The Congregation Divided:
A History of Deaf Religious Segregation, 1895-1955
Maryland School for the Deaf, Frederick
Deaf education in the United States began in the early nineteenth century. The first successful deaf school, the American School for the Deaf (ASD), founded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1817, became a model for deaf education across the country. A state-supported institution, ASD was a residential school that employed deaf instructors and used sign language for instruction. In conjunction with a flurry of reforms that provided for educational opportunities for the blind and created residential facilities for the mentally ill, between the years 1817 and 1850 twenty-five additional state-run deaf institutions were created that patterned themselves after the basic structure at ASD.1
For white deaf children in Maryland, access to education began in 1828. In that year the Maryland state legislature provided for children to attend the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Thirty-two years later the state voted to send students to the Columbia Institute for the Deaf and Dumb in Washington D.C. (In 1885 this school divided into two separate institutions: The National Deaf-Mute College, today known as Gallaudet University, and the Kendall School for the Deaf which provided primary school education.) Two years later, in 1862, the state founded the Maryland Institution for the Education of the Deaf in Frederick, Maryland.3
Residential schools played a vital role in fostering the growth of a deaf cultural network. “With the creation of the first residential school… individuals who shared a sensory world that differed from that of the majority began to coalesce into a community that shared a language and a culture.” 4 Most deaf people came from hearing families who may, or may not, have used a system of sign language with their child. For many deaf children, particularly those born without hearing abilities, entering a signing environment marked their first true access to language.
Fig 1: The Maryland School for the Deaf at Frederick, MD
It is in this way that divisions between black and white deaf students would become pronounced. There is largely anecdotal information about the experiences of southern black deaf people throughout this period. At the time of integration, segregated black deaf schools were integrated into white residential schools and much historical evidence was lost.5 However, segregated deaf education should be viewed in conjunction with larger regional Jim Crow policies and the barriers to education faced by the majority of black people, particularly in the south, were complicated by deafness. In the state of Maryland, segregation began in 1872 when the Maryland state legislature provided for educational opportunities for African American deaf students at the Maryland School for the Colored Deaf in Baltimore.6
The students that matriculated at the segregated schools would have had dramatically different experiences. The Baltimore school was funded by the state and counties and supplied students with tuition and provided for their basic needs including; clothing, food, housing, medical attention, and books. However, while the Maryland School for the Deaf in Frederick, with a white student population, received funding from each county based on the number of students enrolled. In contrast, the Maryland School for the Colored Deaf received a flat rate, regardless of a rising student population.7 This is a familiar trend in the history of segregated education for the deaf. Additionally, “[c]lass sizes appear to have been consistently much larger than in the white schools and educational necessities in short supply.”8 The larger class sizes would additionally swell as students were joined by children from nearby states in 1896 following the Plessy v. Ferguson decision.9
The Frederick school was a well-regarded institution and a number of prominant figures in the American deaf community can be found amongst its graduates including Rev. Daniel E. Moylan, an instructor at the Baltimore school and the founder of both churches.
Source materials available in PDF below:
Sources:
Figure 1: "Maryland School for the Deaf at Frederick (1876)" Gallaudet University Historical Photograph Collection.
1. John V. Van Cleve and Barry A. Crouch, A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America (Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 1989), 29; Margret A. Winzer, The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration (Gallaudet University Press, 1993), 83, 102.
2. “Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb.” The Sun (1837-1987). August 30, 1899. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
3. David M Denton, ed., “History Edition,” Maryland Bulletin 111, no. 5 (March 1991): 2. Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun, “The Deaf-Mutes: A Beneficient State Institition at Frederick City School for the Deaf and Dumb How Children Born Deaf or Have Become Deaf in Childhood Are Taught to Speak--Methods of Instruction-History of the School,” The Sun (1837-1987), June 22, 1892, ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
4. Douglas C. Baynton, Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign Against Sign Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3.
5. Burch, Signs of Resistance, 45.
6. Harris, Stull, and Baker, “Beginning of a Legacy: History of the Maryland School for the Colored Deaf: 1872-1956,” 4.
7. Ibid., 4; Baynton, Gannon, and Bergey, Through Deaf Eyes, 45; Burch, Signs of Resistance, 35.
8. Harris, Stull, and Baker, “Beginning of a Legacy: History of the Maryland School for the Colored Deaf: 1872-1956,” 4; Baynton, Gannon, and Bergey, Through Deaf Eyes, 45; Burch, Signs of Resistance, 35.
9. In 1883, black deaf children in West Virginia were transferred to the Maryland School for Colored Deaf. Similarly, students from Delaware and Washington, D.C., were transferred to the school as well. Prior to Plessy v. Ferguson, the student population at the Columbia Institute (now the Kendall School at Gallaudet University, a premiere teaching institution), composed of children from Washington, D.C. and Delaware, were taught in an integrated classroom at the Columbia Institute.
