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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

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/

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I'm Ready to Head to Chicago Now!

An excerpt from The New York Times - 

A Pie Shop on Chicago’s South Side Serves More Than Dessert

With her first brick-and-mortar bakery, Justice of the Pies, the pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard focuses on creativity — and inclusivity for people with disabilities.

By Kayla Stewart - Reporting From Chicago

The pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard has opened a new bakery
in Avalon Park on the South Side of Chicago.
Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

The South Side of Chicago brims with inimitable African American culture and history, and the pastry chef Maya-Camille Broussard is adding her brand of sweetness to the place where she was born and raised. In June, Ms. Broussard opened the first brick-and-mortar store of her longtime delivery and wholesale pie business, Justice of the Pies.

The shop, in a former dentist’s office in Avalon Park, one of the South Side’s many historic, predominantly African American neighborhoods, serves Ms. Broussard’s inventive pies and pastries, such as her calling cards — a blue cheese praline pear pie and a strawberry basil Key lime pie — along with unorthodox items like her salted caramel peach pie and a deep-dish chilaquiles quiche.

One of her signature desserts, strawberry basil Key lime pie,
is available at the bakery. Credit...Taylor Glascock for The New York Times

Ms. Broussard, who lost 75 percent of her hearing in a childhood accident, may be the industry’s most prominent hard-of-hearing Black pastry chef. She has gained a following for her pies through social media, pop-ups and appearances on the Netflix competition show “Bake Squad.” “I realized that being a member of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community actually gave me a superpower,” she said, “and that superpower includes a heightened sense of smell and taste.”

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