Righting a Wrong From So Long Ago

An excerpt from the Washington Post - 

At last, a diploma for Black deaf students who set historic precedent

A court victory in 1952 allowed them to attend school in Washington. On Saturday, Gallaudet University finally gave them a diploma and an apology.

Perspective by Theresa Vargas

Janice Boyd Ruffin tears up after accepting a diploma on Saturday during a ceremony at
 Gallaudet University honoring students who attended a segregated school
on the university's campus in the 1950s. (Minh Connors/The Washington Post)

Robbie D. Cheatham knew her worth. She also knew other people didn’t always see it.

“She had a lot of things that happened to her in life, really hard, hard stuff, because of being deaf, because of being Black, because of being a woman,” Cheatham’s daughter Krissi Spence told me. “She was so strong mentally and emotionally because she had to be. She had to fight.”

She had to fight in ways that Spence only fully realized after her mom’s death in December at the age of 86.

It was then that she learned Cheatham was part of a group of Black deaf students who weren’t allowed to attend the only school for deaf children in Washington, the city where they lived, until their families filed a class-action lawsuit in 1952. Then, despite a court victory, they weren’t treated the same as the White students who attended kindergarten through 12th grade at the Kendall School on Gallaudet’s campus. Black students were enrolled in the Kendall School Division II for Negroes. They were placed in a separate classroom with separate teachers, and when it came time for them to graduate, unlike their White peers, they weren’t given diplomas.

On Saturday, Gallaudet University held a poignant ceremony aimed at righting that wrong. Officials handed out diplomas for 24 Black deaf students who should have received them more than six decades earlier. Five of the six students who are still alive made it to the ceremony.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/07/22/deaf-black-gallaudet-diploma/