Gallaudet University celebrates graduation of Black students 70 years after commencement

In 1898, Blacks were accepted and received education at the Kendall School on the Gallaudet University campus, but white parents objected to racial integration in 1905.

Seventy years after their graduation, a school for deaf and hard-of-hearing children in Washington, D.C., rectified an injustice by honoring Black deaf students and teachers who attended and served its segregated campus. 

The 24 students who attended the Kendall School Division II for Negroes on the Gallaudet University grounds in the early 1950s and their descendants were awarded high school diplomas on Saturday, CBS News reported. Four Black Kendall School teachers also received posthumous recognition.

Five of the six still-living graduates of the school attended the event with their families.

“Today is an important day of recognition and also a celebration long overdue,” Gallaudet University president Roberta J. Cordano said, according to CBS. “While today’s ceremony in no way removes past harms and injustices or the impact of them, it is an important step to strengthen our continued path of healing.”

Since 1898, Black students had attended Kendall School on the Gallaudet University campus. However, after white parents objected in 1905 to racial integration there, the Black students were transferred to the Maryland School for the Colored Blind and Deaf-Mutes or the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Blacks were no longer present at the Kendall School. 

In 1952, Louise B. Miller, a hearing mother of four children — three of whom were deaf — filed a lawsuit after her oldest son, Kenneth, was denied attendance at the Kendall School because he was Black. 

Miller and the parents of four other Black deaf children prevailed in a civil lawsuit against the District of Columbia Board of Education and won the right of Black deaf children to attend Kendall School. 

However, instead of reintegrating Kendall, Gallaudet created the segregated Kendall School Division II on its campus, which had fewer resources.

The Kendall School Division II for Black children closed after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and Black deaf students started going to school alongside their white counterparts.

To honor Miller, Gallaudet said it will create the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children. The university said the memorial will offer a space for contemplation and healing through remembering all who have worked for the equity of Black deaf children.

Gallaudet declared July 22 as “Kendall 24 Day” and released a board of trustees proclamation acknowledging and apologizing for its past treatment of Black students. 

The proclamation, which expresses regret to each of the 24 students by name, reads: “Gallaudet deeply regrets the role it played in perpetuating the historic injustice, systemic marginalization, and the grave injustice committed against the Black Deaf community when Black Deaf students were excluded at Kendall School and in denying the 24 Black Deaf Kendall School students their diplomas.” 

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