Checking in with the Center for Black Deaf Studies

It has been five years since Gallaudet launched the groundbreaking Center for Black Deaf Studies (CBDS), which has provided a home on campus for research and events related to the Black Deaf experience. Director Dr. Joseph Hill will be moderating a panel on Friday, February 20, at noon in the JSAC Multipurpose Room (and livestreamed) about what CBDS has accomplished so far and what is still to come.

“CBDS at Year 5: Building Legacy, Empowering Future,” features CBDS’ Associate Director Evon Black, ’87, G-’96, & EdS, ’25, Lindsay M. Dunn, ’85, and Founding Director Dr. Carolyn D. McCaskill, ’77, G-’79, & PhD ’05. 

Established in 2020, the CBDS is a research center that documents and manages physical and online resources related to the Black Deaf experience. CBDS’s goals center on teaching and research on African American culture, history, and diaspora, through sponsoring events and providing research experiences for students. The environment of care, mentorship, and support for Gallaudet’s community members that the CBDS provides is evident to visitors walking through the Center’s doors.

At the panel event, the release of a Special Journal Issue of the Deaf Studies Digital Journal (DSDJ) will be announced by DSDJ editor, Associate Professor of American Sign Language, Patrick Boudereault. The special journal issue presents the proceedings of the Black Deaf Studies Symposium, held at Gallaudet in Spring 2023, and includes videos, transcripts, slide decks, and more. A reception will follow the panel.

Groundbreaking of the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens

This month also marks the groundbreaking for the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens memorial, on the former site of the Kendall School Division II for Negroes. The site dedication took place during Homecoming 2025. Construction will progress over the spring and summer, with completion eagerly anticipated for this fall. 

The memorial and walking path serve a profound purpose, providing a space to reflect on four attributes: awareness of Black Deaf people and their lived experience; the freedom Miller’s advocacy brought to the city’s Black Deaf students; remembrance of the courtroom struggle for justice in learning; and healing for past injustices. Part of the Necessity of Now campaign, you can learn more about the memorial’s history and see renderings of the finished project. 

“Triple Intersectional Invisibility: Uncovering the Experiences of Black Deaf and Hard of Hearing Mothers,” presented by Chisom Ofotmata on Friday, March 27, 2026

Next month, the Andrew Foster Lecture Series will feature one of this year’s Deaf Studies Incubator Fellows, Chisom Ofomata. An aspiring OBGYN herself, Ofomata’s lecture is based on her undergraduate senior thesis on the maternity health experiences of Black Deaf and hard of hearing women in the U.S.

Combating the lack of research about heightened Black maternal mortality and communication barriers for d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) patients, her work seeks to determine how these issues may be conflated and affect Black DHH women.

Ofomata’s research captures the stories of women she interviewed and weaves them with archival research to offer insight into how the maternity health experiences of Black DHH women have evolved between 1980 and 2010. Her research aims to uplift the perspectives of this overlooked demographic and acknowledge that while the quality of healthcare varies across the country, more research is needed to ensure an equitable standard of care for Black DHH women. 

Ofomata’s presentation follows last semester’s lectures, which featured Akilah M. English’s “Disrupting Anti-Blackness in K-12 Deaf Ed through a Critical Black Deaf Theory Framework,” and Dr. Mary Perrodin-Singh’s “Becoming a Black Deaf Woman from a Generational Black Deaf Family.”

NBDA Archives Project

And there’s more ahead! One important ongoing project is the work on the NBDA archives. Last spring, the CBDS began collecting materials documenting the history of the National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) in collaboration with the Gallaudet Archives. The collection began in DC with one of the NBDA’s founders, Dr. Ernest Hairston, ’61 & PhD ’94 of Bowie, Maryland, and Dunn, who was heavily involved in the NBDA’s formative years. CBDS continued its collection by travelling to donors’ homes and storage locations in different cities: Pocono Mountains, Pennsylvania; Cleveland, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; and Little Rock, Arkansas. 

The Archives Project team members began with Amelia Palmer, ’23, from the first cohort of the Deaf Studies Incubator, and Rachel Qualls ’24, a CBDA graduate assistant. Three equally skillful student workers are carrying on the work: graduate research assistant, Ana Daku; PhD assistant, Brenda Gutu, and undergraduate assistant, Zoeii Strong. They are now working to digitally upload and archive those materials. The timeline for this important project is expected to wrap up in the fall of 2027. Stay tuned for future news: part of the work is to share the collection and its findings with a broad audience.

Students are the heart of the CBDS as they work on projects, receive paraprofessional training and mentorship, and find a home to study and connect.

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