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Students and supporters march on Capitol Hill in protest for the first Deaf president of Gallaudet University carrying the banner (on loan from the Crispus Attucks museum) used in the 1988 protests to declare Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. (Gallaudet University Archives) |
By Natasha Abner
Thirty-seven years ago, students, faculty, alumni, and supporters of Gallaudet University — the only university for the deaf in the world — put Deaf awareness on the national and international agenda. (Capitalization of “Deaf” is used to represent its status as a cultural identity; lowercase “deaf” indicates the physical trait of deafness.) Gallaudet protestors had closed down the campus and taken to the streets of Washington, D.C., to fight for their own self representation: a Deaf president of their university, the first in its 124 year history. Still images splashed across newspapers and nightly newscasts of the protestors chanting in American Sign Language “deaf president now,” using the convention of representing signs in capitalized English orthography.
Source: Remembering Other Dreams: (Sign) Language Access & Empowerment
