The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry (6 page)

Deaf theater is of course an expression of Deaf culture. A dramatic story line proceeds through choreography and mime, the artistic use of language, and the recognizable conventions of Deaf theater and culture. For the viewer familiar with ASL and Deaf culture, Deaf theater is a dazzling display indeed. Plays with Deaf actors in the United States probably originated in the mid-nineteenth century in the residential schools, where plays developed about Deaf school life, Deaf history, and Deaf family situations. In these plays, students can give free rein to their talents for acting and the expressive use of ASL. Deaf theater is to be found in the Deaf clubs (especially informal skits and mime shows), at Deaf literary societies, and at the numerous Deaf theater groups, both regional and national. The National Theatre of the Deaf is the oldest, continuously performing professional touring theater company in the country. Its actors went from occasional bookings at Deaf events to full-time performance on the national and international stage. In over ten thousand performances, it has not only served Deaf audiences but has also made a large hearing audience aware of the Deaf and the power and beauty of their signed language.70 Among regional Deaf theaters with national and international impact, Deaf West Theatre presents several original productions in ASL, as well as ASL adaptations of plays written in English.

THE VISUAL ARTS

In the mid-eighteenth century, Deaf artists played an important role in creating awareness of the abbe de l'Epee's pioneering efforts and those of his successor. For example, one of Epee's Deaf pupils was a painter, another a sculptor, and each presented a Deaf person's vision of "the father of the Deaf." Ever since, Deaf artists have been presenting Deaf culture to the Deaf and the world beyond. Exhibits of Deaf art are often to be found at Deaf congresses and occasionally in galleries and museums. There have also been several international congresses devoted in part to the Deaf arts. There are lithographs, oil paintings, watercolors, acrylics, pen-and-ink drawings, neon sculptures, photography, and animated films. These works capture aspects of the lives of Deaf people. The renunciation of sign language, formally approved at the 1880 Milan congress, is a recurrent theme, as are the experiences of American Deaf schoolchildren brought up under that regime, where only spoken language was allowed. Many canvases celebrate sign language and Deaf culture. The flourishing study of signed languages in the last few decades and the associated empowerment of Deaf people, have fostered a particularly prolific period in the Deaf arts.71

HISTORY

Scholars agree: "Without memory there can be no ethnicity."72 History is so central to ethnicity that the British House of Lords, in a study of ethnic underrepresentation in government, declared that an ethnic group has two core properties: a cultural tradition of its own, and an awareness of a long shared history that it keeps alive and that distinguishes it from other groups.73 As members of an ethnic group, our history places us on a time line: looking back at past generations, we have a heightened sense of our identity; "the past is a resource used by groups in the collective quest for meaning and community."74 Looking forward, future generations will know our history, which then grants us a measure of immortality.75 The striking parallels with the role of kinship-our ancestors are our past, our descendants our future-suggests that claims of history and of kinship are alternative ways of building ethnic solidarity and giving it timelessness. Indeed, sociologist Anthony Smith points out that some ethnic groups have heroes in their history who are tied to the group only by exemplifying shared values and not by genealogy.76

The history of an ethnic group, a product of the group's culture, is quite different from a scholarly account. An ethnic history is not judged by how accurate it is but rather by how well it organizes experience in the light of cultural values and by its emotive power.77 From this perspective, Deaf history and, more broadly, Deaf Studies are important resources in defining and redefining Deaf ethnicity. Cultural claims, icons, and imagery are used by activists in ethnic mobilization. For example, the official meaning of the 1880 Congress of Milan has long been the renunciation of sign language and the affirmation of the mainstream oral language. However, the Deaf-World in the United States as elsewhere has appropriated that event for ethnic mobilization; it became a symbol-not merely of a particular congress stacked against the Deaf and their language, but of the power imbalance between hearing and Deaf people more generally.

The American Deaf-World has a rich history recounted in stories, books, films, and the like. It has its legends, heroes, and important sites. Earlier we recounted the legend of the abbe de 1'Epee (how he came to establish the first Deaf schools). Another legend of beginnings concerns the gathering of Deaf people in early America, precipitated by the founding of the first permanent school for the Deaf. The legend begins:

In the spring of 1814, a young minister named Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was home in Hartford, Connecticut, recuperating from an illness. One day he observed his younger brother playing with the neighbor's children, including the eight-year-old Alice CogswellD. She had become deaf at the age of two owing to German measles, and had not heard or spoken since then. Gallaudet went over to her. He showed her his hat and wrote the letters H-A-T on the ground. He pointed from the hat to the written word. AliceD responded eagerly, seeming to understand that the letters represented the hat.78

AliceD's plight was symbolic of the plight of countless Deaf Americans. Without hearing, she lived apart from hearing people; without sign, she lived apart from Deaf people as well. In the legend of the abbe de l'Epee, Deaf education began when he led two Deaf women to literacy by employing sign language. Now Gallaudet would do likewise in America with AliceD. The legend continues (translated and abridged) as follows:

AliceD s father, Mason Fitch Cogswell, was a wealthy surgeon; he raised money to send Gallaudet to Europe to learn methods of educating the Deaf. In Britain, Gallaudet found a monopoly on Deaf education that claimed to use speech exclusively with Deaf pupils and would not allow him to learn its methods. At the Paris school founded by the abbe de l'Epee, where sign language was the rule, Gallaudet was welcomed. He studied with Laurent ClercD, who was then a teacher at the school. Together Gallaudet and ClercD traveled to Hartford, solicited funds in several eastern cities, and opened their school, which over the years would bring together hundreds of Deaf children. The Hartford school spawned dozens more in America, all using its sign language, which was based on C1ercDs.

And that's how the Deaf-World began in America-in legend. In fact, Deaf people gathered for mutual support and socializing long before the opening of the Hartford School, as we report in Parts II, III, and IV of this volume. We are informed that many schools for the Deaf perform the unabridged legend each December 10, on Gallaudet's birthday.79 There are many more such legends.80

Opened in 1817, the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (later the American Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb) was America's first charitable institution and the first enduring school for its Deaf people. Pupils from the large Deaf population on Martha's Vineyard brought their island sign language to school; those from other families with numerous Deaf members brought their manual communication practices; and those raised in a hearing environment brought the "home sign" that served their communicative needs at home. All those pupils learned ClercD s sign language, as did disciples who came from other states, aiming to found schools for the Deaf on their return home. What emerged from the meeting between ClercD s French Sign Language and the pupils' diverse sign systems has been called a contact language-which we now call, in its contemporary form, American Sign Language.81 In America, as in France, the mother school soon sent its teachers and graduates all over the country to teach in Deaf schools and to found new ones. As early as 1834, a single sign language was recognized in schools for the Deaf in the United States. By the time of C1ercD s death in 1869, there were some thirty residential schools in the United States with over 3000 pupils and almost 200 teachers. In that same year, the first school for black Deaf children opened in Raleigh, North Carolina. Nearly half of the teachers in the schools for the Deaf were Deaf themselves. Most Deaf pupils and teachers took Deaf spouses and had Deaf as well as hearing children, and this, too, helped to disseminate ASL. The success of the residential schools led to the creation of high school and then college preparatory classes, which led in turn to the National Deaf-Mute College (now Gallaudet University).

A few years before ClercD s death, one of his former pupils, Thomas BrownD of Henniker, New Hampshire, organized the largest gathering of Deaf people ever assembled. (We will have more to say about BrownD and his Deaf clan, in Part II.) Two hundred Deaf people, some from as far away as Virginia, and two hundred pupils of the American Asylum, gathered in Hartford in 1850. The announced purpose of the gathering was to express their gratitude to Gallaudet and ClercD but later events proved that BrownD likely had a political agenda going beyond gratitude: he wanted to counteract the scattering of Deaf people by gatherings to improve their lot. Engraved silver pitchers were presented to Gallaudet and ClercD. The engraving was rich in symbolism from Deaf history: One side of the pitcher shows Gallaudet and C1ercD leaving France; the ship is at hand and their future school is visible beyond the waves: The Old World brings enlightenment to the New. On the other side of the pitcher there is a schoolroom. On the front is a bust of ClercD s teacher, the abbe Sicard (successor to Epee), and around the neck the arms of the New England states. There were speeches and banquets and resolutions and many participants stayed on through the weekend in order to enjoy a church service interpreted into sign language. The desire of Deaf people to gather and to honor their history by presenting it in engravings indicates a sense of peoplehood that rises above the individual and the family.

The gathering in Hartford led to the creation of the first organization of the Deaf in America. Representatives from each of the New England states gathered for a week at the BrownD home in Henniker to frame a constitution for the New England Gallaudet Association of Deaf-Mutes (NEGA). This document called for a newspaper by and for Deaf-mutes, the Gallaudet Guide and Deaf-Mutes' Companion. One of the earliest periodicals in America printed exclusively for the Deaf, the Guide contained news of Deaf meetings, marriages, illnesses and deaths; discussions of issues like the education of Deaf children, and such broader social issues as slavery and religion. In the fall of 1854 "deaf-mutes" from "all parts of the union" met in Hartford for the unveiling of a monument to Gallaudet.82 On it, bas reliefs showed Gallaudet with the Asylum's first three students and his name in the manual alphabet on the opposite face. The entire monument was the "exclusive product of deaf-mute enterprise."83 Among the Deaf orators at the event, whose signing was interpreted for the hearing people in the audience, Thomas BrownD reviewed the history of Deaf education. A draft constitution for the New England Gallaudet Association of Deaf-Mutes was read out and adopted and officers were elected with Thomas BrownD as president. This was the first formal organization for Deaf people in the United States.

After the second convention of the NEGA in Concord, New Hampshire, and a third in Worcester, Massachusetts, the fourth convention was held in 1860 at the Hartford school, with some three hundred attending. The Reverend Thomas Gallaudet of New York (eldest son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet) was recruited to interpret ASL into English for the hearing people who did not know the sign language.84 BrownD gave the presidential address and Laurent ClercD took the assembly to sites significant in Deaf history, such as the house of Mason Cogswell where ClercD first met young AliceD. In the evening there was a banquet with toasts, talks and resolutions. The self-perception of the Deaf as a distinct group was in evidence. The solidarity felt was so great that there were published proposals to secure land from Congress for the formation of a Deaf state in the west.85 (See Ethnic territory below.) Then, as the graduates of the residential schools found ways to gather with the opportunity to socialize in their own language, there were more large meetings of the Deaf and numerous Deaf clubs were founded. BrownD took on other roles as a Deaf leader and campaigned for a national organization. His hope was realized when in 1880 the preeminent organization of the Deaf in America, known today as the National Association of the Deaf, was founded.

The road leading from ClercD s sign language and its use in the classroom to today's appreciation of ASL veered off course in the late nineteenth century. Industrialization, mass immigration, and the rise of eugenics demanded that all citizens cleave to a narrow identity: white, Protestant, middle class, English-speaking, and able-bodied. Increasingly, schools for the Deaf sought to replace ASL with spoken English, culminating with the implementation of the resolutions of the Milan congress. As we told earlier, Deaf teachers, purveyors of Deaf heritage, were dismissed and older Deaf students quarantined as both groups could easily fall into the sin of signing and were not apt in promoting spoken English. Despite the schools' fanatical efforts to eradicate ASL, Deaf people never abandoned sign language. Indeed, they became a more unified minority in the early twentieth century as a response to attempts at forced language replacement.

The return to a role for sign language in Deaf education was fueled by the American civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, by educational policies that accorded greater status to minority languages, and by the growing scientific evidence in the second half of the twentieth century that ASL is a fully autonomous natural language. In 1965, William Stokoe, Dorothy CasterlineD, and Carl CronebergD of Gallaudet University, published a Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles. As PaddenD and HumphriesD explain in their book Inside Deaf Culture, Deaf people were cautious in taking up the idea that their sign language was equal to all other natural languages because hearing people had until then always disparaged their language and sought to replace it with English.86 Nevertheless, the concept that ASL signers had a language and a culture was validating indeed, especially appealing to the new Deaf middle class seeking to replace the old loss-based understanding of themselves and their language. With the recognition of ASL came the demand from parents, professionals, laymen, and students for instruction in the language; this drew large numbers of Deaf people into teaching ASL.