf or hard of hearing i've been deaf since three years old three years old i see

and you learned sign from your family or exactly how did you start learning sign language

well i learned that the philadelphia school it was an oral school for the deaf

and then later at kendall school that's where i went and that's when i changed from oral to sign

language and i use sound language ever since ah so are you retired now you're still working what are

you up to i retired from my job at the washington post after 47 years wow how many years since 1957

i was 16 years old 16. i went on to graduate i worked part-time and then eventually full-time

in 1965 at the washington post so in total i've worked there for 47 years of my career and then

i went to retire 47 years wow so what do you do now with your free time i spend time at

home resting and spending time with my family and my brother so did you grow up um did you graduate

through the kindle school i started in 1952 at philadelphia school and then moved to maryland

did you remember like some of the things that you learned while you were in school no

nothing huh you really weren't able to learn anything in that environment that's how school

was at that time there wasn't much being learned in the fall of 1954 i learned a little bit

at the philadelphia school the instruction was good but at the kennel school it was lousy

what was the difference between the two schools kendall and philadelphia even though it was the

philadelphia school was oral was good education but at kendall i didn't learn anything there

so you wanted to go to a school you wanted to get a good education your mother absolutely wanted that for you so she filed a lawsuit do you remember anything about that i don't i was young

at that time right you were pretty young so you commuted to philadelphia to attend that school

and then later on you moved back to washington d.c and then went to the kindle school so how did that feel so i went to kendall school after philadelphia and i was just so so shocked i just

sat there and didn't learn much that was 1952 to 1954 sometime there but again didn't learn much

most of the time we were just playing around so did you miss the school there in philadelphia

yeah my mother paid tuition i think three thousand dollars for school wow that was quite expensive

at that time so kendall was a segregated school in the past do you remember that

i do 1952 i remember at the time being a commuting student going back and forth to school

how did it feel to have to commute to school i would commute on a cab and i

did that for about a year so you wrote a cab how was that it felt weird it felt very odd

the cab would drop off my different friends at their houses how old were at that time i was 11.

ah 11 years old wow and then uh from 11 to 12. then you moved

hmm so did you know anything about the fact that it was segregated there were

black areas and white areas i don't know anything about that

i think it was when i was around 18 i started to notice but before that i never really realized it

so when you begin to notice what is it that caught your attention well i wasn't learning much just playing around that was it right but then you said when you

became 18 or 19 that's when you started to realize that there was segregation between black people and white people and apparently today do you still see that segregation happening

not as much before there was segregation but now there's been integration uh so

you see that integration now yeah it started mixing students in 1954.

so in 1954 there was more segregation than there is now

in 1954 uh there was decent well that's when it was integration i remember outside it would be

cold we would try to learn a lot when the children and the different school white school they learned

a lot but at kendall we didn't learn much but after 1954 things got better for education

so do you think it got better that people have a better life that black people have a better

life because of the black lives movement or you think it's the same that it really hasn't improved

black lives matter movement

all right well is there anything else you'd want to share about that

well i want to share that i played you know sports back in the day i played basketball and i was on wrestling really really were you you a champion in that how'd you do in sports

yeah i actually won a wrestling championship when i defeated someone who was much larger than me

had the right technique and i was able to grapple him down and i won nice

oh so you had a very high rank nice yeah i think the gentleman's name was frank whitebeat might have been from canada

oh so you wrestled somebody by the name of frank in one all right yeah

so did you have some thoughts you'd like to share with us gerald yes before black the black lives

matter movement i even think about martin luther king and during that time you know i had a pretty good life after martin luther king passed you know i began to wonder and question about you know why

we had certain issues within our community you know i began to notice how white people marginalize black people in different ways and also just you know being upset about segregation

and not having people recognize my common humanity when i was growing up my one of my best friends

was white but i still saw segregation at play and then we saw the rise of the kkk and white

supremacists and so i've come to the realization that sometimes people choose to segregate

themselves because they dislike each other i think black lives matter has helped to improve things

so you do think that the black lives matter movement has improved things i do you know for 500 years black people have been oppressed and marginalized and it's time for

a change we have to learn to accept white people have to learn how to accept black people and what

we want and desire you know sometimes those riots need to happen because that's when people wake up

so do you think with what's happening with the black lives movement now where more white people are becoming more aware of what's going on and they're focusing more attention on this matter do

you think that's happening i do i actually don't believe in marches like i think sometimes marches

are appropriate but to be heard you sometimes need to do something different because people will

have a march and then everyone goes back home and forgets everything the next day sometimes people listen to riots better because properties are being damaged

i want to go back to talking about kindle school do you remember stories from your mom and how your mom actually had to fight for your brother to have a better education

and also fought on behalf of other black deaf children there were 24 in that school do you

remember your mom talking about that at all my mom actually passed away when i was 15 so

i wasn't privy to very much when i was younger but later over time when i became an adult i realized

her tireless efforts impacted the black deaf community otherwise you know kenneth would have

gone to school in baltimore and you know we had a right to be educated and i think that's something

that my mom became a champion for um so when you think about uh what happened with your mom

and what happened in terms of her support of those other 23 students

can you comment on that i remember robert millborn came to see my mom at home to thank her and i

didn't quite know why he did that later i came to the realization that she had been such an

advocate for black deaf students to be educated in the district she bought that lawsuit won it

um you know against the dc board of education and so without her where would we be i am happy

that my mom did what she did so that we would have the opportunity to learn yes we're proud

of your mom as well you know if you had been able to meet her she was such a sweet lady

so when you think about gallaudet hosting this interview for your family as well as

setting up the kindle division 2 memorial project what comes to mind i'm very appreciative

you know we have to be cognizant of the events that have occurred in the past when i think of president elstad i don't really care for him he denied my brother

kenneth the opportunity to attend the school the kendall school here on campus

and so that's why kenneth had to go to philadelphia that makes no sense whatsoever

you know i remember we used to practice um at gallaudet on campus in front of the old

gym and president elstad would be outside when we left our practice just looking at us he'd be there week after week and so i didn't that didn't really sit well with me at the time

i'm very happy that we see shifts happening in our community to make things better

are there any concluding thoughts you'd like to share with us

you know i would love to see a black deaf person as president of gallaudet someday

bobby is great but i would love to have a black deaf president as we think about mbda

and also i really would appreciate having elstad auditorium renamed i don't think it should honor

president elstad because he was not a supporter of black deaf students being educated

here on campus so we know that there have been inequalities that have been perpetuated and we need to work for equality in your opinion do you think things have

improved for the better gallaudet or not i think they have improved for the better

well thank you i want to thank you so much for being with us i really appreciated talking with you so you experienced segregated schools didn't you yes do you remember when your brother

uh went to the segregated school what do you remember from that time and what he went through

well i was little so i really didn't understand what was going on for him in school you know so

i really had no idea about segregation i found out as time went on can you give me an example

i found out the discrimination that my brother went through because it was segregated he had to go all the way to philadelphia instead of coming here to kindle the philadelphia school

was mixed there were black kids Jewish kids white kids but here it can do it was segregated

and so it was a process to get it integrated so you remember him commuting to philadelphia and

then moving back how did that make you feel justin well it was different it was different i remember

coming home for christmas and thanksgiving and win school clothes like for the summer

you grew up in washington dc i'm sure you saw a lot in terms of the civil rights movement race

riots tell me a little bit about that place yes i grew up in a black neighborhood and i didn't

see white people very often i remember sometimes going into a store and seeing a white person and they would be watching me as i was shopping i was thinking why are they looking at me

but my father was an officer so it really didn't bother me i didn't let it bother me

so when martin luther king was killed i was actually out in the streets that day and there were riots and upheaval all over um and

my wife had just uh gave birth to one of our children and i remember my sister saying you need

to get home you need to get home and i said i walk home and she said it needs you need to be safe and so i started walking home and as i got close to my home a police car pulled up and asked me what i

was doing i said i'm going home and they motioned for me to get in the car so i did i got in the car

and i was about 18 years old at that time and they said now go in the house you know and they

wouldn't leave until i went into the house they wanted to make sure i was going to go into the house so what that experience taught me was that segregation in the past it was very hard for us

to deal with as a people and when martin luther king was killed and there was rioting and all that

upheaval you know if anything like that were ever to happen again i'm going to make sure i stay in the house so you were living in a predominantly black neighborhood now has that neighborhood

changed um well now there are a lot of restaurants and bars and uh condos and other buildings in the

neighborhood but in the past it was really bad there was a lot of shooting in that area

and because i couldn't hear my sister could hear shooting in the neighborhood and could hear

gunshots um not exactly

you know to be truthful what i did see though was not good and so you have seen more

white individuals move into the area how do you think that has helped to reduce crime or make

the neighborhood more safe it hasn't i mean white people are moving in but there's still

a lot of break-ins there's a lot of property damage there's a lot of theft there's a lot of armed robbery in the area and so there are a few officers there who see who the problem people are

you know and you can see people have bars on their window and for the ones who don't they're easy targets you know so it hasn't really improved mm-hmm

so i'm been asking you about the kindle school and your upbringing as you look back and reflect

on those memories about your experiences at the kindle school would you mind sharing a little bit more with me um i went to kindle school um you know i wanted to have an education

and i went back i was seen as a troublemaker when i went back and my mother really fought for me to stay there for my last year of school

um so i did have some problems while i was there um what do you see as the differences between then

and now well the difference is that there was no education in my time you know our opportunities

were very limited whereas now people actually get an education when they go to school and

it can help them to prepare for the future in my time what it gave me was a very limited education

so justin thank you so much for sharing your stories with me i am wondering if you can

tell me a little bit more about gallaudet recognizing your family your mom's actions

the kindle school memorial and what that means to you what are your thoughts about this entire

project well i'm very happy that my mom stood up for us and that she faced the board of education

and told them that their actions were against children and preventing them from getting a good education and my mother fought you know she was a fighter

and i'm very proud of my mother for doing that because she stood up for what was right you know

and every time someone stands up for what is right in terms of education that's a good thing powerful

such interesting history and experiences thank you so much for sharing that truly do appreciate

what a moving and significant family yes indeed they're truly beautiful and i enjoy

the opportunity immensely i understand that carol miller is here to also have a conversation

with you uh carolyn and so at this time we would like to invite miss carol miller to join us

yes indeed and i'm happy that you saw the interview that we did with the three brothers

but now i'm so excited to interview miss carol

hello miss carol how are you hello

i would like to start with this interview by thanking you for graciously taking the

time out of your schedule and coming here to interview with us once again

the first question that i would like to ask you

is about your family can you tell me about your mother and what you remember about your mother

in terms of the lawsuit and story surrounding that was there anything that your mom shared with you

well come is three years older than i am so uh

we were not told specifically what was going on but you could pick up the

anguish and the angst around the house about kenneth's education uh how my parents were

trying to get him into school here and that was not being allowed i remember

the talk about the school in maryland and my mother taking him there and not wanting to

leave him they said if they if she left him and he started to cry that they would just

put him in a room and just let him cry and he was about five or six years old at that

time so that was not an option for my mother that's when she brought him home and she decided

that they would make other arrangements i think they started this process in 1946

that's the first letter that i have that shares an insight into what was going on so it was almost

it took about six years before kenneth was actually formally educated and that's a

loss for any student and especially one who's going to need some extra support

it was finally decided after all of the ins and outs and the letters back and forth

uh and the denial of his acceptance into kendall that they decided to send him away

to philadelphia and he was eight years old i think he told me he was eight years old at the

time so i would have been about five maybe five going on six so i remember my brother leaving

i remember the trips going back and forth to pennsylvania to see to see him in school

we were able to spend holidays together and we went to virginia during the summer and we had

all of the summer together but prior to kenneth getting into school i could see the the impact

that not being able to communicate effectively he could communicate about certain concrete things

but as for you know i don't like this i don't want to do that that makes me sad this makes me

happy those kinds of things were you you're not able to explain fully what's going on

so my grandmother who was a very strong presence in our lives believed that if he just put his mind

to it he could be able to hear and talk so she was not a fan of sign language so when he left

washington and he went to pennsylvania kenneth came back kenneth was signing

he was able to communicate with his teachers with his friends and sort of left us behind

after he went into kendall for the two years that he was there between 52 and 54 when the brown decision was decided

there was a difference in what was being taught and how the students were being taught

so and i think again that's two more years of losing

i guess a really solid foundation of education and those things do make a difference

i have letters when my mother started writing again

after the children had been admitted to kendall on a segregated basis that she was noticing that

what was presented to the white children or what was presented to the black children was different

and she said wait a minute we need to get things equalized even more so i don't know i'd have to

go back and look at information to see how that turned out but uh my mother was a homemaker for

a while until my grandmother retired and then she went to work she had gone to howard university she

finished three and a half years there and then she decided she was in love and she had to get married

and grandmother said i will send you as long as you don't get married and when she did

uh she left howard so she had three and a half years at howard university she started out as

a music major because she played the piano she signed in the choir she was an excellent swimmer

but she left howard and she eventually went to work in the federal government and daddy went

to work for the police department we lived in the same house on t street with my grandmother

that she had purchased way back in 1920 and kenneth and justin are still living there

so i've rambled on is there anything you you would like for me to share

i i'm just excited to hear more of the story i enjoy every minute that you share with us about

your mom she seems to have been a wonderful woman i wish absolutely i could have met

her in person but she is gone and no longer with us but as we think about her memories

they live on through her children and she has that legacy that continues so i really do appreciate

you sharing that miss carol i could stay here all day i could listen to you all day i love the

stories i would never tire of it i do want to ask you another question though about the house you

mentioned that you have the house and the house is on the historic ledger from my understanding

it is a landmark in washington d.c is that correct because it is historic in nature

could you talk about that um and do people so people can learn about this historic house

and you mentioned your brothers still live in the house as yes well house is the house is still there 1204 t street uh some years ago my mother was very

interested in family and she loved taking pictures so we have a lot of pictures of

old family members but she had given me the name of some of the older family members and

i've always been interested in the history so i started to gather more information about what

what went on with kenneth and i actually called the dc historical society to find out what they

had because as far as i was concerned it was a fantastic story it was wonderful the

court case was settled in their favor it was two years before brown and when i called the

historical society they sort of gave me what who i don't know anything about louise miller or kenneth

miller we have no information so one of the things i did was to call and find out how they could be

placed on the african-american heritage trail and so after some writing and some explaining

someone says why that's fantastic and we think that the case does deserve to be recognized

so uh i guess maybe it's been 12 14 years ago that a plaque was placed in front of the house

and this is actually the house that grandma bought and kenneth and justin are still there

wow what a wonderful memory can you talk to us about um as you know the kellogg hotel on

the gallaudet campus was built there is a plaque that's located there and it stands behind the name

sign of the kellogg conference center how do you feel about the placement of the plaque currently

i was not aware that the plaque was being placed when it was done and i'm so appreciative of the

efforts that went into having it placed because without it i think that this may have just sort of

floated off into history and not have been recognized so i'm glad it's there i often wondered about the placement of it

and whether it was thought that perhaps if the visitors came through the hotel they would see it but it wasn't visible from the street for the people who were walking through and i have my

cousin has a friend who said she was there and she had no idea that the plaque was there so i think

a change and more recognition is probably the time has come but i'm glad that it was there

and for those who work to have it placed i want to tell them how much i appreciate it

thank you so that leads me to my next question

and this question is about the kindle school memorial project that is currently a work in progress how do you feel about this new memorial project and do you

believe that it's an opportunity for us to share awareness with people about the memorial school

i think it's an excellent opportunity i have enjoyed working with everyone

who has put forth such a great effort and to thank all of them to thank you and yvonne um

i think it's a great opportunity for something to be done that allows people to come to grips with

what has gone on i know there are a lot of people who say oh it's in the past you should just get

over it but sometimes there are pains and there are experiences that stay with you

and they stay with you forever and even sometimes when you can sort of tuck them away there are

times when they come forth and they do bring uh you know you put your head down and you shake

your head and sometimes the tears will come because you understand what went on and not

only with my brother with with all of the children who had to be taken away from their homes and sent

away and were not receiving that one-on-one love and support that they needed they had an extra

challenge to deal with and then the challenge of being alone to me is just unimaginable

when i went to kindle when we were walking with dr cordano and we were with kenneth

and he looked at the kindle school and the old building that i had not seen before because it was

in a part of campus that i did not have access to and he said i was sitting on the front

waiting for my mother to come out because she was in a meeting to find out whether or not they would

allow me to come to the school and it's just that's something that touches you to the point

you can't get over that and so many children have gone through that and here what he had not

been introduced to the information though there's you're different there's something wrong with you

you can't go to school with other people and he's standing there trying to figure out well why

so i think i think the memorial will give us an opportunity

and i understand the design will allow us to enter it and sort of walk through and come

to grips with what has gone on by the time we get to the end and maybe there's a space there that

will give us a place where we can think and heal and say the time has come for us to move forward

i agree with you wholeheartedly it's definitely time this memorial project

it really is a way for us to start healing and gallaudet owes that to your family

and i definitely can't wait for it to be built

i'm excited about it i'm looking forward to it and again i want to thank you so much for

sharing your stories and your experiences with us thank you miss carol thank you truly amazing

you know when you're when we were watching the interviews with the individual family members

and also um the live interviews with carol miller that you just did it was so very powerful

carolyn so i'm wondering if you could perhaps share with us uh some of your experiences what

was it like for you uh to conduct those interviews with the miller family members

sure liz i i would be happy to share indescribable awesome i kept sort of pinching myself and saying

is this really happening am i really interviewing the miller family during the time it was even happening it was like a dream come true for me absolutely surreal and

definitely a historic moment in our time and i am so happy that gallaudet is supporting this effort

and on that particular day november 19 2020 we were welcomed we welcomed the miller family to

the gallaudet campus we put out the red carpet and we served this family to the best of our ability

so it was quite a formal event we had a car formal car service uh bring them to the campus

we also provided breakfast and lunch for them on that day

and we just wanted to make them feel at home as we conducted the interviews and did the filming

and it was just an amazing experience i remember walking over to the hotel and

taking a picture of each family member standing next to the memorial plaque that now stands

and as i think back to that the one word that comes to mind is

awesome i mean i was so pleased and we enjoyed watching the filming we enjoyed interviewing

them and learning much more about the family and this is history that needs to be documented

indeed it does can you tell us um what you want us to be aware of

as one of the four themes um which we know we're now currently focused on awareness

tell us a little bit more what should we be aware of sure when we think about awareness

we need to think about the fact that the miller family had this experience

and part of the kindle division memorial is divided into four phases awareness is the first

of those phases freedom remembrance and healing are the rest of those

and we'll be advertising those later on but we're beginning this webinar by focusing on awareness

and basically we want people to know about the lawsuit we want them to know about what happened

during this period in history and the fact that you can't erase this history we know when we

think about you know general american history you know we learn specific things in school

we learn you know things about black history maybe general things but we don't learn about black deaf

history that's what's missing and we really need those stories of the black deaf history to be told

that black deaf experience such as what happened with the miller family and this lawsuit is important and it's important that many people know about this

this was a landmark lawsuit that happened before the brown versus the board of education

lawsuit and it's something that needs to be shared with the world it's that critically important i agree with you that awareness is the first phase of this process

and it will also give black deaf people an opportunity to share their narratives definitely

you know we may find that many of their stories are painful because of the history that's there

throughout the years and so we have to think how those stories or narratives have been neglected

they have been buried in history and it is past time to create a space where we can increase

our awareness of their narratives we need to get those narratives out to the wider public

i completely agree with you carolyn go ahead and yes i just would like to mention

as miss carol explained when she was talking about the plaque on the back of the name for the kellogg

center many people overlook it they don't see it at all it's easy to miss and that's not acceptable

it's not right we have to do better we have to memorialize the history we have to show

that we value our history it needs to become more visible i concur now my next question for you is

what is so unique about this event can you talk to us a little bit about

black owned businesses that you actually use for your event when you hosted the millers on campus

yes what was unique about the event

well when we got together with the miller family um that in itself was a unique experience being with the family uh as

i mentioned we served both breakfast and lunch that day awesome and it was catered by a black

deaf chef even better it was amazingly delicious i can't even explain it to you and we were so proud

to have a black deaf chef there to prepare the food for us to prepare this meal his name is jamar

higgins and i just have to brag a little bit on him we also had a black deaf photographer who was

present billy butler he was a photographer um so we could see things from his point of view he's

obviously skilled with capturing the emotion of the subjects it's just an amazing amazing day

so hopefully in the future we will have more black deaf owned businesses uh involved in

terms of the communication and marketing in connection with that project so looking forward

to it this is all so amazing i hope that we continue to use our black owned businesses

for future projects oh most definitely for the second third and fourth phase of this project

most definitely we will anything else you'd like to share with us about the november 19th event

i think what i would like to share

is some of the

points in time during that video for example when we were talking with kenneth

and kenneth talked about the kindle building he talked about walking on campus and as we walked on campus i could see kenneth looking

at the kindle building and i could see he was going back into his memory bank just by his look

and at that moment i just took the deepest breath it was like i wanted to freeze that moment in time

can you imagine being a seven-year-old boy and told no you can't come to the school so that

moment when he glanced at the building is just stuck in my memory it was a heart rendering moment

and then we had president bobby cordano with us and he looked at her

and he said i remember and he began to explain his heartache and she apologized

to him for the pain that he'd experienced for what his family went through for the injustice

uh for that entire experience and to be there at that moment for me i i will remember that

forever it's etched into my memory forever so this family is so gracious in helping us heal it

was a healing moment for them it was a healing moment for us so it really went full circle

and we owe them this we owe them this time to heal so i was absolutely floored by those moments how

remarkable and what a powerful moment i'm so pleased that the family had an opportunity to

gather and to get to this place of healing through this process it's very significant thank you

carolyn for sharing this very powerful experience that you had in working with the family i now will

turn it back over to yvonne black yvonne will now explain some of the history and the work

that has gone into the kindle school division ii memorial yvonne is our project lead and has

been doing a tremendous job investing her time to make sure that this project succeeds yvonne

greetings everyone all the people who are able to make themselves available to watch

today especially our younger people over at kindle and to everyone else at schools for the deaf across the country who are our future

first and foremost i wanted to make sure that we show you the november 19th family

photos from when the family arrived i know that you're all eager to see them so take a moment

the deaf photographer billy butler was able to take some of these photographs it's actually

not this uh not what's being shown right now but what took place on november 19th with the family

no shara it it was a time with the family that's what we're looking to display here

so we're trying to find the november 19th photographs when the miller family arrived on campus

okay it should show after this

we noticed that there was an annex building and that was to be replaced with the conference center

the annex building was not impressive by any means

the other side of gallaudet campus had you know appropriate standard buildings you would expect

to see in an educational community but the nx at that time was not up to that quality

at the time when they were preparing to demolish the building there were people who started to talk about it

and there were members of the gallaudet community that were shocked to find out that that building had actually been built to instruct black death students during segregation

that's something that was constantly swept under the rug and not talked about

excellent so in the photographs we were able to see

different members of the family i wanted to take a moment to explain the work that we've been doing up to this point as well as the status and where we currently are

nearly three years ago president bobby cordano attended the

national black deaf advocates conference and that took place in baltimore

at that point it was the black deaf archives that caught our interest and in doing so the

question was asked what's going on with the plaque that's been there for such a long time on campus

but the noise for that plaque to be changed actually started before then

it was the black lives matter movement that had six students which risa shaw was a professor for

who started complaining and really making noise about the plaque

and it was important to make sure that the history behind that area was more widely known

so the mass design group called for different community stakeholders to share their voice and

input on the kendall memorial there was input from the black deaf community the gallaudet community

we were able to get a pulse on what the community felt was significant in this area and being the memorial and that eventually led to having a stakeholder group

and the stakeholder group worked very diligently and you can actually see what the memorial site looks like right outside of the conference center

it looks like a very barren area almost like a cow path

what we want to do is to really beautify that area and show the symbolism that it has

so you'll see different photographs that have been taken of stakeholders and these are the people

who have been doing this work all along to honor the miller family now this group of stakeholders

exists but that's not all in fact all of you as members of the community are also our stakeholders

you have a voice and now i'll allow carolyn to well i'll allow carolyn afterwards to

share more about that but the point is that it doesn't need to be limited to feedback from

gallaudet it could be young people it could be members of the black community brown community

we want everyone to have a part in this process it's truly my pleasure to see this project grow

and to become such a primary and most important project

we really want to capture the essence and there's things that need to be acknowledged

thank you for your patience as we share bits and pieces of information thank you to university communications the admissions office for releasing me to do this work

thank you to the executive directors who have provided their support and to everyone on campus who invested even those of you who are watching right now

you are a part of this legacy and you helped it become what it is i certainly

don't want to overlook the donors who have given significant contributions

from various sources in order to make the memorial what it is that we know now

i would like to thank all of you in advance for your future donations and contributions that may begin today and going forward would like to share a little bit of information

we will have a community engagement process that involves three different sessions

we want to make sure that you're able to attend carolyn and liz will be able to share some of the details that come along with

the naming process we want to be sure that your your voice and your input is considered

lastly we'd like to share some exciting news the project manager the person who is responsible

to manage the entire project and see it to its success as far as the kendall memorial project

we've already have a position that we've advertised so please take a look at the information in the chat we've shared a link where you can apply today

if you are interested you can certainly explore more and if you know someone else who might be

interested feel free to share thank you and again especially to the miller family to liz

miller for fighting the good fight and for all of you for believing in this project once again

thank you it's been a long time coming and change gone come i look forward to all of you

reaching out and sharing the black deaf experience thank you bye-bye well thank you yvonne black

really we owe you a standing ovation so here i am giving you your standing ovation my dear

um as we think about the work that has taken place over the last three years and making this happen our hats are off to you the work's not gonna yeah still more to come

absolutely i love you we'll also have to put in some work and i'm happy that you are still a part of the steering committee because you are a um such has such great value

to contribute to the committee i definitely agree your work has been absolutely amazing

thank you very much this show is yours bye-bye at this time we would like to

introduce our steering committee to you and so if we can get the powerpoint slide to come up there

i think you all can see the powerpoint slide we have dr carolyn mccaskill and myself

we are the co-chairs of the kendall school division ii steering committee

yet please do stay on that slide for now i want to go through and introduce our members to you

you probably see some faces that you recognize we have yvonne black she is our project lead

we also have christopher hoffman

he is our campus design and planning um and if you could please do go back to that slide thank you so much we have delricia mourns she is our graduate student assistant

we have nick gould the executive director of institutional advancement

and lastly we have brandy raris who is the chief marketing and undergraduate admissions officer

next we have our stakeholders

so if we can please get that powerpoint slide

if we can please show the powerpoint of the stakeholders

we have boomi ina who is the edi representative we have allison

polk who is our representative from the development office

we have jc smith our black student union representative

kailyn arlen lozano our graduate student assistant we have howard rosenblum

the ceo of the national association of the deaf carol miller who is a member of the miller family

franklin jones he's the black gentleman that you see pictured in the upper left hand corner with a long blue shirt we have tai

gordano representing the claire center

we have la mark williamson he is a staff the staff of color representative and if we look to our last

line of photos we have mr bernie palmer he is the former project lead and a gallaudet alum

derek beam joseph who is also representing the development office on this project

if you look to the middle row we have a right hand upper corner we have jessica fine

and then from the campus the off from the camp office of campus design and planning

uh the final row um lower left hand corner we have mr dorian fletcher

representing dc abd our dc black death advocates chapter

next to dorian we have taise wright representing the claire center

allison polk from the development office

we also have andrew waneski and he is representing our student body government he is this spg president

bottom row middle photo african american woman in braids zelie meadows

representing our black deaf alumni and mbda i already introduced to you mr lim mark williamson

who is from the undergraduate admissions office and the development office the final picture that you see bottom right hand corner

african-american gentleman in glasses is mr gerald miller who you have already met via his interview

at this time we want to review with you our process for renaming the miller memorial

this is actually a new the new memorial it's very exciting it's an opportunity for us to actually recognize the black deaf experience

we have actually gotten feedback from the black deaf community and various

stakeholders that the kindle school division ii memorial that name itself is inappropriate

the name kendall actually comes from amos kendall who was an individual who gave us

the land for gallaudet university to build the school and the university of course amos kendall

was a white slave owner

the division ii school was also a school that was named following the conventions of segregation

and so with that understanding we want to make sure that black deaf people

are recognized for their tireless efforts in fighting for integration and equality we need to

celebrate the black deaf experience and the current name fails to do that so we the members

of the steering committee have decided to invite our stakeholders that i just mentioned to you all

and the black deaf community to come together so that we can jointly identify potential names

for the new memorial

this memorial is for the black deaf community

and we have to begin with the name of the memorial we want to be sensitive we want to have shared leadership and shared acceptance

because this is going to be a very unique marker for our community given that we will

convene the stakeholders the black deaf community and the steering committee to work

together to come up with a list of potential names we will then hand over the slate of names to the

board of trustees for their review and approval we will then take that slate of names and allow

the public to help us finalize the name that will be chosen in order to rename the current memorial

carolyn what do you think of this process

i think it's uh wonderful for us to involve all pieces of the community so that everyone has a sense of ownership

the stakeholder group is diverse and i think it's about time that we have these people together

because as was explained we still have pain points as we look back on our various memories that

and things that have occurred in time so we don't want to continue to look back in a negative way

and to have negative memories of the past in terms of kindle and slavery and him being a slave owner

with this kindle division to school being a segregated school and those negative memories we decided would be better to come up with a different name we want to involve the community

in that effort and decide what is going to be the most appropriate name the name that really fits historically with what has happened so i'm definitely excited and looking forward to

having the community involved in that process so that we can feel that it's a part of our history

absolutely i am very much looking forward to the naming process that we will

begin upon thank you so much carolyn for sharing your thoughts at this time would you like to introduce the two students who have been involved in this project

yes yes would be my pleasure i would like to introduce the two students who took a course with

me this past fall semester at gallaudet university i teach a course called the dynamics of oppression

and i have a group of students who are involved in that class i'm going to call summer seeger

and natalie marcelo and these two students will share the work that

they did the research they did for the class hi natalie

how are you two doing doing good good well thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of the kindle school memorial project webinar

and i would like for the two of you to perhaps share your team research and to explain what

the topics were the topics that you chose in brief please and uh doesn't matter to me who goes first

sure hi my name is natalie marcello and my partner wendy and i um

researched the mother of kenneth miller louise miller as well as other parents who filed the lawsuit for deaf children's rights to get education at kindle school

while we were doing our research for a paper we learned so much about the miller family

and we learned about the lawsuit and all that was going on during the civil rights era

kindle school was once integrated

but it was definitely a challenge

and miss miller wanted to send her child to kindle school but she was denied access because

he was a black student so he started going to the pennsylvania school for the deaf and then later on

i went to the maryland school for the deaf because it was closer nearby but there were

parents like miss miller who got together and filed a complaint with the dc board of education

and they won that lawsuit and so that started was a a point in history that we can't deny it

allowed them access to kindle school however it was a school that was segregated at that time

so during the time of segregation there were students who came there to and it was built near the old gym building on campus but it was very small brick building

with not enough space for all of the desk in fact all the materials that they had were old

and about a year later they did some upgrades on the building

and that building was dimash for the construction of the kellogg hotel

so it wasn't until 1954 with the brown versus board of education when that lawsuit was won

that integration of schools became a reality so their persistence in continuing to work

on this effort and to continue to focus on the provision of education for black deaf children

was so important it was a moment in history for black deaf students and a moment of civil rights

importance in the history of black deaf people so as we focus on black deaf children and the parents

who were involved in that situation they were the ones who empowered the deaf community so we

want to recognize the hard work of the parents as well as that of the miller family so that was the

information that i chose to focus on in terms of black deaf history i know that we need to make a record of all of it you know whether we're talking about events that happen on campus or off campus

it's an important part of black deaf history and their legacy will continue through this project

thank you so much natalie

now uh summer the floor is yours hello everyone i'm summer and my research project um there were

another group of students for dr mccaskill's class and we focused our research project on

the miller memorial we particularly made our focus the other 23 students that attended the school

those students also need to be memorialized because their experience is so very important

to capture as well we want to make sure that that experience doesn't disappear and it's

just important to recognize every individual's contribution and to celebrate those contributions

through this project we were curious to know about their lives what happened to them so that we can

actually benefit future generations of the deaf community i hope that those stories will inspire

greater change and so in researching their experiences we were curious about

their experiences even from 1905 all the way up till 1952 so we wanted to learn more about why did

the situation transpire as it did what influenced change to happen and so for research purposes we

wanted to look at those 23 students we divided them into three categories actually um we had

a group of students so we were able to divide the 23 students up and we each focused on a different

group of students we wanted to research their individual histories with the goal of capturing

their stories through internet research we also want you know we could use google

we use the gallaudet library and also the gallaudet archives

during our research we found minimal information on some of these individuals we actually couldn't

find a lot of information about them and so we decided that we wanted to be able to interview

some of the members of the miller family so that we could actually get more information and then

that would lead us to verify the information that we had captured on the other 23 students so the

miller family they said of those 23 students five of the students are still living and so through

our research we're hoping that we will be able to continue to perhaps set up some interviews with

those five remaining members of their class while they're still alive and so hopefully if we can

conduct those interviews we'll be able to find out more even about the lives of the students who have passed away um because it's important for us to capture their story as well so this is an

ongoing project for us that we're very excited about well thank you thank you so much summer

i really appreciate the two of you taking my class and the research that you did

and the research that you will continue to do thank you yes thank you for giving us the

opportunity dr moore speaking uh natalie and summer thank you so very much for sharing your

research with us i look forward to learning more about your resource results thank you everyone

all right we're back you know i did want to say um i'm really sorry with the technical issues that

we've faced today hopefully we'll get everything all worked out and be ready for our next uh series

in the webinar series um as i mentioned earlier it's a series of four we are now

focused on awareness our next webinar will be focused on freedom and then we have two other

webinars coming to the future remembrance and healing so we'll do better we'll get better as

time goes by in terms of the technological issues so thank you so much for your patience all right

now we will be opening it up for q a indeed

let me ask yvonne black to join us at this time as well hello for a period of questions and answers

yes so we're open to the audience to ask questions carolyn i saw that there were a couple of questions that people

really were just dying to know um and one of them was where can they get the shirt for the

center of black deaf studies and people are also asking if you can share a link

where contributions can be made to so if we can have those two in the chat

there was another question

what happened to the people other people's lives and you know how can we make sure that we don't miss anything

or is there a website that we can find more information at i believe the center for black deaf

studies is available online but i just wanted to share some of the questions people had in the chat

as far as the t-shirts i'm happy that you love them i absolutely love that the member of the families the miller family put them on i wear them as well however today we are wearing purple uh in

honor of miss louise miller because that was one of her favorite colors and i love purple as well

now getting back to the topic of the t-shirts we will post that information soon there are

several other people who've asked me about them and are interested in purchasing the t-shirts so we'll post that information shortly

as to how you can purchase them uh we haven't set up a process yet uh but we

are currently working with um the business office to make sure that we work that out so

soon soon we'll advertise it soon okay and what was the other question

so there was information that's been shared in the chat as far as where people can find details on the memorial

and another question was how many students showed up when the division 2 school was opened do we

know there were 23 students at the kindle division ii school and some of them are still alive today

uh i believe that kenneth mentioned there are four or five students who are still alive and i would

really love to interview them and love to get a chance to meet them and to hear their stories

i think that they are definitely an important part of the history of this occasion as well

right now we don't have all of those names um but kenneth uh did mention hmm i think robert

robert moore oh somebody who recently passed away um so there are there are four or five students who are still um alive at this time uh robert milburn was

that student so anyway the goal is that we have the students who are doing the research

do more research about those who are still surviving and also find other information there are gaps in what we know but we're definitely curious to

find out more about their background where they worked what their family life was like

so that's a part of our plan that we will continue to do research on all 23 of the

students so the two students who are in my course who just presented as i mentioned they've already

started working on that project of doing research to find out more information about the 23 students

and tagging along with carolyn's remarks we do have the names of people who are still living

one of them lives in florida and another person lives in virginia we're doing our best to collect that information we know that one of the students is currently in

a nursing home so as a part of the project lead responsibilities i'll make sure to collect their

information because we do want to make sure that we're able to collect as much information

as we can and we'll be sure to share with the community members as part of our next steps

okay so i think there's no more questions in the chat but if anything comes up feel free to

look at the information that's posted and again for some of you who missed some of what we shared

we'll have this available on facebook as well as youtube for your reference

now i'll take a look at the q a

okay someone asked why purple the reason we wore purple is because louise miller loved the color

purple in the second of our series we'll have more information to share with the community great idea

who knows maybe we'll sing purple rain we'll see

i also want to especially recognize those that have contributed for quite some time

especially the class of 1992 and their donations being the first class to donate to this project

thank you so much to the class of 1992. and to all the other classes make sure you follow suit

this year is this month is kindness month okay

also for the photographs that were taken on november 19th we'll also post those so people

can see what the facial expressions were when the family arrived on campus and as they went

through about as they went about their day on november 19th we'll share those photographs

there are people that are hoping that we can broadcast this nationwide through pbs and i'm glad to say indeed that is the plan

the center for black deaf research is really focusing on this and trying to put on the forefront this is so significant because it

took place before brown versus board of education and should be an exhibit in the african-american

history of african-american museum of african-american history and culture

more information forthcoming and i think that completes my responses to these questions

have we answered all of the questions in the q a are we ready for the wrap up

i do want to thank everyone who was involved today with this project

and thank the audience for being here at the webinar you were fabulous thank you

and i would say keep an eye out for future webinars

and please do visit galleyshare.com center for black deaf studies

for further information indeed thank you once again

and before we close the teacher in me has to acknowledge these four different levels and for today the first level was awareness awareness

the second will be freedom

the third will be remembrance remembrance and the fourth healing healing keep that in mind

thank you thank you all so much thank you for watching

[End Video Transcript]

Webinar #1 - Awareness

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Video Transcript

[Video Transcript Start]
[Video presented in English and ASL]

hello everyone thank you so much for joining in our second series uh in our second webinar in the series

and the theme is freedom the last one was on december 9th and it focused on awareness

and today we'll be focusing on freedom i have to say that i'm excited to begin this program

i was in fact a project lead for the memorial project

and the purpose of this program is to focus on kendall 100 kendall alumni students and i graduated from kendall and went to mssd

we had an original emcee mike kent i planned for our event today but due

to some family emergencies he wasn't able to make himself available so i had to step

in hopefully we can bring mike in next time i'm delighted to be today's emcee regardless i wanted to share a little bit of what you can expect during today's program

we'll kick off with an opening prayer and then we'll have the national black anthem from alumni presented by a kindle alumni

then we also have staff from the claire center who will be presenting a song and we'll go through the program agenda we'll share announcements by dr elizabeth moore

and then carolyn and we'll see the rest of the program hopefully all of you enjoy what we have planned for you today

we'll have our prayer it's recorded by billy butler who's an alumni of mssd

our god who sits high and looks slow you have sustained us and brought us to today

thank you for connecting us and allowing us to be a part of your kingdom

allowing us to maintain a relationship with you through jesus

today's webinar audience is gathered to have a discussion about the historic battle of black deaf injustice

this included a lack of freedom and as we consider the things and situations that the

black deaf community went through we admit that it posed great challenges and hardships

we know that you are already familiar with this story of injustice you allowed us to endure it

to see this change and even improve but lord a lot of work still remains to be accomplished today

during this webinar we ask that you would be with us as we gather as a witness to the conversation

hear us as we discuss what changes and improvements are needed to create a better world for future generations

a world that is more just and free and accessible to the black deaf community

we want to thank you god because we know that you will show yourself strong today

you are mighty and capable to do and provide all that we need or may ask for

so today god we ask we ask for your divine presence to come and be with us god we thank

you for what is to come because we know that you will help this webinar to be a success

you are going to provide funding for this memorial in ways we cannot even imagine

from sources unknown abundance will flow

god you will bless this endeavor and all those involved with this initiative you will bless the technology so that this event will be a smashing success we trust that you will do whatever we ask

we thank you in advance because you have already blessed this program you've already

made it a success you've already provided what we need thank you god for being our god

you are our motivation we trust in you

and we can depend on you in preparation as we kick off this webinar

we ask that as people join in that they receive a blessing

in jesus name we praise you forever and ever and ever in jesus name amen amen and amen

amen amen

as as billy share we are all blessed here today

what's next on our agenda and i'd like to remind everyone that we want to showcase our alumni from kendo and mssd

who are now working at million school for the deaf there's one in particular ronnie bradley

who will be performing the black national anthem

touching my heart is fluttering after seeing that thank you to louise b miller's family

for producing us for helping to produce a successful child thank you

i'll try not to get too emotional next in our program i would like to welcome tara miles from the clear center

tariff never mind making yourself on video how are you doing tara i'm doing well

you have a song in mind right yes i'm so happy that you asked me

uh the song that i'm going to do is oh lord i want you to help me and i have to say that this song

is a classic spiritual it is a cry to the lord for help and when i think about the miller family

i think about their struggle i think about the frustrations they experience the barriers

that they fought to overcome a system of oppression and injustice i think about that and i remember how it was back then you know that black people like we couldn't be

you know we didn't go for therapy we didn't have counseling our counselor was the lord that is who helped us through that's who helped us when we had to struggle through it

thank you

i want

i want you to help me tell them to help me

i want you to help me on my journey

want you to help me

help me

come down now for prayer

whoa

help me

that was beautiful that's one of my favorite songs

i'm trying to hold my tears back because when i was a child and i saw

martin luther king getting assassinated that music was always playing in the background

i remember seeing people as i sat on the front porch and this is so meaningful i want to thank president cordano especially

on february 3rd there was an event planned for our president's presidential lecture for the state

of the union it was a presentation scheduled for the community that had to be rescheduled

and there was paperwork filed on february 2nd and then it continued february 3rd so 69 years ago to this day the significant moment in history

all of the help that louise b miller got was from god

god used people to help guide her along the way and the miller family

the next person i'd like to call on is dr elizabeth moore

our chief diversity officer hi dr moore the floor is yours thank you

we the kindle school division two memorial steering committee are very elated to share

an update with the community regarding the naming process for the memorial you may

remember at our last webinar in december we actually hosted the kindle school division 2

webinar part 1 which was awareness and that is the event where dr carolyn mccaskill

actually interviewed some of the members of the miller family i'm sure all of you recall that and

that is when we actually announce the process for assigning a formal name to the memorial

so with the help of the community we wanted to engage you in this process

for the kindle school division two memorial and this is because we know that there are various

stories within our community as you may already know kendall or amos kendall

is actually the philanthropists who donated land so that we could establish the school

and the university however mr kindle was a white slave owner and so with that checkered history

we have also recognized that the division two schools current name represents a segregated pass

for black deaf education and black deaf students and so as we think about the current name it

doesn't really represent the spirit of the black deaf community and our struggle for equality in

education and also recognizing the oppression that that community experienced and so the

kindle school division ii memorial project and our steering committee got to work to address

this matter we met with various stakeholder groups including kindle students current mssd students

and our community stakeholders like the national black deaf advocates organization

the national association of the deaf and a variety of other community organizations

as well as student organizations and so after getting all of their input

we were able to collect a slate of proposed names for the memorial and i want to just share some

statistics with you from the stakeholder groups again kindle students participated in this process

they were very enthusiastic and so they were able to give us their suggestions we had landmarks

that were taken into consideration like the martin luther king landmark and so the kindle instructors

use this as an educational opportunity for their students brainstorming recommendations for naming

the memorial and so the kindle students who were engaged in this process were sixth through eighth

graders and they submitted 21 names believe it or not on the mssd side of the campus

which of course is our 9th through 12th graders we had 27 names submitted

and then from the community at large we collected a total of 35 names which is just awesome and so

having that slate of names we were absolutely inspired by the engagement from the community

in this process it was absolutely tremendous the steering committee then got to work deliberating

about the names and narrowed down that slate of names to three names and you may be wondering

what are the three names that we have come down to the first is the louise b miller memorial

the second is the louise b miller pathways and gardens

a legacy to black deaf children the third and final name

is the louise b miller black deaf cultural path

so let me go ahead and give you some additional context for each of those names

the louise b miller memorial actually recognizes the miller family and the journey that they undertook and the sacrifice

that the mother mrs miller made on behalf of her four children three of whom were deaf her

three deaf sons and her one hearing daughter mrs miller was the tireless advocate and she fought

four black deaf children to be educated on the campus of gallaudet university in washington dc

and this of course recognized the importance of black deaf children

being educated and then of course highlighting the miller's family struggle and fight in this regard

and so as we recognize the civil rights of the black deaf community we recognize educational access and this name takes that into consideration

the history the impact and the ongoing efforts that we must take to address

injustice in education particularly for black deaf children now the second name

which is the louise b miller pathways and gardens a legacy to black deaf children

when we envision louise b miller

we recognize her personality her spirit her determination

and if it wasn't for her advocacy efforts and her desire to ensure freedom for her deaf son what would our current reality

look like in terms of accessing quality education and programming for deaf children

as we think about the jim crow era in washington dc that certainly had an impact on the black deaf

community parent would want to send their child to a school that wasn't in their local neighborhood

and so the miller family had three deaf sons they lived in the city

and there was a school that their deaf sons could not attend right in their local neighborhood

and so mrs miller had a staunch commitment and was adept at working to open doors

doors that had been closed for half a century 50 years can you imagine she was a powerhouse

of a woman and so the louise b miller pathways and gardens a legacy to black deaf children

is quite fitting to honor a humble woman of great stature

and so on the behalf of black deaf children she fought the good fight

so we were able to collect all of these names

and we really see that this captures four themes we have a awareness freedom

and the memorial itself

the third name louise b miller black deaf cultural path again recognizes the work of mrs miller

and also kenneth who was her deaf son and the struggles that they had to navigate to achieve

justice for black deaf children in washington d.c

she was able to successfully bring forth a lawsuit for black deaf students to enter kindle school but at that time segregation was still the law of the

land and so there were two schools one for black deaf students and one for white deaf students

this became a cultural space on campus and today as we think about the journey from awareness

to freedom to remembrance and to healing we recognize that it is a path

and so we want to have a space for black deaf cultural recognition on

the campus of gallaudet university and in the spirit of louise v miller and her desire

for black deaf students to receive an education in a city that was their home

so the word itself path indicates that there is a journey to be undertaken

and so the way that the memorial will be designed it is designed in such a way to exhibit that

it will honor louise b miller and the original 23 students that enrolled in the school

the year at open and so we hope that this will then leave a lasting legacy

to black deaf culture and preserving that culture on the campus of gallaudet university

it would be a special place the louise b miller black death cultural path so we have three really

great names here you might remember that i began by explaining that we collected about 35 names and we had to work really hard we had a lot of conversations narrowing

down that slate of names to the three names that we are presenting to you this afternoon

i myself have already shared these names with the board of trustees

and the board of trustees will look over these three names and approve the three names that we've recently shared so that we can then send them back out

to the community and we will be asking the community to vote on the name of the memorial

this is such a historic occasion and i know each and every one of us is inspired by this process

especially for the black deaf community

because we feel a sense of ownership in this process

okay um so i will of course keep you updated in the near future especially as we decide to vote

on the name which will happen by the end of this month you will be hearing from us soon thank you

wonderful thank you liz that was a beautiful report it's truly exciting to see where

we'll go with the names now that we have these three looking forward to it thank you for your

remarks i wanted to share with you some information about the naming process

it is not complete we still have more ahead of us we plan to have community engagement

in this community engagement we'll talk about some of the materials and textures that we'd like to see in that memorial the next community engagement session is this friday

february 5th it's really fascinating look at all the detail behind the scenes as far

as what should be in that memorial so please be sure to participate you're welcome to join

now the garden it's something that we'll be walking across on a daily basis so keep that in mind with that let's continue

with the program hopefully you've enjoyed what we've had for you so far

i would like to give a very warm welcome to elizabeth who's one of the co-chairs

dr elizabeth moore and dr mccaskill who is also co-chair and at this point i'd like to call

dr mccaskill to come up and to prepare for this interview and explain a little bit about what

we can expect okay so i'll let you run the show hello there and thank you yvonne hello everyone

i hope that you are having a good afternoon i am so excited the center for black deaf studies in collat is working on collaborating part 2 and 4

of this memorial process and we're doing that in honor of the history of black deaf education

so today uh perhaps you remember we had a program on december 8th it was a webinar the theme of that

particular webinar was awareness and that webinar was the first of a series of four

and was basically an introduction to allow everyone to learn about the story that each miller family sibling shared they spoke of what it was like

in their experiences going to school they talked about their journey

kenneth talked about his experience going from one school to the other he went to both philadelphia school for the deaf as well as the kindle school

so they had an opportunity we had an opportunity rather to listen to their stories and also their

sister carolyn joined us as well as gerald uh all of the siblings join us in talking about their

stories and justin as well so today's program is going to move on to the topic of freedom

now we understand that we're not exactly free because the day the education of both hearing

and deaf black children are not equal there is still a system of inequal treatment within schools

so today we'll actually be talking about the lawsuit itself and what happened in the process

of filing that lawsuit and i am very fortunate to have two people that i'll be interviewing

about this topic those two people are dr sandra jowers dr jowers is a well-known historian

in the washington dc maryland virginia area and dr jarrus is also a professor at the university of

washington dc once i interview her then i'll also interview miss carol miller good morning dr jowers

how are you i am well and thank you for having me this is such an honor and a pleasure to be here

it's also my pleasure to have you here and we're very excited and appreciate the fact that you were able to join us today

and share a little bit of what you know about the lawsuit i recall reading about your dissertation

and in doing so i have to say that it was just truly eye-opening and remarkable

thank you so much for agreeing to this i understand that you're incredibly busy woman

and i have to say i just appreciate your willingness to respond to some of these questions

uh so with that i'll start with the first question what inspired you to write your dissertation about

uh miller versus board of education lawsuit thank you for the question and i'm going to

be concise because i'm so passionate about this what i would add with along with being a scholar

and a professor is that i am the stepmother of now a deaf daughter a adult daughter who herself

has three hearing children and a uh her partner is deaf as well so when she was

a little girl about 20 years ago i three things happened in my life i got married

i entered graduate school at howard university and i became a member of shiloh baptist church

i did not know at the time how they would all be connected and moved me toward writing about the miller case but as i became a stepmother and ashley was our deaf child and she was asking

about black deaf history i was showing her a history book and she said well who's deaf who's deaf and there was no one deaf in there and she she was bored she didn't want to read anymore

and i said okay this is what i'm going to focus on in graduate school i need to show her black deaf

history i can show her black history but i need to expand that and include black deaf history we're

at shiloh baptist church we're just new members and i was explaining to some of the members that

i was going to howard graduate school and one of the silent mission members in fact two of them

the late robert millhouse and the late donald mayfield said to me uh through the interpreter

that i needed to look at the miller case i needed to write about it it was important it needed to

be known and i started researching it and my daughter was excited at the time now she was 10

and so to have her excited was truly important so i did research and that became my topic because

as a historian we know the 1954 brown versus board of education case but the 1952 miller case

was two years before it changed the education for black deaf children in the district of columbia

and some of the same attorneys on that case worked with thurgood marshall on the brown case

so it became truly it was important anyway but it truly became important when i could tie it

all together as part of that freedom educational freedom movement for children hearing and deaf

that is an awesome story do you feel that your dissertation ended up having an

impact as far as the quality of education for black deaf students i think it had an impact on

those individuals who were writing about education for black deaf children and for hearing children

and how who struggled for that mrs miller was an exemplar uh in the community for her children

and she became a wider example and role model for others as well so i think the dissertation

did some light brought some light to a a women woman and a movement that should have had more

light to it but many times for for scholars even if there's no one deaf in your family

or in your circle it's not something you think about so and i've had people from

across the country and internationally contact me about the dissertation and about the case

and moving it forward and so i'm working on some projects uh because you want to expand it even

though we know things are not as they were we also know that educational freedom is not

where we want it to be for our children so there are things to do and more layers to add to that

you mentioned a little bit about your dissertation how

how landmarks were a part of it you mentioned thurgood marshall

obviously widely known what is it that you want people or viewers to leave with what is

it that you want them to remember the most and uh what do you feel like has the most

uh strong impression on them being that this was such a landmark case

is there a response you have to that what you want people to remember i think i want people to remember that the landmark cases are certainly important because their historical watershed

movement but to also understand that a lot of the significant change comes locally right so mrs

miller may not be known throughout the world or throughout the country but she had such an amazing

impact locally so i want people to take away from this understanding that social change advocates

come in all dimensions and they're not always on the national stage that this was a significant

case regionally that was connected to a larger case and to understand that you don't always have

to go for um the historical watershed moments that are put in the history books that you made

to memorize that you have local heroes that do exactly the same thing to press the boundaries to

break ceilings and to move uh to make change and that's what mrs miller did so look locally as well

that's very true you raised an excellent point are you currently updating your dissertation or do you plan to publish it yes um i'm currently

working on something that's connected to it i had the opportunity to meet with the late

uh mrs ruby fry hughes the first hearing black teacher who was signed at kendall school after

the case there were four and she was the first one that was signed and i had an opportunity for my daughter to meet her as well and she handed me some uh primary sources i have her contract

that she signed when she was hired she gave me a lot of pictures and a lot of other um documents and so i'm presently looking at the chapter for the instructors and making her the

focal point of that here was a black woman coming from new york moved to washington uh was first of

all shocked by the segregation she found here uh and was very much um not a um signed uh her

instructor she was an oralist who became involved with sign language and changed over to that so

she was very clear that um she was impacted by teachers who were signing and so that made her

change and that's the story that i want to talk about so i'm working on now looking at making

her story part of this trilogy uh the case her story and then trying to do an oral history

project of the students i had an opportunity to meet several and many are still here and we've

lost a lot they transitioned so as a public and oral historian i want to make sure we get those

stories down and i'm calling them signed oral history so that's the third project

that sounds very exciting i can't wait to see uh what your your next

project will end up looking like is there anything else that you'd like to add or do you think that

uh the questions covered mostly everything you wanted to share was there anything else you wanted

to add what i'd like to add is how important and significant it is for these programs to continue

for the public to be informed about what has transpired of the heroes and heroines involved

in that and the deaths the center for black death studies the critical umns and timeliness of having

a place in a repository where individuals can find out about this history so i'm just excited

that we're doing the programs and hopefully we don't just do them in february that they

will be ongoing throughout the year because as we know black history is 365 days a year so i'm

thankful to you for this program and for everyone yes it is yes it is so this is critical this is

how we'll keep the history how our children will know um how those in the community know we honor

what has taken place and how we respect those who made the sacrifice to push forward

i most certainly agree there's a question from the audience and i believe the question asks is there any way we can read

her dissertation i would love to have the opportunity to read it

um i will have to i know that i think it's somewhere public there's a jstor

does dissertations but a lot of it also it's in the chapter um i was asked to do a chapter for um

the book of gala that did the race a fair chance in a race of life so i've got a chapter in there

on black death education um i will look if so if you will if we can get the link or

an email for that person i will look to see where the dissertation is available and we'll send them

the link because it's somewhere on the internet everything is so it's there somewhere

i think proquest yes that's it proquest i believe that might be the other location that we might

be able to find that pro quest so that's an alternative uh place where you can probably

find your dissertation but thank you so much dr towers it's truly been a pleasure having you

join us today so thank you so much for your time thank you for having me

absolutely next i would like to interview carol miller

carol hello miss miller how are you hello how are you

i'm doing well thank you doing well i am so excited about this program today and about

all that we've done in terms of awareness now we're on to the section about freedom

and i want to entertain a discussion about the lawsuit and i have a couple questions to ask you in that regard can you tell us what it is you

know when your mom filed the lawsuit what do you remember about that time i am and i want your mind

kenneth i don't think you can see it but kenneth is sitting and watching us um i am three years old

he's watching i'm three years younger than kenneth and what i remember is um a trip to baltimore

was overly maryland i remember lots of conversation about kenneth going to school

i know that i had entered a division ii school but kenneth was not attending school at that time

i remember kenneth having to go away and i remember my mother coming home and she had started

to work and coming home and asking if there had been any information from dr paul cook and

at that time i did not know the significance of what was going on because you're just a child and

this is just everyday life but i'm sitting here now and i'm surrounded by old papers and pictures

and letters that take us back to that time and i know that kenneth is is going back also so we've

had several conversations with the family within the four of us uh kenneth gerald justin and myself

and among the four was trying to remember and recount and record all of the things that each

of us remembers so i do remember when kenneth was able to come home from pennsylvania because

he had been there for three years i believe and it was just terrific he was able to come home

and while he was able to attend the school he left one situation for another situation and of course

his children you don't know these things until you go back and listen uh you try and remember

and i always think of and i wrote something down and it says i cannot write the wrong

or take away the pain that all of those memories bring but what we want to do is try and encourage

people to understand their history and not forget it so kenneth is watching gerald and justin i hope

thank you and i want to ask you do you remember how long it took for that court case to be settled

but how long did it take well from the time it was filed until it was settled it didn't take very

long but the process that i know that my mother was involved in and i don't know how long other

parents were working because there was so many children who went through this and we're just

sort of a representation of what was going on but my mother started trying to have kenneth educated

in 1946 and then she ended up he finally came home to uh kendall i think it was the fall of 1952.

the actual case was filed in february of 52 and the finding came down in july i think july the 3rd

of 1952 and they were ordered to attend school on the campus in september of 52.

and i remember the building going up when they first went to kendall they were in the old gym and there were curtains put up and different makeshift situations were

put in place so that they could be educated there but i do remember that

building going up and it was just almost overnight that the building went up uh and we i thought it

was the most fantastic thing it was shaped like an h the dormitory was on this side for

the boys the girls were on this side there was a lunchroom cafeteria in the basement in the middle

and on the top were the classrooms and i thought it was fantastic i realized when we came in the

first gate that we sort of went around the side to get to it and you didn't see too much when we

got out of the car other than we would run inside and help kenneth put his things in

and then we would leave so every sunday this was the routine that we went through kenneth would

come home friday afternoon and every sunday we'd pack up the car pack up his clothes and take him

back to the school as i said i thought it was a cute little place but come to find out that it was

what it looks like isn't always what it is and we were sort of shunted off around to the side

but it was better than going all the way to pennsylvania but little did i know that there were still many issues that needed to be settled

and we still have some of the letters where my mother was trying to address some of those

this is so interesting can you remind us i heard that there were actually two lawsuits

um the first one i believe was when the children were brought to campus back to washington dc

and they went to school in the old gym but there was another lawsuit a second lawsuit as well

can you talk about that that i'm not familiar with the papers that i have from my mother

as far as i can determine right now only uh talk about the first one or what she

was going through to get to the first one so i don't know about the second one

all right thank you i know there were two lawsuits that impacted this one but i don't know about

another one being filed

i see okay thank you thank you that's fine my next question is can you explain for the audience

why is it important to know about this historic case

why is it important well if you don't understand your history

and where you have been i think you're not quite sure where you need to go so when students perhaps

look at what's happening at their school now they need to be able to look back and say aha this is

not something new you have done this before and it's happening over and over again therefore

i'm going to see if i can stop it right now so i think the old thing about if you don't know where

you've been you don't know where you're going and also i hope it serves as some sort of a catalyst

that if someone could do this back in the 40s we would almost 80 years later we can do it again

it's just it's just amazing and it's sad that we're still still working i think about my mother

and her three children who sorry her three children that went to kendall she saw not one graduation not any kind of awarding of success

no one graduated you just sort of eased on out the door and you were gone there was no reward for what they were doing there

yes it is so critical to tell people about the history

the next question i would like to ask you is how has this affected your family

the effect is never ending the effect is never ending as i said i have

pictures and books and the memories are there i shared this about kenneth and how he said he

he went away to school and he cried and he cried how does that

70 years later how does that still not affect you and it does and i think of all of the parents all of the children

and i i really would like to know just some of the things that they went through

i remember when my mother went to overlay and she jot it down on the back of a piece of paper

and she says that when she got to the school wanted to with kenneth she had taken kenneth with her and

i think this was the time she was thinking about leaving them leaving him and she says

they wanted to take him in the room they wanted to examine him for sores source not my mother not us they wanted to examine her for stores and she they told her if he

started to cry they would put him in the room and just close the door and she brought kenneth home

and that my mother was not a crier but that made her cry to think that they were going to do that

to her child and all the other children that had been through that but she brought him home

and that's when the decision was made that he wouldn't be going there and they would take him to philadelphia and he was there for three years but she couldn't take him

and look at some of her papers and there's a there's a halt there's a stop say what was going

on and then i remembered oh she was giving birth to my younger brother my younger brothers my two

younger brothers so when it was time to take kenneth to pennsylvania my grandmother did it

so there were lots of things i remember her sewing in the name tags and all of his clothes

i remember the trunks that had to be taken to the station and sent to philadelphia and picked

up with his name painted on them i think of the visits that we took to pennsylvania

the times that he was just there without us he was just there without his family

such amazing story i am absolutely fascinated with hearing the stories of what happened

with your family is there anything that you would like to add miss miller before we have

questions from the audience is there any final comments that you would like to add

well just don't forget don't let it become ho-hum yeah well that happened it's an ongoing fight it seems

and we were so hopeful that maybe things had been fixed but they're not fixed and it's an

ongoing issue it's an ongoing issue and as i said you can't take away the pain you can't it's

it's just not something that you can forget each time i look at pictures of kenneth when he was small and think of you know why did you do that to him

why would you do that he was a little boy

oh my goodness thank you so much miss carol for sharing with us i really really appreciate

your being with us here today so much and we will definitely be in touch thank you again

and now missy vaughn

touching thank you thank you for that interview

know that the road to freedom is never a straight line it's never a straight path it's a journey

it certainly is a journey and at times a journey you have to experience pain and

you you get wounds as a result and then these wounds end up being stories to share with the world i've had two excellent interviews and at this moment

i just feel it's been a wonderful opportunity to share the stories about the lawsuit itself

from dr jower's point of view and her experience with writing the dissertation

and then the interview the personal interview with miss carol miller talking about her experience

with what her mom went through on this journey a very painful journey and as we listened to both of them i i could sit here and listen to the two of them all day long and never tire

um so it's been a wonderful opportunity and i'm definitely excited about the third and fourth series yes yes very much yes so let me let the program go on

uh i did want to mention there was actually two lawsuits that took place the first lawsuit was

essentially dismissed um he was sent between baltimore and pennsylvania however with the

second lawsuit of course with god's help and uh the people that louise had behind her

she was able to kind of circumvent the barriers and succeeded so thank you for this interview

you shared a lot of important information thank you all right i'm going to sign off all right

now i'd like to go on with the model secondary school for the deaf and there is a poem that will be performed for you and this poem is from langston hughes's freedom

so i'm delighted to show the various students at kendall and mssd these students are

rajya

at atari this is virginia's sign name roger is willing to perform this poem

please take a moment to enjoy

democracy will not come today this year not ever through compromise and fear i have as much right

as the other fellow has to stand on my own two feet and own the land

i tire so of hearing people say let things take their course tomorrow is another day no

i do not need my freedom when i'm dead i cannot live on tomorrow's bread

freedom freedom is a strong seed planted in a great need i

live here too i want freedom just as you freedom freedom it's coming soon or is it

democracy will not come today this year nor ever through compromise and fear i have as much right

as the other fellow has to stand on my own two feet and own the land i so tired of hearing people

say let things take their course tomorrow is another day no i'm not in my freedom when i'm dead

very touching talked about freedom and what freedom means

having the same and equal freedoms as others is what should happen not waiting for freedom to be given to you quite powerful

i wanted to mention that if you're interested in hearing more of these stories you can certainly donate to this project i'll share a link with further information thank you

i also want to thank those that have contributed up until this point

now there are three alumni members from kendall that went on to graduate and graduated from mssd

and these individuals are daisy wooten come on up next nina harrison

formerly ina williams i think uh now ina harrison

and then we've got emanuel perotin njoku come on up how are y'all doing doing well thank you

thank you for taking the time to join us at uh such an historic moment the freedom webinar i did have a couple questions i wanted to ask each of you

and i think we might be able to field one or two brief questions from the audience

if you wouldn't mind can you introduce your name year of graduation what did you do

after graduating high school and perhaps what you're doing now daisy would you like to start it off sure hi there everyone my name is daisy wooten and uh do you want me to talk about what i do for

work now well what year did you graduate and um what's life been like for you after graduation got

it thank you so much uh this is very emotional has been very emotional for me watching this webinar

thus far so trying to rein it in i graduated from kindle in 1977 i believe i came into the school

in 1965 somewhere in there 1966 then i went to high school at mssd in 1977 graduated in 1982.

and uh right i graduated also from gallaudet and that was in 1992

and then i went to nyu i was there until 1995 from 1994 then graduated i worked at a variety

of places and now i live in north carolina and i work with the north carolina division

of services for the deaf and hard of hearing and i've been here for 15 years thank you daisy

you know would you mind introducing yourself what year you graduated and uh what you've been up to since since then sure thank you yvonne i'm anna um for those of you who don't

know me my former name was anna williams my current last name is harrison

but i do want to share some memories that i have i first entered into the kindle school april of 71

i believe and i graduated and then went to mssd i was in 78 i graduated from mssd in 82

and after that i couldn't um enter or enroll at gallaudet university there were some challenges

that were there some barriers for me and so i needed to take some other prerequisite courses

and so that was a journey for me i desired to enroll at gallaudet but that just wasn't a possibility when i graduated from mssd and so then i ended up

going to a community college in seattle washington and then i was absolutely of

course thrilled about that opportunity i got an aaa degree that was in 88

and then it would have been 92 or 93 can't remember the exact year

um where i was still looking for a job i was unemployed and i want to thank rick at mssd

he actually gave me an opportunity to gain employment at mssd and i decided to continue working there i was interested in getting further education graduate

education from strayer university i actually got two degrees graduate degrees in human resources

which related to my job and then i got a second degree in educational administration related to

school environments so that i could apply those skill sets to my job at mssd

so i have of course been working in that environment for a very long time

encountered international students so decided to also study interpreting as a cdi and so i have

been able to support students in that way students from various language backgrounds

thank you and then we've got emmanuel emmanuel maybe you can talk about what year you went into kendall mssd your graduation uh and and what you've been up to

all right sure um thank you for inviting me to be a part of this a very special event my name is emmanuel parodin njoku who's my sign name um you know

i've been a kendall kid my whole life i enrolled in 1998 a year after i was born

this is the interpreter at this time the video is frozen okay sorry about that i'm back so i graduated mssd in 2014 and then i went on to rochester

institute of technology majoring in biomed science i graduated in 2018

at that time i thought i wanted to have a career in science and medicine and i had an opportunity

as a post-baccalaureate fellow at the national cancer institute where i'm currently working

which is under the national institute of health focusing on breast cancer research

it's an awesome story to see all of you navigate through your educational journeys to where you are today

in thinking about the memories that you had at kendall school what would you like to share with our audience you know being a black deaf child at kendall

emanuel there are a few memories that i have but i'll share one of my highlights

i remember being very young and a part of the video project called uh it takes a village to

raise a child and this was my introduction and ultimately led to public speaking

and you know the ability to be more confident in myself i got a lot of support from the kendall school school community including teachers and staff

i was part of the optimist club which was very empowering to young people giving them a stage to

express themselves and that's what really shaped me into who i am today so that and in addition

to so many other memories uh at expos in the middle of school presenting on various projects

always being very immersed in science being a member of student body government the kennel

school community was supportive in so many ways and allowed me to flourish into the way i am today

thank you for sharing that what are some other memories in uh that you had from kendall

um campfire girls you know i remember just being involved in different organizations and learning

so many different activities like modeling just so many gifts that i was given as a kindle student

and now of course i teach students and i have the opportunity to encourage

students to make the best of their lives the opportunity that i was given in girl

scouts i think that is the same concept as the campfire girls and it was such a gift to me

thank you how about you daisy can you share some memories that you had of kendall

yes i have so many good memories that i can look back on growing up at kindle

and i think i was really thankful to ann williamson she was a hearing parent she had

a deaf child his name was james and she was the one who really encouraged all of us all of the

parents to get together and talk about you know black deaf children having equal access to rights

so i remember very clearly going to junior camp and at their that camp there are about eight of us

uh young students who were there and i remember a teacher taking me home

taking me to her home and teaching me how to swim and enjoying a conversation

with her and this was a white teacher can you imagine that and then another time i remember

us going out to minnesota to a camp in minnesota and we met the mayor so

i remember that quite clearly i also had a favorite teacher kirk um and uh he was

indian descent so i remember the youth leadership camp and always you know how having those teachers

help us to be creative in the things that we did and we learned photography we learned shop we

learned math skills you know so a variety of things from those teachers who encouraged us

thank you now when did you first learn about the story of louise b miller

and her son in the fight for education um what touched you in particular about that

and when did you learn about that story you know sure um since moving here from jamaica

i entered into the kindle school and i don't really remember hearing much about louise b miller

people would talk about martin luther king right we always hear about martin luther king um and so i continued through my studies at kendall and even at mssd we sort of had the uh regular list of

civil rights heroes and sheroes um and then once i learned of the kindle division to school memorial

i thought to myself my goodness that is my story but i didn't know of that story um and if not for

mrs miller where would we be today i am inspired by her i feel like she really saved us um and so

we owe her a great debt i am so appreciative of her and it is really all about freedom

wow and then uh daisy what about you i would have to second that

um my memory is not really that clear as a teenager you know i grew up with

anna and going over to the deaf club the dca black death cub i remember being on florida

avenue and i remember there was a guy there um and i found out that that was vernon shorter's father

and he talked about it but not really in depth and he talked about gerald and about this lawsuit with

kendall but i wasn't really clear i was kind of fuzzy on the story it wasn't too much much later

on in life that i learned more about it and now i actually learned from dr carolyn mccaskill talking

about the louise de mello story today and such a sense of gratitude you know i actually bawled

when i heard the story i couldn't hold the tears back this lawsuit in 1954 happened before brown

versus the board of education 1954 if it wasn't for this where would we be now you know what

would the state of education be for us you know we suffered living right here in washington dc

so i am forever eternally grateful to louise b miller fighting for us fighting for her son

but fighting for us and the future of deaf black children who would benefit from that lawsuit thank you daisy for those remarks emmanuel how about you what what do you think here um you

know similar to ina i hadn't really known about it uh growing up it wasn't until you know this

past december and i was able to kind of see the big picture um i processed it in real time and uh

it's really a lot of acknowledgement and thanks going to louise b miller for all of the work that she did you know all the people that were behind her like daisy mentioned

really allowed us to have the foundation necessary in order to succeed and thrive as deaf people like deaf people in particular so thank you and also i think this is something

that should be shared knowledge among both hearing and deaf communities thank you

thank you so much for answering that and for our last question what is uh some advice that you like to share with black deaf folks in black deaf children

that might be students at kendall an ssd in the greater us or even internationally you know before

we wrap up i'm just curious to see what your thoughts are on that daisy what's your advice hmm

i would say be strong be passionate work hard don't just take people word for what they say

when they say it you can't you know what you are inside do what you can to follow your path

ask your parents to help you ask others to help you to succeed and thrive you can't do it alone you also need god so have faith have determination have passion and stick with the plan

emanuel you know i would say don't be afraid to ask questions you know when opportunities come here come your way make sure you capitalize on that

stand up for what's right you know be sweet and kind to everyone and also make sure you don't

forget your roots and what kendall was able to do for you and then for ina what do you think

as we just think of it and i don't even have words this is such a momentous occasion um you know we

always i will always share with students that we always want to respect one another regardless of

our background whether we're from um america or not uh wherever we may be from we need to

make sure that we respect one another we need to make sure that we have different experiences we

want to cultivate role models we never know who may plant a seed in our lives it may be someone

from a different ethnicity or nationality thank you and daisy do you want to share your final

remarks before we close out yes i would say it's so important to find someone who believes in you

if you see someone who does not believe in you then look for somebody else because that person who believes in you will help you to succeed

most definitely thank you so much for your participation may you continue on your path

towards success and greatness thank you so much for representing kendall and our mssd students so

well as well as gallaudet university thank you very much and bye bye thank you for having me

bye-bye

i have to say that hearing everyone's story was very touching um i took a note emmanuel

said that uh it took a village to what it takes a village to raise a child it was a

project he was working on and i'm wondering if kendall should bring back that kind of program

i also noted that when it comes to kendall students who enrolled in kendall and then went

on to mssd and went on to graduate kendall and mssd is a part of the claire center

and gallaudet is doing a very good job of retaining these students and making sure

that our younger students have someone to look up to that's something to think about

next i'd like to call on president cordano to share some of her thoughts and remarks after viewing today's program

president cordano please come up

hello there hi president cordano if you want to mine can you please share what your thoughts

and remarks uh that you have for us after today's program absolutely and thank you

i just wanted to remind all of us that gallaudet students in 2016 one of the

very first things that they wanted gallaudet to address is our history related to memorials

and today if you don't know this or not aware we now have a plaque that faces the hotel

it's on a brick edifice that sits out front of the hotel

and from lincoln circle as you drive through the campus you would never see that plaque but if you walk around the opposite direction you're able to see what it memorializes and if

you're seated in the outdoor patio area at the hotel you can actually face that plaque and see

what it's all about there are many members of our black deaf community who've time and time again

have just expressed their discontent in the insufficiency of that plaque it's striking to

me how even our own alumni as you saw here from kendall school and mssd at the claire center

didn't know anything about the history related to this memorial and louise b miller's lawsuit

this is exactly what our community is all about doing in terms of making changes the center

for black deaf studies is a significant way to recognize that it was established to do the very

thing we're seeing it doing now to capture the stories and to capture the history that relates

to our black deaf community and their experiences throughout their educational systems here in

our country within our communities and all that they have faced and struggled with along the way

always in that fight seeking freedom and civil rights i want to thank the

leadership for our students here at gallaudet particularly our black deaf student union

and our staff faculty people such as yvonne and dr mccaskill dr liz moore bernie palmer mumiana

and so many others far too many to name who have served on this committee since we began this work

in 2017 the most activity began around this committee as we began designing the vision for

this memorial it is one of the most exciting things we have happening now the community

is engaged in helping us build out that vision as to how we can tell the story going forward

today was a beautiful and powerful webinar we heard from so many individuals and

learned greatly as a result i wanted to echo something that was shared by

um dr sandra and i'm just looking to make sure i have her last name right dr sandra jowers as she

talked about change being local and we should never forget that change can happen right here

right where we are every single day that changes only evidence through us and our involvement

we always have to keep an eye out for one another because we are bringing the change we are bringing change to the world to our local actions and this is one example of that very thing

i also wanted to highlight that the success of our bringing these stories as we have over the

last couple of webinars and of course more will be coming the success is made possible through

the partnerships that have been formed through collaborative efforts we've come together to create the vision around this work and how we can move this work forward

every one of us plays a role any free one of us has a possibility to create change

as we look back to the legacy and black history especially black deaf history

and we continue to understand that history to the present so that we can build a future that's

different i invite everyone who's listening today to join with us in this journey to help

us continue movement forward on this vision as we honor a pure champion a mother an activist

a heroine that really represents all that we are as a community so i want to thank you for being with us today keep finding those stories keep bringing those

stories to us and allow us to keep learning and changing the world to make it a better place

thanks to everyone who's involved in the webinar today and all of you who are watching in i'm so very grateful for everything that's happening and all the work you've been doing we will

continue to support you through your journey ahead thank you all so much thank you president

cordano for your thoughtful remarks and some of your thoughts after viewing today's program

you know this is a community effort and we rely on each other in order to truly share this story

and looking at some of my notes from karen miller she said that none of the students uh

none of the 23 students that graduated in the class of 1952 were able to enroll in college

and we know that there's already been an apology that you've given to kevin and the miller family but this is a conversation that will continue

and we will not stop talking about this thank you absolutely no doubt about that

we need more research to be done and more stories to be shared about the history as to what's happened over time especially as it relates to the black deaf community so much about their

experience and their journey and the educational system is just not sufficiently being told the

stories aren't out there i mean seeing our three alumni say i have to mention now how proud i

am to see our alumni here from mssd and the clair center and absolutely their presentations

the story they shared are beautiful and it's a lovely example of what's possible when we have

you know sheroes like louise b miller who fought for the future of people even today and there

are other stories like that so thank you yvonne thank you president cordano wonderful message

now i'd like to go on with the program uh when we're nearing its end but we're not finished

just yet we were able to reach out to various kindle alum who graduated and went to mssd

and really the essence of what i'm sharing is that the focus is on students that were enrolled in kendall so i want to give a special thanks to louise b

miller and her family for the fight that they fought and thank you for sharing that with us

so please take a moment to watch the video of our various alumni members so these are

i am a yuke and i come from cameroon in western africa

i was enrolled in kendall in the state sixth grade and i graduated in 1990

i want to extend a deep heartfelt thank you to louise and her family for encouraging the rights

of black deaf children to be educated at kendall if it were not for the work that was done by the

miller family i would have stayed in africa thank you so much for everything that you've done for us

hello everyone my name is velma stanton i was at kindle in 1975 and graduated in 1978 to enter mssd

thank you miss louise b miller we appreciate meeting all of your family thank you

hello i'm tais wright

and i'm a former kindle student i enrolled in 81 graduated in 93 and i want to say thank you to

mrs miller for being such an advocate for the black deaf community and black deaf children

hi i'm vernon shorter

my mom is barbara shorter and my father's name is robert

melbourne i want to can go uh and i wanted to thank the 23 students and louise miller for in

the miller family for freeing us to go to kendall hello i'm latrell i'm in seventh grade at kindle

and i remember seeing a presentation on black history um at kendall and it talked about the

segregation of black and white students and that really struck me i am so happy that we're setting

up this memorial to honor mrs miller hello my name is lamont and i'm in the seventh grade

i want to say thank you to miss miller because she helped kindle the students who were black and

white come together and i'm so happy to be able to learn and to thrive hi my name is sherman smith

my hometown is dc and i also went to school here at kendall and mssd on gallaudet campus

this was around 1968 or 1969 i graduated in 1978

and i wanted to point out an interesting fact that kendall school mssd or all on gallaudet's campus

and i've actually had a personal experience first hand there was a lot of impact from the

history that was talked about today i was a young kid in kendall school

and that's really where i began my my childhood in my early years

as i went on i learned more became more educated

and then eventually moved to the red park school that was on campus and it was a red building a very very old building that was on campus

so in my time on campus i learned i was educated i remember during the summer time especially during

the month of july for a whole 30 days we will go to different outdoor activities like camps

learn how to develop more independent skills our leadership skills and all that started at kendall

the connection between kindle and mssd was very inspiring

i had an opportunity because of the freedom to attend kendall to learn and become educated

and that would benefit me in my future that gave me a strong foundation to be a student

i graduated in 1978

and ever since then i can't appreciate i can't appreciate enough the impact

that kendall has had on me i recognize that even today if you're deaf i suggest

that you send your child i suggest that you learn at kendall if it weren't for kendall

i probably wouldn't be here i probably would not have succeeded without kendall so i do want to

recognize the school thank you to gallaudet mssd and kendall for setting up my education thank you

i'm inna harrison williams and i enrolled in kindle in april of 71.

i then graduated in 78 and i want to say thank you mrs miller for fighting on our behalf

on behalf of all black deaf children hi i'm ethan

i graduated from kendall school in 2010 and i want to thank the miller family everyone my name is darian burwell gambrell

and i went to kindle from 1984 to 1988 i want to thank louise b miller and her family for changing

my life thank you for making sure that all of us had an excellent education at kendall thank you

hi i'm emmanuel perdon joku graduated from kendall in 2010 and i wanted to say thank you so much to

louise miller if it weren't for the fight that she put up i wouldn't be where i am today thank

you so much hello i'm christine and i can share with you a short story i'm really a proud kindle

alum you see i'm supporting my wildcats gear a washington dc native graduated in the class of 97

also graduated from gallaudet and being a kindle student has given me so many gifts mrs miller

and her family really made a difference for her son kenneth and her other deaf children

i just appreciate her so much hi i'm daisy wooten and i graduated from kindle in 1977. i actually

went into the school i believe the year was 1965 or 1966. i remember my mother telling

me that i went to the school and to be honest i have been absolutely touched to learn so much

from the center for black deaf studies description of louise b miller in her fight i sort of vaguely

remember that story but i have to tell you right now it is crystal clear and has had such an impact

on me it actually brought me to tears and so i think to myself where would i be without kendo

where would i have gone you know i graduated from kendo i was able to get an advanced education

to get my bachelor's my master's without kendall where would i be i would be lost you know a child

who was language deprived so it's a really scary thought to think of what my role might have been

hi i'm ikea aj for short i graduated from kendall

i went to mssd um i've been a kennel product my whole life thank you to the louise b miller family

for everything that they've done and the fight for education and having access to education especially during times of segregation they work to desegregate

i absolutely love the kendall school it's been an inspiration and i've enjoyed learning there

oh my goodness seeing these alumni just touches my heart

it shows you that the fight was worth it

now we know we haven't gotten everything that we need a hundred percent so the fight still continues

i would like to say thank you so much for each and everyone who participated today it's been an honor to see your face

next we have a song that will be performed by kendall alum ronnie bradley and as a tribute

to louise b miller in all of her efforts and fighting along the journey towards freedom

although it hasn't been achieved 100 percent we're getting there is called a song from

you taught me everything and everything you've given me

you will always be i know

your love is like tears from the stars

my soul

you're always down for me you've always been around for me even when i was

you always

looking back when i was so afraid and then you come to me and you take me

you'll always be

hopefully everyone enjoyed today's program and everything that we had put together for you today

before we call up dr moore and others i would like to thank everyone who individually contributed in one way or another to this program

so dr moore dr

[End Video Transcript]

Webinar #2 - Freedom

Play Video

Video Transcript

[Video Transcript Start]
[Video presented in English and ASL]

Hello I'm Dr. Carolyn McCaskill

founding director of

Center for Black Deaf Studies

at Gallaudet University.

January 17th marks the anniversary of

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s fearless fight

for civil rights and justice

is a true resemblance of a man of honor;

a man of integrity;

and an evangelical protestant.

i have the pleasure to present to you dr martin is the king they are

i am happy to still languish in the corners of american society and finds

himself in exile in his own land so we've come here today to dramatize a

shameful condition in a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check

when the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the

constitution and the declaration of independence they were signing a promise

or a note to whichever american wants to fall out

this note was a promise that all men yes black men as well as white men

will be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life liberty

and the pursuit of happiness

[Music]

Racism has no place at Gallaudet University.

Racism dehumanizes racially and ethnically

diverse community members.

Racism especially denies racially and

ethnically diverse community members

full access to their humanity.

Racism intersects with audism

and other -isms.

Thus, racism contradicts and

is incompatible with Gallaudet University’s

mission and values.

now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to

the sunlit path of racial justice now is the time

to lift our nation from the quick sins of racial injustice to the solid rock of

brotherhood now is the time to make justice a reality for all of god's

children it would be fatal for the nation

to overlook the urgency of the moment this sweltering summit of the negroes

legitimate discontent will not pass

until that is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality

Numerous names have ignited a heated

social movement, in every state and

around the world, people of all colors

genders, and ages

are coming together to march in fury

and with hope for justice.

Justice

Equitable Future

Move Forward

Racial Equity

Racism is a pandemic, too.

The moment from protest to

policy changes;

today continues to be our chance to

amplify the energy of

not only being antiracist is enough,

be part of the change.

Yes, YOU.

Join us!

what we know of segregation

jim crow and so

forth the black deaf community was not insulated from any of that

My country, tears of thee

sweet land of liberty of the icing land where my fathers died landed the

pilgrims pride from every mountain side

that freedom ring

in america is to be a great nation this must become true

so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of new

hampshire let freedom ring from the mighty mountains in new york that

freedom rang from the heightening alligators of pennsylvania that freedom

ring from the snow-capped rockies of colorado let freedom ring from the

crevasse of slopes of california not only that let freedom ring from stone

mountain of georgia that freedom rang from look out mountain of tennessee let

freedom ring from every hill and moan hill of mississippi from every

mountainside let freedom ring and when this happens

when we allow freedom ring when we let it ring from every village

and every hamlet from every state and every city

we will be able to speed up that day when all of god's children black men and

white men jews and gentiles protestants and catholics will be able to join hands

and sing in the words of the old negro spiritual free at last free at last

you

[End Video Transcript]

Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

Support the Louise B Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children

A memorial to honor a significant and historically overlooked milestone for Gallaudet University and the world.

Minor in Black Deaf Studies

Starting this fall 2022, our undergraduate students may consider the minor in Black Deaf Studies. The courses includes:

Black ASL
Black Deaf People Studies
Black Deaf History: 1818 – 1890
Black Deaf Seminar
Orature & Literature in the Black Deaf Community

Resources

Black Student Union

The Black Student Union seeks to develop unity among black students so that jointly and strongly they can express concerns and problems faced on campus.

Peer Mentor Program

Student Success’s Peer Mentorship program is designed to assist students in their social, personal, and academic acclimation to Gallaudet University.

Computer Lab

A computer lab is a space which provides computer services to a defined community.

Scholarships

Andrew Foster Scholarship

Linwood Smith Scholarship

Glenn Anderson Scholarship

Charles Williams Scholarship

Andrew Foster Scholarship

Linwood Smith Scholarship

Glenn Anderson Scholarship

Charles Williams Scholarship

CBDS Faculty and Staff

Dr. Carolyn McCaskill, Ph.D.

Director Professor, Deaf Studies Department

Evon Black

Associate Director

JC Smith

Undergraduate Student Assistant

Advisory Board

Dr. Rezenet Moges-Riedel

Christopher Johnson

Lindsay Dunn

Tim Albert

Dr. Cell Lucas

Dr. Sandra Jowers-Barber

Daisy Wooten