American Annals of the Deaf

Abstract:

Deaf education and American Sign Language emerged in Connecticut during the early 1800s as part of a reactionary social and political agenda that included church control of government and public schools, antifeminism, anti-Catholicism, and, the topic of the present article, White nationalism. Topics discussed include the racist views of early advocates of deaf education, including Mason Fitch Cogswell and Amos Kendall; evidence that Alabama land granted to the American School for the Deaf by Congress involved ASD in the selling of slaves; and T. H. Gallaudet's exploitation of his reputation as a teacher of the deaf to fund-raise for the deportation of African Americans to Liberia. Popular legends that Edmund Booth and Lewis Weld were abolitionists and that Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc helped the Amistad captives are debunked. The three mixed-race boys enrolled in ASD during the 1820s and 1830s are discussed in this context.