Finding Deaf Herstory and History:
Resources for the Classroom
Edmund Booth, Deaf Pioneer
Gallaudet University Press, 2004
Recently, the great-great-granddaughter of the Deaf pioneer and NAD supporter, Edmund Booth, told me a story about her great-niece learning about the California Gold Rush in her social studies class. The young girl excitedly shared the fact that she was a descendant of a forty-niner, but her class, including her teacher, did not believe her. She called her dad and asked him to bring the book Edmund Booth, Deaf Pioneer when he picked her up that day, and she was thrilled to explain about her proud heritage at show-and-tell.
The story reinforces a motivation behind much of my book writing. Deaf people were there throughout history—and these stories need to be told. Not only do children, both hearing and deaf, need to learn these connections to history, but also their teachers.
In nearly every significant event in American history, Deaf and hard of hearing people were contributing in meaningful ways. Edmund Booth was actively involved in both the Deaf and hearing political and social worlds. So, too, was Laura Redden Searing, the Deaf poetess and Civil War journalist who came to my attention while working with Bonnie Meath-Lang on Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences: A Biographical Dictionary. Now, while conducting research for a new book on the Deaf experience during the Civil War, I was delighted to become acquainted with the women's history scholar Judy Yaeger Jones, who had been working passionately to bring further attention to Laura Redden Searing. Jones had discovered a treasure trove of personal papers, including letters, diaries, scrapbooks and heretofore unknown photos in Searing's family's possession. She coedited with Jane E. Vallier the book Sweet Bells Jangled: Laura Redden Searing, A Deaf Poet Restored. Judy also published numerous articles about the prolific Deaf writer's life and work.
Sweet Bells Jangled
Gallaudet University Press, 2003
Our interests soon led to the collaboration now in progress—the first-ever detailed biography of Laura Redden Searing. It is an examination of both Deaf studies and women's studies perspectives, an informative documentary source on how one Deaf woman overcame attitude and communication barriers to achieve greatness.
After entering the Missouri School for the Deaf, the bright young woman began to publish her own prose by the age of 17, and she later assumed a pen name of Howard Glyndon as her journalism career developed. She began her lifelong career as a writer at the age of 19 in the midst of pre-Civil War chaos and escalating violence of St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from the Missouri School for the Deaf in 1858. By 1864, she had formed friendships with General Grant and President Abraham Lincoln.
The assassination of President Lincoln touched her deeply. Later, she wrote that Ford Theatre had become a "dark, unwholesome, and death-breeding" building used as a pension office. She felt it should be razed to the ground and a monument "erected to mark the spot where Lincoln's blood was shed." Reading this reminded me of what I had written in my book, Edmund Booth, Deaf Pioneer, about the day the Deaf editor had arrived home after learning about Lincoln's assassination. Booth's son wrote: "His face was white and stern. The lines about his mouth were set and his eye expressed both deep anger and sorrow."
The cause for which many people, including Laura Redden Searing and Edmund Booth, had argued so passionately had been won at a terrible cost.
Such connections highlighting the Deaf experience in history will become increasingly possible as Deaf and hearing scholars develop an expanding resource library of Deaf studies books and as excellent films are captioned for the classroom. One valuable resource for learning more about Deaf history is the Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP).
The DCMP offers free-loan described and captioned educational media in all subjects, including historical footage of key figures and events in Deaf history. Taking a cursory glance at the offerings on the DCMP Web site, I found numerous titles related to women of the West and homesteading on the Great Plains—great topics to bridge to Edmund Booth, Deaf Pioneer. Edmund had built the first frame house in Anamosa, Iowa. He and his remarkable Deaf wife, Mary Ann Walworth Booth, were raising a family in the wilderness during a time when the country was new and much of the land uncharted. There was no white settlement five miles west of their new homestead. One marvels to picture this Deaf couple living without fear on the Plains among wildcats and rattlesnakes in often unpredictable weather.
I also found DCMP Civil War titles related to Lincoln, the Battle of Gettysburg, and causes of the Civil War. Watching a DVD about Lincoln made me think about how the President of the United States, with the war still on, took the time to read Laura Redden Searing's book of poems, Idyls of Battle and Poems of the Rebellion, personally writing her a note that he found them "all patriotic and some of them very pretty." After viewing the title, "Battle of Gettysburg," I read her poem, "The Graves of Gettysburg," in Sweet Bells Jangled one more time, imagining the young Deaf poetess writing by candlelight the final stanza about the brave soldiers who had died on the battlefield in July 1863:
Let us lay them where they fell,
When their work was done so well!
In the martyr's noble silence,
Leaving us the tale to tell.
This is herstory and history at its best.
Harry Lang is a Deaf
professor
at the National
Technical Institute for
the Deaf at Rochester
Institute of Technology.
He has authored eight
books in the area of
Deaf
studies.
Learn more about history through captioned media.
Here are a few titles that you may consider while
beginning your journey into the past.
An Interview with Dr. Malcolm J. Norwood
Famous Deaf Americans - Part I
