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Miller Memorial
THE NECESSITY OF NOW
°Õ³ó±ðÌýLouise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children offers a safe space to engage with others in exploring history and building a path forward, while the Center for Black Deaf Studies brings the intersectionality issue to the forefront and gives Black Deaf people the opportunity to share stories and mentor each other.
We are at a rare and critical moment in history where, as a nation, we are collectively open to learning, understanding, and recalibrating the wrongs that were done to Black people in the past. We are on the precipice of transformational change and we can specifically enact it for Black and Deaf people in particular through this effort.
Organizations, corporations and individuals have all pledged their commitment to appreciating and actively supporting Black history and culture while making meaningful strides in restorative justice with the goal of obtaining true equity and inclusion. Now is the time to seize the moment.
Our memorial will provide a space for reflection and healing through the remembrance of all who have fought for the equality that Black Deaf children deserve.
Gallaudet is taking action by designing a new memorial and walking path, which is the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children. This space will reflect upon the four attributes: ²¹·É²¹°ù±ð²Ô±ð²õ²õÌýof Black Deaf people and their lived experience; the ´Ú°ù±ð±ð»å´Ç³¾Ìýthat Ms. Miller’s advocacy brought to the city’s Black Deaf students; °ù±ð³¾±ð³¾²ú°ù²¹²Ô³¦±ðÌýof the courtroom struggle for justice in learning; and ³ó±ð²¹±ô¾±²Ô²µÌýfor past injustices.
ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú takes great pride in honoring the legacy, courage, and vision of Louise B. Miller. Her actions in the lawsuit Miller v. D.C. Board of Education trailblazed a path for educational justice, setting the precedent for Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1952, Louise B. Miller, a Washington, D.C. mother of four children — three deaf sons and one hearing daughter — reached the end of her tolerance for the city’s biased regulations that forced parents like her to send their Black Deaf children away from the District of Columbia — at their own expense — to receive an education.
The injustice of sending their children great distances for an education, combined with the moral outrage and insult to human dignity that parents of Black Deaf children experienced, led Ms. Miller to initiate the process of challenging a law that was an affront to the core of democracy. She filed suit in federal court against the D.C. Board of Education on behalf of her Black Deaf son, Kenneth, and other Black Deaf children who were denied admission to Kendall School, with the aim of ending segregation and having their Black Deaf children educated within the District.
On July 3, 1952, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in their favor in Miller v. Board of Education of District of Columbia, stating that African Americans could not be sent outside a state or district to obtain the same education that white students could have within the state or district. This ruling led to the construction of Kendall School Division II at Gallaudet in 1953. Miller is thought to be a precursor to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Justices decided unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.
Miller v. Board of Education of District of Columbia is thought to be a precursor to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Justices decided unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional.
A plaque recognizing Louise Miller’s efforts is installed in front of the Kellogg Conference Hotel at ºÚÁÏÀÏ˾»ú.
These images are renderings showing how the Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children will look, with your support.Renderings courtesy of MASS Design Group.
Meet the Millers: Awareness
[Video Start][Video presented in ASL and transcribed to English]
Equality has been missing from my life but it's never too late what we know of segregation jim crow and so forth the black deaf community was not insulated from any of that it's painful really painful but we have to address this pain and we can't just push it away if we look the other way then we'll never have the opportunity to heal what does this memorial mean for the black deaf community it's really important for the black deaf community >especially when black deaf students arrive at gallaudet for many of them it is a part of their dream and upon seeing this memorial it can be an inspirational force that lets them know that gallaudet recognizes and values the black deaf community a feeling of welcome if you are interested in donating here's the link to do so thank you hello it is my pleasure to introduce to you the story of the miller family the miller family includes mother louise b miller and her four children kenneth carol gerald and justin all three of her sons are deaf and her daughter carol is hearing louise b miller's story is one of courage and tireless advocacy it changed the history of deaf education in this country it was mrs miller who decided to enroll her son kenneth in our very own kindle school in 1946 her son was denied enrollment because he was black however mrs miller didn't stop her fight and she persisted until finally in 1952 she decided to lead a class action lawsuit against the washington dc board of education to fight for the right of her son to be educated here at kendall school miller mrs miller won that lawsuit that then forced the establishment of the kindle school division 2 for negroes which was the name at that time that was the first lawsuit that started the process of dismantling the doctrine upheld by the supreme court decision plessy versus ferguson the doctor known as separate but equal by winning the lawsuit it set the precedent for dismantling that legal argument and lent support to the final decision by the supreme court in the brown versus board of education in 1954. very few people understand the connection between louise b miller's fight for her deaf son kenneth and the success of the supreme court case brown versus board of education this family has shown great patience and support of this community as we assess and reflect on our past mistakes and looking at ourselves today to further examine our current actions and supporting our movement to create a better and more just future for all of our deaf childrenespecially black latina latino latinx native american asian pacific and those of diverse identities we are proud that the family is here with us to continue to share their stories for us to come to understand our history and what we need to continue to wrestle with and reflect upon and further understand i remain grateful to the miller family for building their relationship with us during the last few yearsi am proud that they are here with us as a community and so very grateful to them i now look to dr carolyn mccaskill to lead this celebration of the miller family story the center for black deaf studies will be a place to centralize document and gather the stories of the history of the kindle division ii school thank you equality has been missing from my life okay hi we are ready yes we certainly are i was waiting for sister carolyn and here we are well good morning sister liz how are you i'm doing fantastic this morning so what are we doing today my dear well you know what i am really so excited about the program for today this webinar is the second one to be hosted by the center for black deaf studies and i'm absolutely over the moon thrilled that we're here to talk about the kindle division 2 school memorial project so we're going to talk about what the plan is and that's going to be part of our agenda today we're also going to introduce the miller family and we'll get a chance to see an interview as well as some photos and we'll have a chance to interview each one of them actually and then after that we plan to enter a discussion about the kindle division ii memorial project itself uh we have a steering committee and we'll learn from that steering committee about the mass design team and their efforts in terms of the design for the memorial project and another piece of this a very important piece of it is talking about the naming process for the memorial so we'll spend some time talking about that and then towards the end we'll have times for questions and so as i said i'm really excited to get going and oh i didn't even introduce myself to the audience hello everyone i am dr carolyn mccaskill the founding director of the center for black deaf studies and professor in the deaf studies department at gallaudet university uh uh oh it seems that dr moore has her video has frozen give us a moment all right uh dr carolyn mccaskill thank you really this is a watershed moment for our community i know that individuals are very thrilled and so looking forward to this event and the interpreter no longer has visual access on doctor moore she is experiencing intermittent freezing yes i'm noticing that as well hmm um dr moore is asked that i take over perhaps we can go ahead with the portion of the program the next portion let's proceed with the interview video clip and we can proceed that with an interview of carol miller please if we can have carol miller and now i'm absolutely thrilled to be able to interview each individual member of the member of the miller family first of all i have here with me kenneth miller so kenneth tell me a little bit about your name about yourself this is your name sign correct yes and are you deaf or hard of hearing i've been deaf since three years old three years old i see and you learned sign from your family or exactly how did you start learning sign language well i learned that the philadelphia school it was an oral school for the deaf and then later at kendall school that's where i went and that's when i changed from oral to sign language and i use sound language ever since ah so are you retired now you're still working what are you up to i retired from my job at the washington post after 47 years wow how many years since 1957 i was 16 years old 16. i went on to graduate i worked part-time and then eventually full-time in 1965 at the washington post so in total i've worked there for 47 years of my career and then i went to retire 47 years wow so what do you do now with your free time i spend time at home resting and spending time with my family and my brother so did you grow up um did you graduate through the kindle school i started in 1952 at philadelphia school and then moved to maryland 1960. did you remember like some of the things that you learned while you were in school no nothing huh you really weren't able to learn anything in that environment that's how school was at that time there wasn't much being learned in the fall of 1954 i learned a little bit at the philadelphia school the instruction was good but at the kennel school it was lousy what was the difference between the two schools kendall and philadelphia even though it was the philadelphia school was oral was good education but at kendall i didn't learn anything there so you wanted to go to a school you wanted to get a good education your mother absolutely wanted that for you so she filed a lawsuit do you remember anything about that i don't i was young at that time right you were pretty young so you commuted to philadelphia to attend that school and then later on you moved back to washington d.c and then went to the kindle school so how did that feel so i went to kendall school after philadelphia and i was just so so shocked i just sat there and didn't learn much that was 1952 to 1954 sometime there but again didn't learn much most of the time we were just playing around so did you miss the school there in philadelphia yeah my mother paid tuition i think three thousand dollars for school wow that was quite expensive at that time so kendall was a segregated school in the past do you remember that i do 1952 i remember at the time being a commuting student going back and forth to school how did it feel to have to commute to school i would commute on a cab and i did that for about a year so you wrote a cab how was that it felt weird it felt very odd the cab would drop off my different friends at their houses how old were at that time i was 11. ah 11 years old wow and then uh from 11 to 12. then you moved hmm so did you know anything about the fact that it was segregated there were black areas and white areas i don't know anything about that i think it was when i was around 18 i started to notice but before that i never really realized it so when you begin to notice what is it that caught your attention well i wasn't learning much just playing around that was it right but then you said when you became 18 or 19 that's when you started to realize that there was segregation between black people and white people and apparently today do you still see that segregation happening not as much before there was segregation but now there's been integration uh so you see that integration now yeah it started mixing students in 1954. so in 1954 there was more segregation than there is now in 1954 uh there was decent well that's when it was integration i remember outside it would be cold we would try to learn a lot when the children and the different school white school they learned a lot but at kendall we didn't learn much but after 1954 things got better for education so do you think it got better that people have a better life that black people have a better life because of the black lives movement or you think it's the same that it really hasn't improved black lives matter movement all right well is there anything else you'd want to share about that well i want to share that i played you know sports back in the day i played basketball and i was on wrestling really really were you you a champion in that how'd you do in sports yeah i actually won a wrestling championship when i defeated someone who was much larger than me had the right technique and i was able to grapple him down and i won nice oh so you had a very high rank nice yeah i think the gentleman's name was frank whitebeat might have been from canada oh so you wrestled somebody by the name of frank in one all right yeah so did you have some thoughts you'd like to share with us gerald yes before black the black lives matter movement i even think about martin luther king and during that time you know i had a pretty good life after martin luther king passed you know i began to wonder and question about you know why we had certain issues within our community you know i began to notice how white people marginalize black people in different ways and also just you know being upset about segregation and not having people recognize my common humanity when i was growing up my one of my best friends was white but i still saw segregation at play and then we saw the rise of the kkk and white supremacists and so i've come to the realization that sometimes people choose to segregate themselves because they dislike each other i think black lives matter has helped to improve things so you do think that the black lives matter movement has improved things i do you know for 500 years black people have been oppressed and marginalized and it's time for a change we have to learn to accept white people have to learn how to accept black people and what we want and desire you know sometimes those riots need to happen because that's when people wake up so do you think with what's happening with the black lives movement now where more white people are becoming more aware of what's going on and they're focusing more attention on this matter do you think that's happening i do i actually don't believe in marches like i think sometimes marches are appropriate but to be heard you sometimes need to do something different because people will have a march and then everyone goes back home and forgets everything the next day sometimes people listen to riots better because properties are being damaged i want to go back to talking about kindle school do you remember stories from your mom and how your mom actually had to fight for your brother to have a better education and also fought on behalf of other black deaf children there were 24 in that school do you remember your mom talking about that at all my mom actually passed away when i was 15 so i wasn't privy to very much when i was younger but later over time when i became an adult i realized her tireless efforts impacted the black deaf community otherwise you know kenneth would have gone to school in baltimore and you know we had a right to be educated and i think that's something that my mom became a champion for um so when you think about uh what happened with your mom and what happened in terms of her support of those other 23 students can you comment on that i remember robert millborn came to see my mom at home to thank her and i didn't quite know why he did that later i came to the realization that she had been such an advocate for black deaf students to be educated in the district she bought that lawsuit won it um you know against the dc board of education and so without her where would we be i am happy that my mom did what she did so that we would have the opportunity to learn yes we're proud of your mom as well you know if you had been able to meet her she was such a sweet lady so when you think about gallaudet hosting this interview for your family as well as setting up the kindle division 2 memorial project what comes to mind i'm very appreciative you know we have to be cognizant of the events that have occurred in the past when i think of president elstad i don't really care for him he denied my brother kenneth the opportunity to attend the school the kendall school here on campus and so that's why kenneth had to go to philadelphia that makes no sense whatsoever you know i remember we used to practice um at gallaudet on campus in front of the old gym and president elstad would be outside when we left our practice just looking at us he'd be there week after week and so i didn't that didn't really sit well with me at the time i'm very happy that we see shifts happening in our community to make things better are there any concluding thoughts you'd like to share with us you know i would love to see a black deaf person as president of gallaudet someday bobby is great but i would love to have a black deaf president as we think about mbda and also i really would appreciate having elstad auditorium renamed i don't think it should honor president elstad because he was not a supporter of black deaf students being educated here on campus so we know that there have been inequalities that have been perpetuated and we need to work for equality in your opinion do you think things have improved for the better gallaudet or not i think they have improved for the better well thank you i want to thank you so much for being with us i really appreciated talking with you so you experienced segregated schools didn't you yes do you remember when your brother uh went to the segregated school what do you remember from that time and what he went through well i was little so i really didn't understand what was going on for him in school you know so i really had no idea about segregation i found out as time went on can you give me an example i found out the discrimination that my brother went through because it was segregated he had to go all the way to philadelphia instead of coming here to kindle the philadelphia school was mixed there were black kids jewish kids white kids but here it can do it was segregated and so it was a process to get it integrated so you remember him commuting to philadelphia and then moving back how did that make you feel justin well it was different it was different i remember coming home for christmas and thanksgiving and win school clothes like for the summer you grew up in washington dc i'm sure you saw a lot in terms of the civil rights movement race riots tell me a little bit about that place yes i grew up in a black neighborhood and i didn't see white people very often i remember sometimes going into a store and seeing a white person and they would be watching me as i was shopping i was thinking why are they looking at me but my father was an officer so it really didn't bother me i didn't let it bother me so when martin luther king was killed i was actually out in the streets that day and there were riots and upheaval all over um and my wife had just uh gave birth to one of our children and i remember my sister saying you need to get home you need to get home and i said i walk home and she said it needs you need to be safe and so i started walking home and as i got close to my home a police car pulled up and asked me what i was doing i said i'm going home and they motioned for me to get in the car so i did i got in the car and i was about 18 years old at that time and they said now go in the house you know and they wouldn't leave until i went into the house they wanted to make sure i was going to go into the house so what that experience taught me was that segregation in the past it was very hard for us to deal with as a people and when martin luther king was killed and there was rioting and all that upheaval you know if anything like that were ever to happen again i'm going to make sure i stay in the house so you were living in a predominantly black neighborhood now has that neighborhood changed um well now there are a lot of restaurants and bars and uh condos and other buildings in the neighborhood but in the past it was really bad there was a lot of shooting in that area and because i couldn't hear my sister could hear shooting in the neighborhood and could hear gunshots um not exactly you know to be truthful what i did see though was not good and so you have seen more white individuals move into the area how do you think that has helped to reduce crime or make the neighborhood more safe it hasn't i mean white people are moving in but there's still a lot of break-ins there's a lot of property damage there's a lot of theft there's a lot of armed robbery in the area and so there are a few officers there who see who the problem people are you know and you can see people have bars on their window and for the ones who don't they're easy targets you know so it hasn't really improved mm-hmm so i'm been asking you about the kindle school and your upbringing as you look back and reflect on those memories about your experiences at the kindle school would you mind sharing a little bit more with me um i went to kindle school um you know i wanted to have an education and i went back i was seen as a troublemaker when i went back and my mother really fought for me to stay there for my last year of school um so i did have some problems while i was there um what do you see as the differences between then and now well the difference is that there was no education in my time you know our opportunities were very limited whereas now people actually get an education when they go to school and it can help them to prepare for the future in my time what it gave me was a very limited education so justin thank you so much for sharing your stories with me i am wondering if you can tell me a little bit more about gallaudet recognizing your family your mom's actions the kindle school memorial and what that means to you what are your thoughts about this entire project well i'm very happy that my mom stood up for us and that she faced the board of education and told them that their actions were against children and preventing them from getting a good education and my mother fought you know she was a fighter and i'm very proud of my mother for doing that because she stood up for what was right you know and every time someone stands up for what is right in terms of education that's a good thing powerful such interesting history and experiences thank you so much for sharing that truly do appreciate what a moving and significant family yes indeed they're truly beautiful and i enjoy the opportunity immensely i understand that carol miller is here to also have a conversation with you uh carolyn and so at this time we would like to invite miss carol miller to join us yes indeed and i'm happy that you saw the interview that we did with the three brothers but now i'm so excited to interview miss carol hello miss carol how are you hello i would like to start with this interview by thanking you for graciously taking the time out of your schedule and coming here to interview with us once again the first question that i would like to ask you is about your family can you tell me about your mother and what you remember about your mother in terms of the lawsuit and story surrounding that was there anything that your mom shared with you well come is three years older than i am so uh we were not told specifically what was going on but you could pick up the anguish and the angst around the house about kenneth's education uh how my parents were trying to get him into school here and that was not being allowed i remember the talk about the school in maryland and my mother taking him there and not wanting to leave him they said if they if she left him and he started to cry that they would just put him in a room and just let him cry and he was about five or six years old at that time so that was not an option for my mother that's when she brought him home and she decided that they would make other arrangements i think they started this process in 1946 that's the first letter that i have that shares an insight into what was going on so it was almost it took about six years before kenneth was actually formally educated and that's a loss for any student and especially one who's going to need some extra support it was finally decided after all of the ins and outs and the letters back and forth uh and the denial of his acceptance into kendall that they decided to send him away to philadelphia and he was eight years old i think he told me he was eight years old at the time so i would have been about five maybe five going on six so i remember my brother leaving i remember the trips going back and forth to pennsylvania to see to see him in school we were able to spend holidays together and we went to virginia during the summer and we had all of the summer together but prior to kenneth getting into school i could see the the impact that not being able to communicate effectively he could communicate about certain concrete things but as for you know i don't like this i don't want to do that that makes me sad this makes me happy those kinds of things were you you're not able to explain fully what's going on so my grandmother who was a very strong presence in our lives believed that if he just put his mind to it he could be able to hear and talk so she was not a fan of sign language so when he left washington and he went to pennsylvania kenneth came back kenneth was signing he was able to communicate with his teachers with his friends and sort of left us behind after he went into kendall for the two years that he was there between 52 and 54 when the brown decision was decided there was a difference in what was being taught and how the students were being taught so and i think again that's two more years of losing i guess a really solid foundation of education and those things do make a difference i have letters when my mother started writing again after the children had been admitted to kendall on a segregated basis that she was noticing that what was presented to the white children or what was presented to the black children was different and she said wait a minute we need to get things equalized even more so i don't know i'd have to go back and look at information to see how that turned out but uh my mother was a homemaker for a while until my grandmother retired and then she went to work she had gone to howard university she finished three and a half years there and then she decided she was in love and she had to get married and grandmother said i will send you as long as you don't get married and when she did uh she left howard so she had three and a half years at howard university she started out as a music major because she played the piano she signed in the choir she was an excellent swimmer but she left howard and she eventually went to work in the federal government and daddy went to work for the police department we lived in the same house on t street with my grandmother that she had purchased way back in 1920 and kenneth and justin are still living there so i've rambled on is there anything you you would like for me to share i i'm just excited to hear more of the story i enjoy every minute that you share with us about your mom she seems to have been a wonderful woman i wish absolutely i could have met her in person but she is gone and no longer with us but as we think about her memories they live on through her children and she has that legacy that continues so i really do appreciate you sharing that miss carol i could stay here all day i could listen to you all day i love the stories i would never tire of it i do want to ask you another question though about the house you mentioned that you have the house and the house is on the historic ledger from my understanding it is a landmark in washington d.c is that correct because it is historic in nature could you talk about that um and do people so people can learn about this historic house and you mentioned your brothers still live in the house as yes well house is the house is still there 1204 t street uh some years ago my mother was very interested in family and she loved taking pictures so we have a lot of pictures of old family members but she had given me the name of some of the older family members and i've always been interested in the history so i started to gather more information about what what went on with kenneth and i actually called the dc historical society to find out what they had because as far as i was concerned it was a fantastic story it was wonderful the court case was settled in their favor it was two years before brown and when i called the historical society they sort of gave me what who i don't know anything about louise miller or kenneth miller we have no information so one of the things i did was to call and find out how they could be placed on the african-american heritage trail and so after some writing and some explaining someone says why that's fantastic and we think that the case does deserve to be recognized so uh i guess maybe it's been 12 14 years ago that a plaque was placed in front of the house and this is actually the house that grandma bought and kenneth and justin are still there wow what a wonderful memory can you talk to us about um as you know the kellogg hotel on the gallaudet campus was built there is a plaque that's located there and it stands behind the name sign of the kellogg conference center how do you feel about the placement of the plaque currently i was not aware that the plaque was being placed when it was done and i'm so appreciative of the efforts that went into having it placed because without it i think that this may have just sort of floated off into history and not have been recognized so i'm glad it's there i often wondered about the placement of it and whether it was thought that perhaps if the visitors came through the hotel they would see it but it wasn't visible from the street for the people who were walking through and i have my cousin has a friend who said she was there and she had no idea that the plaque was there so i think a change and more recognition is probably the time has come but i'm glad that it was there and for those who work to have it placed i want to tell them how much i appreciate it thank you so that leads me to my next question and this question is about the kindle school memorial project that is currently a work in progress how do you feel about this new memorial project and do you believe that it's an opportunity for us to share awareness with people about the memorial school i think it's an excellent opportunity i have enjoyed working with everyone who has put forth such a great effort and to thank all of them to thank you and yvonne um i think it's a great opportunity for something to be done that allows people to come to grips with what has gone on i know there are a lot of people who say oh it's in the past you should just get over it but sometimes there are pains and there are experiences that stay with you and they stay with you forever and even sometimes when you can sort of tuck them away there are times when they come forth and they do bring uh you know you put your head down and you shake your head and sometimes the tears will come because you understand what went on and not only with my brother with with all of the children who had to be taken away from their homes and sent away and were not receiving that one-on-one love and support that they needed they had an extra challenge to deal with and then the challenge of being alone to me is just unimaginable when i went to kindle when we were walking with dr cordano and we were with kenneth and he looked at the kindle school and the old building that i had not seen before because it was in a part of campus that i did not have access to and he said i was sitting on the front waiting for my mother to come out because she was in a meeting to find out whether or not they would allow me to come to the school and it's just that's something that touches you to the point you can't get over that and so many children have gone through that and here what he had not been introduced to the information though there's you're different there's something wrong with you you can't go to school with other people and he's standing there trying to figure out well why so i think i think the memorial will give us an opportunity and i understand the design will allow us to enter it and sort of walk through and come to grips with what has gone on by the time we get to the end and maybe there's a space there that will give us a place where we can think and heal and say the time has come for us to move forward i agree with you wholeheartedly it's definitely time this memorial project it really is a way for us to start healing and gallaudet owes that to your family and i definitely can't wait for it to be built i'm excited about it i'm looking forward to it and again i want to thank you so much for sharing your stories and your experiences with us thank you miss carol thank you truly amazing you know when you're when we were watching the interviews with the individual family members and also um the live interviews with carol miller that you just did it was so very powerful carolyn so i'm wondering if you could perhaps share with us uh some of your experiences what was it like for you uh to conduct those interviews with the miller family members sure liz i i would be happy to share indescribable awesome i kept sort of pinching myself and saying is this really happening am i really interviewing the miller family during the time it was even happening it was like a dream come true for me absolutely surreal and definitely a historic moment in our time and i am so happy that gallaudet is supporting this effort and on that particular day november 19 2020 we were welcomed we welcomed the miller family to the gallaudet campus we put out the red carpet and we served this family to the best of our ability so it was quite a formal event we had a car formal car service uh bring them to the campus we also provided breakfast and lunch for them on that day and we just wanted to make them feel at home as we conducted the interviews and did the filming and it was just an amazing experience i remember walking over to the hotel and taking a picture of each family member standing next to the memorial plaque that now stands and as i think back to that the one word that comes to mind is awesome i mean i was so pleased and we enjoyed watching the filming we enjoyed interviewing them and learning much more about the family and this is history that needs to be documented indeed it does can you tell us um what you want us to be aware of as one of the four themes um which we know we're now currently focused on awareness tell us a little bit more what should we be aware of sure when we think about awareness we need to think about the fact that the miller family had this experience and part of the kindle division memorial is divided into four phases awareness is the first of those phases freedom remembrance and healing are the rest of those and we'll be advertising those later on but we're beginning this webinar by focusing on awareness and basically we want people to know about the lawsuit we want them to know about what happened during this period in history and the fact that you can't erase this history we know when we think about you know general american history you know we learn specific things in school we learn you know things about black history maybe general things but we don't learn about black deaf history that's what's missing and we really need those stories of the black deaf history to be told that black deaf experience such as what happened with the miller family and this lawsuit is important and it's important that many people know about this this was a landmark lawsuit that happened before the brown versus the board of education lawsuit and it's something that needs to be shared with the world it's that critically important i agree with you that awareness is the first phase of this process and it will also give black deaf people an opportunity to share their narratives definitely you know we may find that many of their stories are painful because of the history that's there throughout the years and so we have to think how those stories or narratives have been neglected they have been buried in history and it is past time to create a space where we can increase our awareness of their narratives we need to get those narratives out to the wider public i completely agree with you carolyn go ahead and yes i just would like to mention as miss carol explained when she was talking about the plaque on the back of the name for the kellogg center many people overlook it they don't see it at all it's easy to miss and that's not acceptable it's not right we have to do better we have to memorialize the history we have to show that we value our history it needs to become more visible i concur now my next question for you is what is so unique about this event can you talk to us a little bit about black owned businesses that you actually use for your event when you hosted the millers on campus yes what was unique about the event well when we got together with the miller family um that in itself was a unique experience being with the family uh as i mentioned we served both breakfast and lunch that day awesome and it was catered by a black deaf chef even better it was amazingly delicious i can't even explain it to you and we were so proud to have a black deaf chef there to prepare the food for us to prepare this meal his name is jamar higgins and i just have to brag a little bit on him we also had a black deaf photographer who was present billy butler he was a photographer um so we could see things from his point of view he's obviously skilled with capturing the emotion of the subjects it's just an amazing amazing day so hopefully in the future we will have more black deaf owned businesses uh involved in terms of the communication and marketing in connection with that project so looking forward to it this is all so amazing i hope that we continue to use our black owned businesses for future projects oh most definitely for the second third and fourth phase of this project most definitely we will anything else you'd like to share with us about the november 19th event i think what i would like to share is some of the points in time during that video for example when we were talking with kenneth and kenneth talked about the kindle building he talked about walking on campus and as we walked on campus i could see kenneth looking at the kindle building and i could see he was going back into his memory bank just by his look and at that moment i just took the deepest breath it was like i wanted to freeze that moment in time can you imagine being a seven-year-old boy and told no you can't come to the school so that moment when he glanced at the building is just stuck in my memory it was a heart rendering moment and then we had president bobby cordano with us and he looked at her and he said i remember and he began to explain his heartache and she apologized to him for the pain that he'd experienced for what his family went through for the injustice uh for that entire experience and to be there at that moment for me i i will remember that forever it's etched into my memory forever so this family is so gracious in helping us heal it was a healing moment for them it was a healing moment for us so it really went full circle and we owe them this we owe them this time to heal so i was absolutely floored by those moments how remarkable and what a powerful moment i'm so pleased that the family had an opportunity to gather and to get to this place of healing through this process it's very significant thank you carolyn for sharing this very powerful experience that you had in working with the family i now will turn it back over to yvonne black yvonne will now explain some of the history and the work that has gone into the kindle school division ii memorial yvonne is our project lead and has been doing a tremendous job investing her time to make sure that this project succeeds yvonne greetings everyone all the people who are able to make themselves available to watch today especially our younger people over at kindle and to everyone else at schools for the deaf across the country who are our future first and foremost i wanted to make sure that we show you the november 19th family photos from when the family arrived i know that you're all eager to see them so take a moment the deaf photographer billy butler was able to take some of these photographs it's actually not this uh not what's being shown right now but what took place on november 19th with the family no shara it it was a time with the family that's what we're looking to display here so we're trying to find the november 19th photographs when the miller family arrived on campus okay it should show after this we noticed that there was an annex building and that was to be replaced with the conference center the annex building was not impressive by any means the other side of gallaudet campus had you know appropriate standard buildings you would expect to see in an educational community but the nx at that time was not up to that quality at the time when they were preparing to demolish the building there were people who started to talk about it and there were members of the gallaudet community that were shocked to find out that that building had actually been built to instruct black death students during segregation that's something that was constantly swept under the rug and not talked about excellent so in the photographs we were able to see different members of the family i wanted to take a moment to explain the work that we've been doing up to this point as well as the status and where we currently are nearly three years ago president bobby cordano attended the national black deaf advocates conference and that took place in baltimore at that point it was the black deaf archives that caught our interest and in doing so the question was asked what's going on with the plaque that's been there for such a long time on campus but the noise for that plaque to be changed actually started before then it was the black lives matter movement that had six students which risa shaw was a professor for who started complaining and really making noise about the plaque and it was important to make sure that the history behind that area was more widely known so the mass design group called for different community stakeholders to share their voice and input on the kendall memorial there was input from the black deaf community the gallaudet community we were able to get a pulse on what the community felt was significant in this area and being the memorial and that eventually led to having a stakeholder group and the stakeholder group worked very diligently and you can actually see what the memorial site looks like right outside of the conference center it looks like a very barren area almost like a cow path what we want to do is to really beautify that area and show the symbolism that it has so you'll see different photographs that have been taken of stakeholders and these are the people who have been doing this work all along to honor the miller family now this group of stakeholders exists but that's not all in fact all of you as members of the community are also our stakeholders you have a voice and now i'll allow carolyn to well i'll allow carolyn afterwards to share more about that but the point is that it doesn't need to be limited to feedback from gallaudet it could be young people it could be members of the black community brown community we want everyone to have a part in this process it's truly my pleasure to see this project grow and to become such a primary and most important project we really want to capture the essence and there's things that need to be acknowledged thank you for your patience as we share bits and pieces of information thank you to university communications the admissions office for releasing me to do this work thank you to the executive directors who have provided their support and to everyone on campus who invested even those of you who are watching right now you are a part of this legacy and you helped it become what it is i certainly don't want to overlook the donors who have given significant contributions from various sources in order to make the memorial what it is that we know now i would like to thank all of you in advance for your future donations and contributions that may begin today and going forward would like to share a little bit of information we will have a community engagement process that involves three different sessions we want to make sure that you're able to attend carolyn and liz will be able to share some of the details that come along with the naming process we want to be sure that your your voice and your input is considered lastly we'd like to share some exciting news the project manager the person who is responsible to manage the entire project and see it to its success as far as the kendall memorial project we've already have a position that we've advertised so please take a look at the information in the chat we've shared a link where you can apply today if you are interested you can certainly explore more and if you know someone else who might be interested feel free to share thank you and again especially to the miller family to liz miller for fighting the good fight and for all of you for believing in this project once again thank you it's been a long time coming and change gone come i look forward to all of you reaching out and sharing the black deaf experience thank you bye-bye well thank you yvonne black really we owe you a standing ovation so here i am giving you your standing ovation my dear um as we think about the work that has taken place over the last three years and making this happen our hats are off to you the work's not gonna yeah still more to come absolutely i love you we'll also have to put in some work and i'm happy that you are still a part of the steering committee because you are a um such has such great value to contribute to the committee i definitely agree your work has been absolutely amazing thank you very much this show is yours bye-bye at this time we would like to introduce our steering committee to you and so if we can get the powerpoint slide to come up there i think you all can see the powerpoint slide we have dr carolyn mccaskill and myself we are the co-chairs of the kendall school division ii steering committee yet please do stay on that slide for now i want to go through and introduce our members to you you probably see some faces that you recognize we have yvonne black she is our project lead we also have christopher hoffman he is our campus design and planning um and if you could please do go back to that slide thank you so much we have delricia mourns she is our graduate student assistant we have nick gould the executive director of institutional advancement and lastly we have brandy raris who is the chief marketing and undergraduate admissions officer next we have our stakeholders so if we can please get that powerpoint slide if we can please show the powerpoint of the stakeholders we have boomi ina who is the edi representative we have allison polk who is our representative from the development office we have jc smith our black student union representative kailyn arlen lozano our graduate student assistant we have howard rosenblum the ceo of the national association of the deaf carol miller who is a member of the miller family franklin jones he's the black gentleman that you see pictured in the upper left hand corner with a long blue shirt we have tai gordano representing the claire center we have la mark williamson he is a staff the staff of color representative and if we look to our last line of photos we have mr bernie palmer he is the former project lead and a gallaudet alum derek beam joseph who is also representing the development office on this project if you look to the middle row we have a right hand upper corner we have jessica fine and then from the campus the off from the camp office of campus design and planning uh the final row um lower left hand corner we have mr dorian fletcher representing dc abd our dc black death advocates chapter next to dorian we have taise wright representing the claire center allison polk from the development office we also have andrew waneski and he is representing our student body government he is this spg president bottom row middle photo african american woman in braids zelie meadows representing our black deaf alumni and mbda i already introduced to you mr lim mark williamson who is from the undergraduate admissions office and the development office the final picture that you see bottom right hand corner african-american gentleman in glasses is mr gerald miller who you have already met via his interview at this time we want to review with you our process for renaming the miller memorial this is actually a new the new memorial it's very exciting it's an opportunity for us to actually recognize the black deaf experience we have actually gotten feedback from the black deaf community and various stakeholders that the kindle school division ii memorial that name itself is inappropriate the name kendall actually comes from amos kendall who was an individual who gave us the land for gallaudet university to build the school and the university of course amos kendall was a white slave owner the division ii school was also a school that was named following the conventions of segregation and so with that understanding we want to make sure that black deaf people are recognized for their tireless efforts in fighting for integration and equality we need to celebrate the black deaf experience and the current name fails to do that so we the members of the steering committee have decided to invite our stakeholders that i just mentioned to you all and the black deaf community to come together so that we can jointly identify potential names for the new memorial this memorial is for the black deaf community and we have to begin with the name of the memorial we want to be sensitive we want to have shared leadership and shared acceptance because this is going to be a very unique marker for our community given that we will convene the stakeholders the black deaf community and the steering committee to work together to come up with a list of potential names we will then hand over the slate of names to the board of trustees for their review and approval we will then take that slate of names and allow the public to help us finalize the name that will be chosen in order to rename the current memorial carolyn what do you think of this process i think it's uh wonderful for us to involve all pieces of the community so that everyone has a sense of ownership the stakeholder group is diverse and i think it's about time that we have these people together because as was explained we still have pain points as we look back on our various memories that and things that have occurred in time so we don't want to continue to look back in a negative way and to have negative memories of the past in terms of kindle and slavery and him being a slave owner with this kindle division to school being a segregated school and those negative memories we decided would be better to come up with a different name we want to involve the community in that effort and decide what is going to be the most appropriate name the name that really fits historically with what has happened so i'm definitely excited and looking forward to having the community involved in that process so that we can feel that it's a part of our history absolutely i am very much looking forward to the naming process that we will begin upon thank you so much carolyn for sharing your thoughts at this time would you like to introduce the two students who have been involved in this project yes yes would be my pleasure i would like to introduce the two students who took a course with me this past fall semester at gallaudet university i teach a course called the dynamics of oppression and i have a group of students who are involved in that class i'm going to call summer seeger and natalie marcelo and these two students will share the work that they did the research they did for the class hi natalie how are you two doing doing good good well thank you so much for agreeing to be a part of the kindle school memorial project webinar and i would like for the two of you to perhaps share your team research and to explain what the topics were the topics that you chose in brief please and uh doesn't matter to me who goes first sure hi my name is natalie marcello and my partner wendy and i um researched the mother of kenneth miller louise miller as well as other parents who filed the lawsuit for deaf children's rights to get education at kindle school while we were doing our research for a paper we learned so much about the miller family and we learned about the lawsuit and all that was going on during the civil rights era kindle school was once integrated but it was definitely a challenge and miss miller wanted to send her child to kindle school but she was denied access because he was a black student so he started going to the pennsylvania school for the deaf and then later on i went to the maryland school for the deaf because it was closer nearby but there were parents like miss miller who got together and filed a complaint with the dc board of education and they won that lawsuit and so that started was a a point in history that we can't deny it allowed them access to kindle school however it was a school that was segregated at that time so during the time of segregation there were students who came there to and it was built near the old gym building on campus but it was very small brick building with not enough space for all of the desk in fact all the materials that they had were old and about a year later they did some upgrades on the building and that building was dimash for the construction of the kellogg hotel so it wasn't until 1954 with the brown versus board of education when that lawsuit was won that integration of schools became a reality so their persistence in continuing to work on this effort and to continue to focus on the provision of education for black deaf children was so important it was a moment in history for black deaf students and a moment of civil rights importance in the history of black deaf people so as we focus on black deaf children and the parents who were involved in that situation they were the ones who empowered the deaf community so we want to recognize the hard work of the parents as well as that of the miller family so that was the information that i chose to focus on in terms of black deaf history i know that we need to make a record of all of it you know whether we're talking about events that happen on campus or off campus it's an important part of black deaf history and their legacy will continue through this project thank you so much natalie now uh summer the floor is yours hello everyone i'm summer and my research project um there were another group of students for dr mccaskill's class and we focused our research project on the miller memorial we particularly made our focus the other 23 students that attended the school those students also need to be memorialized because their experience is so very important to capture as well we want to make sure that that experience doesn't disappear and it's just important to recognize every individual's contribution and to celebrate those contributions through this project we were curious to know about their lives what happened to them so that we can actually benefit future generations of the deaf community i hope that those stories will inspire greater change and so in researching their experiences we were curious about their experiences even from 1905 all the way up till 1952 so we wanted to learn more about why did the situation transpire as it did what influenced change to happen and so for research purposes we wanted to look at those 23 students we divided them into three categories actually um we had a group of students so we were able to divide the 23 students up and we each focused on a different group of students we wanted to research their individual histories with the goal of capturing their stories through internet research we also want you know we could use google we use the gallaudet library and also the gallaudet archives during our research we found minimal information on some of these individuals we actually couldn't find a lot of information about them and so we decided that we wanted to be able to interview some of the members of the miller family so that we could actually get more information and then that would lead us to verify the information that we had captured on the other 23 students so the miller family they said of those 23 students five of the students are still living and so through our research we're hoping that we will be able to continue to perhaps set up some interviews with those five remaining members of their class while they're still alive and so hopefully if we can conduct those interviews we'll be able to find out more even about the lives of the students who have passed away um because it's important for us to capture their story as well so this is an ongoing project for us that we're very excited about well thank you thank you so much summer i really appreciate the two of you taking my class and the research that you did and the research that you will continue to do thank you yes thank you for giving us the opportunity dr moore speaking uh natalie and summer thank you so very much for sharing your research with us i look forward to learning more about your resource results thank you everyone all right we're back you know i did want to say um i'm really sorry with the technical issues that we've faced today hopefully we'll get everything all worked out and be ready for our next uh series in the webinar series um as i mentioned earlier it's a series of four we are now focused on awareness our next webinar will be focused on freedom and then we have two other webinars coming to the future remembrance and healing so we'll do better we'll get better as time goes by in terms of the technological issues so thank you so much for your patience all right now we will be opening it up for q a indeed let me ask yvonne black to join us at this time as well hello for a period of questions and answers yes so we're open to the audience to ask questions carolyn i saw that there were a couple of questions that people really were just dying to know um and one of them was where can they get the shirt for the center of black deaf studies and people are also asking if you can share a link where contributions can be made to so if we can have those two in the chat there was another question what happened to the people other people's lives and you know how can we make sure that we don't miss anything or is there a website that we can find more information at i believe the center for black deaf studies is available online but i just wanted to share some of the questions people had in the chat as far as the t-shirts i'm happy that you love them i absolutely love that the member of the families the miller family put them on i wear them as well however today we are wearing purple uh in honor of miss louise miller because that was one of her favorite colors and i love purple as well now getting back to the topic of the t-shirts we will post that information soon there are several other people who've asked me about them and are interested in purchasing the t-shirts so we'll post that information shortly as to how you can purchase them uh we haven't set up a process yet uh but we are currently working with um the business office to make sure that we work that out so soon soon we'll advertise it soon okay and what was the other question so there was information that's been shared in the chat as far as where people can find details on the memorial and another question was how many students showed up when the division 2 school was opened do we know there were 23 students at the kindle division ii school and some of them are still alive today uh i believe that kenneth mentioned there are four or five students who are still alive and i would really love to interview them and love to get a chance to meet them and to hear their stories i think that they are definitely an important part of the history of this occasion as well right now we don't have all of those names um but kenneth uh did mention hmm i think robert robert moore oh somebody who recently passed away um so there are there are four or five students who are still um alive at this time uh robert milburn was that student so anyway the goal is that we have the students who are doing the research do more research about those who are still surviving and also find other information there are gaps in what we know but we're definitely curious to find out more about their background where they worked what their family life was like so that's a part of our plan that we will continue to do research on all 23 of the students so the two students who are in my course who just presented as i mentioned they've already started working on that project of doing research to find out more information about the 23 students and tagging along with carolyn's remarks we do have the names of people who are still living one of them lives in florida and another person lives in virginia we're doing our best to collect that information we know that one of the students is currently in a nursing home so as a part of the project lead responsibilities i'll make sure to collect their information because we do want to make sure that we're able to collect as much information as we can and we'll be sure to share with the community members as part of our next steps okay so i think there's no more questions in the chat but if anything comes up feel free to look at the information that's posted and again for some of you who missed some of what we shared we'll have this available on facebook as well as youtube for your reference now i'll take a look at the q a okay someone asked why purple the reason we wore purple is because louise miller loved the color purple in the second of our series we'll have more information to share with the community great idea who knows maybe we'll sing purple rain we'll see i also want to especially recognize those that have contributed for quite some time especially the class of 1992 and their donations being the first class to donate to this project thank you so much to the class of 1992. and to all the other classes make sure you follow suit this year is this month is kindness month okay also for the photographs that were taken on november 19th we'll also post those so people can see what the facial expressions were when the family arrived on campus and as they went through about as they went about their day on november 19th we'll share those photographs there are people that are hoping that we can broadcast this nationwide through pbs and i'm glad to say indeed that is the plan the center for black deaf research is really focusing on this and trying to put on the forefront this is so significant because it took place before brown versus board of education and should be an exhibit in the african-american history of african-american museum of african-american history and culture more information forthcoming and i think that completes my responses to these questions have we answered all of the questions in the q a are we ready for the wrap up i do want to thank everyone who was involved today with this project and thank the audience for being here at the webinar you were fabulous thank you and i would say keep an eye out for future webinars and please do visit galleyshare.com center for black deaf studies for further information indeed thank you once again and before we close the teacher in me has to acknowledge these four different levels and for today the first level was awareness awareness the second will be freedom the third will be remembrance remembrance and the fourth healing healing keep that in mind thank you thank you all so much thank you for watching
[Video End]
hello everyone
thank you so much for joining in our second series uh in our second webinar in the series
and the theme is freedom the last one was on december 9th and it focused on awareness and today
we'll be focusing on freedom i have to say that i'm excited to begin
this program i was in fact a project lead for the
memorial project and the purpose of this program
is to focus on kendall 100 kendall alumni students
and i graduated from kendall and went to mssd we had an original emcee mike kent i
planned for our event today but due to some family emergencies he wasn't able to make himself available
so i had to step in hopefully we can bring mike in next time i'm delighted to be today's emcee
regardless i wanted to share a little bit of what you can expect during today's program
we'll kick off with an opening prayer and then we'll have the national black
anthem from alumni presented by a kindle alumni
then we also have staff from the claire center who will be presenting a song and we'll go through the program agenda
we'll share announcements by dr elizabeth moore
and then carolyn and we'll see the rest of the program hopefully all of you enjoy what we have
planned for you today
we'll have our prayer it's recorded by billy butler who's an alumni of mssd
our god who sits high and looks slow you have sustained us and brought us to
today thank you for connecting us
and allowing us to be a part of your kingdom
allowing us to maintain a relationship with you through jesus
today's webinar audience is gathered to have a discussion about the historic
battle of black deaf injustice
this included a lack of freedom and as we consider the things and situations
that the black deaf community went through we admit that it posed great challenges and hardships
we know that you are already familiar with this story of injustice you allowed us to endure it
to see this change and even improve but lord a lot of work still remains to
be accomplished today during this webinar we ask that you would be with us
as we gather as a witness to the conversation
hear us as we discuss what changes and improvements are needed
to create a better world for future generations
a world that is more just and free
and accessible to the black deaf community
we want to thank you god because we know that you will show yourself strong today
you are mighty and capable to do and provide all that we need or may ask for
so today god we ask we ask for your divine presence to come and be with us
god we thank you for what is to come because we know that you will help this webinar to be a
success you are going to provide funding for this memorial in ways we cannot even
imagine from sources unknown abundance will flow
god you will bless this endeavor and all those involved with this initiative you will bless the technology
so that this event will be a smashing success we trust that you will do whatever we
ask we thank you in advance because you have already blessed
this program you've already made it a success
you've already provided what we need thank you god for being our god
you are our motivation we trust in you
and we can depend on you in preparation as we kick off this
webinar we ask that as people join in that they receive a blessing
in jesus name we praise you forever and ever
and ever in jesus name amen amen and amen
amen amen
as as billy share we are all blessed here today
what's next on our agenda and i'd like to remind everyone that we
want to showcase our alumni from kendo and mssd who are now working at million school
for the deaf there's one in particular ronnie bradley
who will be performing the black national anthem
[Music]
touching my heart is fluttering after seeing that
thank you to louise b miller's family
for producing us for helping to produce a successful child
thank you i'll try not to get too emotional
next in our program i would like to welcome tara miles from the clear center
tariff never mind making yourself on video how are you doing tara i'm doing well
[Music] you have a song in mind right yes i'm so happy that you asked me
uh the song that i'm going to do is oh lord i want you to help me and i have to say
that this song is a classic spiritual
it is a cry to the lord for help and when i think about the miller family
i think about their struggle i think about the frustrations they experience the barriers
that they fought to overcome a system of oppression and injustice i think about that and i remember how it
was back then you know that black people like we couldn't be you know we didn't go for therapy we
didn't have counseling our counselor was the lord that is who helped us through that's who helped us when we had to
struggle through it
thank you
[Music] [Laughter]
[Music] [Applause]
i want [Music]
[Music] [Applause] i want you to help me
tell them to help me
[Laughter] [Music]
i want you to help me on my journey
want you to help me
[Music] help me
oh
come down now for prayer
[Applause] [Music]
whoa
[Applause] help me
that was beautiful that's one of my favorite songs
i'm trying to hold my tears back because when i was a child and i saw
martin luther king getting assassinated that music was always playing in the background
i remember seeing people as i sat on the front porch and this is so meaningful
i want to thank president cordano especially
on february 3rd there was an event planned for our president's presidential lecture
for the state of the union it was a presentation scheduled for the community that had to be rescheduled
and there was paperwork filed on february 2nd and then it continued february 3rd so 69
years ago to this day the significant moment in history
all of the help that louise b miller got was from god
god used people to help guide her along the way and the miller family
the next person i'd like to call on is dr elizabeth moore
our chief diversity officer hi dr moore the floor is yours
we the kindle school division two memorial steering committee
are very elated to share an update with the community regarding the naming
process for the memorial you may remember at our last webinar in december we actually hosted the
kindle school division 2 webinar part 1 which was awareness
and that is the event where dr carolyn mccaskill actually interviewed some of the members
of the miller family i'm sure all of you recall that and that
is when we actually announce the process for assigning a formal name to the memorial
so with the help of the community we wanted to engage you in this process
for the kindle school division two memorial
and this is because we know that there are various stories within our community
as you may already know kendall or amos kendall
is actually the philanthropists who donated land so that we could establish the school
and the university however mr kindle was a white
slave owner and so with that checkered history
we have also recognized that the division two schools current name represents a segregated pass for black
deaf education and black deaf students and so as we think about the current
name it doesn't really represent the spirit of the black deaf community
and our struggle for equality in
education and also recognizing the oppression that that community experienced
and so the kindle school division ii memorial project and our steering committee got to work
to address this matter we met with various stakeholder groups including
kindle students current mssd students and our community stakeholders like the
national black deaf advocates organization the national association of the deaf and
a variety of other community organizations as well as student organizations and so
after getting all of their input
we were able to collect a slate of proposed names for the memorial
and i want to just share some statistics with you from the stakeholder groups again kindle
students participated in this process they were very enthusiastic and so they were able to give us
their suggestions we had landmarks that were taken into consideration like
the martin luther king landmark and so the kindle instructors use this as
an educational opportunity for their students brainstorming recommendations for naming the memorial
and so the kindle students who were engaged in this process were sixth through eighth graders
and they submitted 21 names believe it or not on the mssd side of the campus
which of course is our 9th through 12th graders we had 27 names submitted
and then from the community at large we collected a total of 35 names
which is just awesome and so having that slate of names we were absolutely
inspired by the engagement from the community in this process it was absolutely tremendous the
steering committee then got to work deliberating about the names and narrowed down that slate of names
to three names and you may be wondering what are the three names that we have
come down to the first is the louise b miller memorial
the second is the louise b miller pathways
and gardens a legacy to black deaf
children the third and final name is the louise b miller black
deaf cultural path
so let me go ahead and give you some additional context for each of those names
the louise b miller memorial actually recognizes the miller family
and the journey that they undertook and the sacrifice that the mother mrs miller made
on behalf of her four children three of whom were deaf her three deaf sons and her one hearing
daughter mrs miller was the tireless advocate
and she fought four black deaf children to be educated on the campus of
gallaudet university in washington dc
and this of course recognized the importance of black deaf children
being educated and then of course highlighting the miller's family struggle and fight in this regard
and so as we recognize the civil rights of the black deaf community we recognize
educational access and this name takes that into
consideration the history the impact and the ongoing
efforts that we must take to address injustice in education particularly
for black deaf children now the second name
which is the louise b miller pathways and gardens
a legacy to black deaf children
when we envision louise b miller
we recognize her personality her spirit her determination
and if it wasn't for her advocacy efforts and her desire to ensure freedom for
her deaf son what would our current reality look like in
terms of accessing quality education and programming for deaf children
as we think about the jim crow era in washington dc that certainly had an impact on the
black deaf community parent would want to send
their child to a school that wasn't in their local neighborhood
and so the miller family had three deaf sons they lived in the city
and there was a school that their deaf sons could not attend right
in their local neighborhood and so mrs miller had
a staunch commitment and was adept at working
[Music] to open doors doors that had been closed
for half a century 50 years can you imagine
she was a powerhouse of a woman
and so the louise b miller pathways and gardens a legacy to black deaf
children is quite fitting to honor
a humble woman of great stature
and so on the behalf of black deaf children
she fought the good fight so we were able to collect all of these
names and we really see that this captures
four themes we have a awareness freedom
and the memorial itself
the third name louise b miller black deaf cultural path
again recognizes the work of mrs miller and also kenneth who was her deaf son
and the struggles that they had to navigate to achieve justice for black deaf children in
washington d.c she was able to successfully bring forth
a lawsuit for black deaf students to enter kindle school but at that time segregation was
still the law of the land and so there were two schools one for black deaf students and one for white deaf students
this became a cultural space on campus and today as we think about the journey
from awareness to freedom to remembrance
and to healing we recognize that it is a path
and so we want to have a space for black deaf cultural
recognition on the campus of gallaudet university and in the spirit of louise v miller and
her desire for black deaf students to receive
an education in a city that was their home
so the word itself path indicates that there is a journey to be
undertaken and so the way that the memorial will be designed it is designed in such a way to exhibit
that it will honor louise b miller and the original 23 students that enrolled in
the school the year at open and so we hope that this will then leave a lasting legacy
to black deaf culture and preserving that culture on the campus of gallaudet university
it would be a special place the louise b miller
black death cultural path so we have three really great names here
you might remember that i began by explaining that we collected about 35 names and we had to work
really hard we had a lot of conversations narrowing down that slate of names to the three names that we are
presenting to you this afternoon i myself have already shared these names
with the board of trustees and the board of trustees will look over
these three names and approve the three names that we've
recently shared so that we can then send them back out to the community and we will be asking the community to
vote on the name of the memorial
this is such a historic occasion and i know each and every one of us is inspired by this process
especially for the black deaf community
because we feel a sense of ownership in this process
okay um so i will of course keep you updated in the near future
especially as we decide to vote on the name which will happen by the end
of this month you will be hearing from us soon thank you
wonderful thank you liz that was a beautiful report
it's truly exciting to see where we'll go with the names now that we have these three looking forward to it thank you for your
remarks i wanted to share with you some information about the naming process
it is not complete we still have more ahead of us we plan to have community engagement
in this community engagement we'll talk about some of the materials and textures that we'd like to see in that memorial
the next community engagement session is this friday february 5th it's really fascinating
look at all the detail behind the scenes as far as what should be in that memorial so please be sure to participate you're
welcome to join now the garden it's something that we'll
be walking across on a daily basis so keep that in mind
with that let's continue with the program hopefully you've enjoyed what we've had for you so far
i would like to give a very warm welcome to elizabeth who's one of the co-chairs
dr elizabeth moore and dr mccaskill who is also co-chair and at this point
i'd like to call dr mccaskill to come up and to prepare for this interview and explain a
little bit about what we can expect okay so i'll let you run the show hello
there and thank you yvonne hello everyone
i hope that you are having a good afternoon i am so excited
the center for black deaf studies in collat is working on collaborating part 2 and 4
of this memorial process and we're doing that in honor of the history of black deaf
education so today uh perhaps you remember we had
a program on december 8th it was a webinar the theme of that particular webinar was
awareness and that webinar was the first of a series of four
and was basically an introduction to allow everyone to learn about the story that each miller
family sibling shared
they spoke of what it was like in their experiences going to school
they talked about their journey kenneth talked about his experience
going from one school to the other he went to both philadelphia school for the deaf as well as the kindle school
so they had an opportunity we had an opportunity rather to listen to their stories
and also their sister carolyn joined us as well as gerald uh all of the siblings join us
in talking about their stories and justin as well so today's program is going to move on
to the topic of freedom now we understand that we're not exactly
free because the day the education of both hearing and deaf
black children are not equal there is still a system of inequal
treatment within schools
so today we'll actually be talking about the lawsuit itself and what happened in
the process of filing that lawsuit and i am very fortunate to have two
people that i'll be interviewing about this topic those two people are dr
sandra jowers dr jowers is a well-known historian
in the washington dc maryland virginia area and dr jarrus is also
a professor at the university of washington dc
once i interview her then i'll also interview miss carol miller good morning dr jowers how are you i am
well and thank you for having me this is such an honor and a pleasure to be here
it's also my pleasure to have you here and we're very excited and appreciate the
fact that you were able to join us today and share a little bit of what you know about the lawsuit
i recall reading about your dissertation and in doing so i have to say that it
was just truly eye-opening and remarkable
thank you so much for agreeing to this i understand that you're incredibly busy woman
and i have to say i just appreciate your willingness to respond to some of these
questions uh so with that i'll start with the first question what inspired you to write your
dissertation about uh miller versus board of education lawsuit
thank you for the question and i'm going to be concise because i'm so passionate about this what i would add with along with being a
scholar and a professor is that i am the stepmother of now a deaf daughter a adult daughter who
herself has three hearing children and a uh her partner is deaf as well so when she was a little
girl about 20 years ago i three things happened in my life i got married
i entered graduate school at howard university and i became a member of shiloh baptist
church i did not know at the time how they would all be connected and moved me
toward writing about the miller case but as i became a stepmother and ashley
was our deaf child and she was asking about black deaf history i was showing her a history book
and she said well who's deaf who's deaf and there was no one deaf in there and she
she was bored she didn't want to read anymore and i said okay this is what i'm going to focus on
in graduate school i need to show her black deaf history i can show her black history but i need to expand that
and include black deaf history we're at shiloh baptist church we're just new members
and i was explaining to some of the members that i was going to howard graduate school and one of the silent
mission members in fact two of them the late robert millhouse and the late donald mayfield said to me
uh through the interpreter that i needed to look at the miller case i needed to write about it it was important it
needed to be known and i started researching it and my daughter was excited at the time now she
was 10 and so to have her excited was truly important so i did research and that became my
topic because as a historian we know the 1954
brown versus board of education case but the 1952 miller case
was two years before it changed the education for black deaf children in the district
of columbia and some of the same attorneys on that case worked with thurgood marshall on the
brown case so it became truly it was important anyway but it truly became important
when i could tie it all together as part of that freedom educational freedom movement
for children hearing and deaf
that is an awesome story do you feel that your dissertation ended up
having an impact as far as the quality of education for black deaf students i think it had
an impact on those individuals who were writing about education for black deaf children and
for hearing children and how who struggled for that mrs miller was an exemplar
uh in the community for her children and she became a wider example and role
model for others as well so i think the dissertation did some light brought some light to a
a women woman and a movement that should have had more light to it
but many times for for scholars even if there's no one deaf in your family
or in your circle it's not something you think about so and i've had people from across the
country and internationally contact me about the dissertation and about the case
and moving it forward and so i'm working on some projects uh because you want to expand it even
though we know things are not as they were we also know that educational
freedom is not where we want it to be for our children so there are things to do
and more layers to add to that
you mentioned a little bit about your dissertation how
how landmarks were a part of it you mentioned thurgood marshall
obviously widely known what is it that you want people or viewers to leave with
what is it that you want them to remember the most and uh what do you feel like has the most
uh strong impression on them being that this was such a landmark case
is there a response you have to that what you want people to remember i think i want people to remember that
the landmark cases are certainly important because their historical watershed movement but to also understand that a
lot of the significant change comes locally right so mrs miller may not be known
throughout the world or throughout the country but she had such an amazing impact locally so i want people to take away
from this understanding that social change advocates come in all dimensions and they're not
always on the national stage that this was a significant case
regionally that was connected to a larger case and to understand that you don't always have
to go for um the historical watershed moments that are put in the history books that you made
to memorize that you have local heroes that do exactly the same thing to press
the boundaries to break ceilings and to move uh to make change and that's what mrs miller did so look locally
as well
that's very true you raised an excellent point are you currently updating your
dissertation or do you plan to publish it yes um
i'm currently working on something that's connected to it i had the opportunity to
meet with the late uh mrs ruby fry hughes the first hearing black teacher
who was signed at kendall school after the case there were four and she was the first one that was signed
and i had an opportunity for my daughter to meet her as well and she handed me some uh primary
sources i have her contract that she signed when she was hired she gave me a lot of pictures and a lot of
other um documents and so i'm presently looking at the chapter for the
instructors and making her the focal point of that here was a black woman coming from new york moved to washington
uh was first of all shocked by the segregation she found here uh and was very much um not a
um signed uh her instructor she was an oralist who became
involved with sign language and changed over to that so she was very clear that um she was
impacted by teachers who were signing and so that made her change and that's the story
that i want to talk about so i'm working on now looking at making
her story part of this trilogy uh the case her story and then trying to
do an oral history project of the students i had an opportunity to meet several
and many are still here and we've lost a lot they transitioned so as a public and oral historian i want
to make sure we get those stories down and i'm calling them signed oral history so that's the third project
that sounds very exciting i can't wait to see uh what your your next
project will end up looking like is there anything else that you'd like
to add or do you think that uh the questions covered mostly everything you wanted to share
was there anything else you wanted to add what i'd like to add is how important and significant it is for
these programs to continue for the public to be informed about what
has transpired of the heroes and heroines involved in that and the deaths the center for black
death studies the critical umns and timeliness of having a place in a repository where
individuals can find out about this history so i'm just excited that we're doing the programs
and hopefully we don't just do them in february that they will be ongoing throughout the
year because as we know black history is 365 days a year so i'm thankful to you for this program
and for everyone yes it is yes it is so this is critical this is how we'll
keep the history how our children will know um how those in the community know we honor
what has taken place and how we respect those who made the sacrifice to push forward
i most certainly agree there's a question from the audience and
i believe the question asks is there any way we can read
her dissertation i would love to have the opportunity to read it
um i will have to i know that i think it's somewhere public there's a jstor does dissertations but a lot of
it also it's in the chapter um i was asked to do a chapter for um
the book of gala that did the race a fair chance in a race of life so i've got a chapter in there on black
death education um i will look if so if you will if we can get the link or
an email for that person i will look to see where the dissertation is available and we'll send them
the link because it's somewhere on the internet everything is so it's there somewhere
i think proquest yes that's it proquest i believe that might be the other
location that we might be able to find that pro quest so that's an alternative
uh place where you can probably find your dissertation but thank you so much dr towers it's truly
been a pleasure having you join us today so thank you so much for your time thank you for having me
absolutely next i would like to interview carol
miller
carol hello miss miller how are you hello
how are you i'm doing well thank you doing well i am
so excited about this program today and about all that we've done in terms
of awareness now we're on to the section about freedom and i want to entertain a discussion
about the lawsuit and i have a couple questions to ask you in that regard
can you tell us what it is you know when your mom filed the lawsuit what do you remember about
that time
i am and i want your mind kenneth i don't think you can see it but
kenneth is sitting and watching us um i am
three years old he's watching i'm three years younger
than kenneth and what i remember is um a trip to baltimore
was overly maryland i remember lots of conversation about kenneth going
to school i know that i had entered a division ii school
but kenneth was not attending school at that time
i remember kenneth having to go away and i remember my mother coming home
and she had started to work and coming home and asking if there had
been any information from dr paul cook and
at that time i did not know the significance of what was going on because you're just a child and this is
just everyday life but i'm sitting here now and i'm surrounded by
old papers and pictures and letters that
take us back to that time and i know that kenneth is is going back also so we've had
several conversations with the family within the four of us uh kenneth gerald justin and myself
and among the four was trying to remember and recount
and record all of the things that each of us remembers so i do remember when kenneth was able
to come home from pennsylvania because he had been there for three years i believe and it was just
terrific he was able to come home and while he was able to attend the
school he left one situation for another situation
and of course his children you don't know these things until you go back and listen
uh you try and remember and i always think of and i wrote something down and
it says i cannot write the wrong or take away the pain that all of those
memories bring but what we want to do is try and encourage people to understand their
history and not forget it so kenneth is watching
gerald and justin i hope
thank you and i want to ask you do you remember how long it took for that court case to
be settled but how long did it take well from the
time it was filed until it was settled it didn't take very long
but the process that i know that my mother was involved in and i don't know how long other parents were working
because there was so many children who went through this and we're just sort of a representation
of what was going on but my mother started trying to have kenneth educated in 1946
and then she ended up he finally came home to uh kendall i think it was the fall of
the actual case was filed in february
of 52 and the finding came down in july i think july the 3rd
of 1952 and they were ordered to attend school on the campus in september of 52.
and i remember the building going up when they first went to kendall they were in the old gym and there were
curtains put up and different makeshift situations were
put in place so that they could be educated there but i do remember that
building going up and it was just almost overnight that the building went up uh and we i
thought it was the most fantastic thing it was shaped like an h the dormitory was on this side for the
boys the girls were on this side there was a lunchroom cafeteria in the
basement in the middle and on the top were the classrooms and i thought it was fantastic
i realized when we came in the first gate that we sort of went around the side to get to it and you didn't see
too much when we got out of the car other than we would run inside and help kenneth put his things in
and then we would leave so every sunday this was the routine that we went through kenneth would come home friday
afternoon and every sunday we'd pack up the car pack up his clothes and take him back to the school as i
said i thought it was a cute little place but come to find out that it was
what it looks like isn't always what it is and we were sort of shunted off
around to the side but it was better than going all the way to pennsylvania
but little did i know that there were still many issues that needed to be settled
and we still have some of the letters where my mother was trying to address
some of those
this is so interesting can you remind us i heard that there were
actually two lawsuits um the first one i believe was when the children were brought to
campus back to washington dc and they went to school in the old gym
but there was another lawsuit a second lawsuit as well can you talk about that that i'm not
familiar with the papers that i have from my mother
as far as i can determine right now only uh talk about the first one or what she was
going through to get to the first one so i don't know about the second one
all right thank you i know there were two lawsuits that impacted this one but i don't know about
another one being filed
i see okay thank you thank you that's fine my next question is can you explain for
the audience why is it important to know about this historic case
why is it important well if you don't understand your
history and where you have been i think you're
not quite sure where you need to go so
when students perhaps look at what's happening at their school now they need to be able to look back
and say aha this is not something new you have done this before and it's
happening over and over again therefore i'm going to see if i can stop it right now
so i think the old thing about if you don't know where you've been you don't know where you're going
and also i hope it serves as some sort of a catalyst that if someone could do this back in
the 40s we would almost 80 years later we can do it again
it's just it's just amazing and it's sad that we're still
still working i think about my mother and her three children who sorry her
three children that went to kendall she saw not one graduation
not any kind of awarding of success
no one graduated you just sort of eased on out the door and you were gone
there was no reward for what they were doing there
yes it is so critical to tell people about the history
the next question i would like to ask you is how has this affected your family
the effect is never ending the effect is never ending as i said i
have pictures and books and the memories are
there i shared this about kenneth and how he said he
he went away to school and he cried and he cried how does that
70 years later how does that still not affect you and it does and i think of all of the
parents all of the children and i i really would like to know just
some of the things that they went through i remember when my mother went to
overlay and she jot it down on the back of a piece of paper
and she says that when she got to the school
wanted to with kenneth she had taken kenneth with her and i think this was the time she was
thinking about leaving them leaving him and she says they wanted to take him in the room they wanted to examine him for
sores source not my mother not us they wanted to examine her for
stores and she they told her if he started to cry they would put him in the room and just close the door
and she brought kenneth home and that my mother was not a crier
but that made her cry to think that they were going to do that
to her child and all the other children that had been through that
but she brought him home and that's when the decision was made
that he wouldn't be going there and they would take him to philadelphia and he was
there for three years but she couldn't take him and look at some of her papers and there's a there's a
halt there's a stop say what was going on and then i remembered oh she was giving birth to my younger
brother my younger brothers my two younger brothers so when it was time to take kenneth
to pennsylvania my grandmother did it so there were lots of things i remember
her sewing in the name tags and all of his clothes i remember the trunks that had to be
taken to the station and sent to philadelphia and picked up with his name painted on them i think of the visits
that we took to pennsylvania the times that he was just there without
us he was just there without his family
such amazing story i am absolutely fascinated with hearing
the stories of what happened with your family is there anything that you would like to add miss miller before we have
questions from the audience is there any final comments that you would like to add
well just don't forget don't let it become ho-hum yeah well
that happened it's an ongoing fight it seems
and we were so hopeful that maybe things had been fixed but they're not fixed
and it's an ongoing issue it's an ongoing issue and as i said
you can't take away the pain you can't it's it's just not something that you can
forget each time i look at pictures of kenneth when he was small
and think of you know why did you do that to him
why would you do that he was a little
boy
oh my goodness thank you so much miss carol for sharing with us i really really appreciate your being
with us here today so much and we will definitely be in touch
thank you again
and now missy vaughn
touching thank you thank you for that interview
know that the road to freedom is never a straight line it's never a straight path it's a
journey it certainly is a journey and at times a
journey you have to experience pain and
you you get wounds as a result and then these wounds end up being stories to share with the world
i've had two excellent interviews and at this moment i just feel it's been a wonderful
opportunity to share the stories about the lawsuit itself from dr jower's point of view and her
experience with writing the dissertation and then the interview the personal
interview with miss carol miller talking about her experience with what her mom went through on this journey
a very painful journey and as we listened to both of them i i could sit here and listen to the two
of them all day long and never tire um so it's been a wonderful opportunity
and i'm definitely excited about the third and fourth series yes
yes very much yes so let me let the program go on
uh i did want to mention there was actually two lawsuits that took place
the first lawsuit was essentially dismissed um he was sent between
baltimore and pennsylvania however with the second lawsuit of course with
god's help and uh the people that louise had behind her she was able to kind of circumvent the
barriers and succeeded so thank you for this interview you shared a lot of
important information thank you all right i'm going to sign off
all right now i'd like to go on with the model
secondary school for the deaf and there is a poem that will be
performed for you and this poem is from langston hughes's
freedom
so i'm delighted to show the various students at kendall and mssd these students are
rajya
at atari this is virginia's sign name roger is willing to perform this poem
please take a moment to enjoy
democracy will not come today this year not ever
through compromise and fear i have as much right as the other fellow has to stand
on my own two feet and own the land i tire so of hearing people say let
things take their course tomorrow is another day no
i do not need my freedom when i'm dead i cannot live on tomorrow's bread
freedom freedom is a strong seed
planted in a great need i live here too i want freedom just as you
freedom freedom it's coming soon or is it
democracy will not come today this year nor ever through compromise and fear i have as
much right as the other fellow has to stand on my own two feet and own the land
i so tired of hearing people say let things take their course tomorrow is another day no
i'm not in my freedom when i'm dead
very touching
talked about freedom and what freedom means
having the same and equal freedoms as others is what should happen not waiting for freedom to be given to you quite
powerful i wanted to mention that if you're
interested in hearing more of these stories you can certainly donate to this project
i'll share a link with further information thank you
i also want to thank those that have contributed up until this point
now there are three alumni members from kendall that went on to graduate and graduated
from mssd and these individuals are
daisy wooten come on up next
nina harrison
formerly ina williams i think uh now ina harrison
and then we've got emanuel perotin njoku
come on up
how are y'all doing doing well thank you
thank you for taking the time to join us at uh such an historic moment the freedom webinar i did have a couple
questions i wanted to ask each of you and i think we might be able to field
one or two brief questions from the audience if you wouldn't mind can you introduce
your name year of graduation what did you do
after graduating high school and perhaps what you're doing now daisy would you like to start it off
sure hi there everyone my name is daisy wooten and uh do you want me to talk about what
i do for work now well what year did you graduate and um what's life been like for you after
graduation got it thank you so much uh this is very emotional has been very emotional for me
watching this webinar thus far so trying to rein it in i graduated from
kindle in 1977 i believe i came into the school
in 1965 somewhere in there 1966 then i went to high school at mssd in
1977 graduated in 1982. and uh right i graduated also from
gallaudet and that was in 1992
and then i went to nyu i was there until 1995
from 1994 then graduated i worked at a variety of places
and now i live in north carolina and i work with the north carolina
division of services for the deaf and hard of hearing and i've been here for 15 years
thank you daisy you know would you mind introducing
yourself what year you graduated and uh what you've been up to since since then sure thank you yvonne
i'm anna um for those of you who don't know me my former name was anna williams
my current last name is harrison but i do want to share some memories
that i have i first entered into the kindle school
april of 71 i believe and i graduated
and then went to mssd i was in 78 i graduated from mssd in 82
and after that i couldn't um enter or enroll at
gallaudet university there were some challenges that were there some barriers for me and so
i needed to take some other prerequisite courses
and so that was a journey for me i desired to enroll at gallaudet but that just wasn't a possibility when i graduated from
mssd and so then i ended up going to a community college in seattle
washington and then i was absolutely of course thrilled about that opportunity i got an
aaa degree that was in 88
and then it would have been 92 or 93 can't remember the exact year
um where i was still looking for a job i was unemployed
and i want to thank rick at mssd
he actually gave me an opportunity to gain employment at mssd and i decided to continue working there
i was interested in getting further education graduate education from strayer
university i actually got two degrees graduate degrees
in human resources which related to my job and then i got a
second degree in educational administration related to
school environments so that i could apply those skill sets to my job at mssd
so i have of course been working in that environment for a very long time
encountered international students so decided to also study interpreting
as a cdi and so i have been able to support students in that way students from various language backgrounds
thank you and then we've got emmanuel emmanuel maybe you can talk about what year you went into kendall
mssd your graduation uh and and what you've been up to
all right sure um thank you for inviting me to be a part of this a very special event my name is emmanuel parodin njoku
who's my sign name um you know i've been a kendall kid my whole life i enrolled in 1998 a year after i was
born
this is the interpreter at this time the video is frozen okay sorry about that i'm back so i graduated
mssd in 2014 and then i went on to rochester institute of technology
majoring in biomed science i graduated in 2018 at that time i thought i wanted to have
a career in science and medicine and i had an opportunity as a post-baccalaureate
fellow at the national cancer institute where i'm currently working which is
under the national institute of health focusing on breast cancer research
it's an awesome story to see all of you navigate through your educational journeys to where you are today
in thinking about the memories that you had at kendall school what would you like to share with our audience you know being a black deaf
child at kendall emanuel
there are a few memories that i have but i'll share one of my highlights i remember being very young and a part
of the video project called uh it takes a village to raise a child
and this was my introduction and ultimately led to public speaking
and you know the ability to be more confident in myself i got a lot of support from the kendall
school school community including teachers and staff i was part of the optimist club which
was very empowering to young people giving them a stage to express themselves and that's what really
shaped me into who i am today so that and in addition to so many other
memories uh at expos in the middle of school presenting on various projects
always being very immersed in science being a member of student body government
the kennel school community was supportive in so many ways and allowed me to flourish into the way i am today
thank you for sharing that what are some other memories in uh that you had from kendall
um campfire girls you know i remember
just being involved in different organizations and learning so many different activities like modeling
just so many gifts that i was given as a kindle student and now of course i
teach students and i have the opportunity to encourage students to make the best of their lives
the opportunity that i was given in girl scouts i think that is the same concept as the campfire girls and it was
such a gift to me thank you how about you daisy can you share some memories that you had of
kendall yes i have so many good memories that i can look back on growing up at kindle
and i think i was really thankful to ann williamson she was a hearing parent she had a deaf
child his name was james and she was the one who really encouraged all of us
all of the parents to get together and talk about you know black deaf children having equal access to rights
so i remember very clearly going to junior camp and at their that camp there
are about eight of us uh young students who were there and i remember a teacher taking me home
taking me to her home and teaching me how to swim and enjoying a conversation with her and
this was a white teacher can you imagine that and then another time i remember
us going out to minnesota to a camp in minnesota
and we met the mayor so i remember that quite clearly i also had
a favorite teacher kirk um and uh he was
indian descent so i remember the youth leadership camp and always you
know how having those teachers help us to be creative in the things that we did
and we learned photography we learned shop we learned math skills you know so a variety of
things from those teachers who encouraged us
thank you now when did you first learn about the story of louise b miller
and her son in the fight for education um what touched you in particular about
that and when did you learn about that story
you know sure um
since moving here from jamaica i entered into the kindle school and
i don't really remember hearing much about louise b miller people would talk about martin luther
king right we always hear about martin luther king um and so i continued through my studies at kendall and even at mssd
we sort of had the uh regular list of civil rights heroes and sheroes um and then
once i learned of the kindle division to school memorial i thought to myself my
goodness that is my story but i didn't know of that story um and if not for
mrs miller where would we be today i am inspired by her i feel like she really saved us
um and so we owe her a great debt i am so appreciative of her and
it is really all about freedom wow and then uh daisy what about you
i would have to second that um my memory is not really that clear as a teenager
you know i grew up with
anna and going over to the deaf club the dca black death cub i remember being
on florida avenue and i remember there was
a guy there um and i found out that that was vernon
shorter's father and he talked about it but not really in depth and
he talked about gerald and about this lawsuit with kendall but i wasn't really clear i was kind of
fuzzy on the story it wasn't too much much later on in life that i learned more about it and now i
actually learned from dr carolyn mccaskill talking about the louise de mello story today and
such a sense of gratitude you know i actually bawled when i heard the story i couldn't hold
the tears back this lawsuit in 1954 happened before brown versus the board of education 1954
if it wasn't for this where would we be now you know what would the state of education be for us you know
we suffered living right here in washington dc so i am forever eternally grateful
to louise b miller fighting for us fighting for her son but fighting for us and the future of deaf black children who would benefit
from that lawsuit thank you daisy for those remarks emmanuel how about you what what do you think here um you know
similar to ina i hadn't really known about it uh growing up it wasn't until
you know this past december and i was able to kind of see the big picture um i processed it in real time and uh
it's really a lot of acknowledgement and thanks going to louise b miller for all of the work that she did
you know all the people that were behind her like daisy mentioned really allowed us to have the foundation
necessary in order to succeed and thrive as deaf people like deaf people in particular so thank you and also i
think this is something that should be shared knowledge among both hearing and deaf communities thank you
thank you so much for answering that and for our last question what is uh some advice that you like to
share with black deaf folks in black deaf children that might be students at kendall
an ssd in the greater us or even internationally you know before we wrap
up i'm just curious to see what your thoughts are on that daisy what's your advice hmm
i would say be strong be passionate work hard don't just take
people word for what they say when they say it you can't you know what you are inside do what you
can to follow your path ask your parents to help you ask others to help you to succeed and thrive
you can't do it alone you also need god so have faith have determination have passion and
stick with the plan emanuel you know i would say don't be
afraid to ask questions you know when opportunities come here come your way make sure you capitalize
on that stand up for what's right you know be sweet and kind to everyone
and also make sure you don't forget your roots and what kendall was able to do for you
and then for ina what do you think as we just think of it and i don't even
have words this is such a momentous occasion um you know we always i will always share
with students that we always want to respect one another regardless of our background
whether we're from um america or not uh wherever we may be from we need to
make sure that we respect one another we need to make sure that we have different experiences we want to
cultivate role models we never know who may plant a seed in our lives it may be someone from a
different ethnicity or nationality thank you and daisy do you want to share
your final remarks before we close out yes i would say it's so important to find someone who believes in you
if you see someone who does not believe in you then look for somebody else because that person who believes in you
will help you to succeed most definitely thank you so much for your participation
may you continue on your path towards success and greatness thank you so much for
representing kendall and our mssd students so well as well as gallaudet university
thank you very much and bye bye thank you for having me
bye-bye [Music]
i have to say that hearing everyone's story was very touching um i took a note emmanuel said that uh
it took a village to what it takes a village to raise a child it was a project he was
working on and i'm wondering if kendall should bring back that kind of program
i also noted that when it comes to kendall students who enrolled in kendall and then went on
to mssd and went on to graduate
kendall and mssd is a part of the claire center and gallaudet is doing a very good job
of retaining these students and making sure that our younger students have someone to look up to
that's something to think about
next i'd like to call on president cordano to share some of her thoughts
and remarks after viewing today's program
president cordano please come up
hello there hi president cordano if you want to mine can you please share
what your thoughts and remarks uh that you have for us after today's program absolutely and thank you
i just wanted to remind all of us that gallaudet students in 2016
one of the very first things that they wanted gallaudet to address is our history related to memorials
and today if you don't know this or not aware we now have a plaque that faces the
hotel it's on a brick edifice that sits out
front of the hotel and from lincoln circle as you drive through the campus you would never
see that plaque but if you walk around the opposite direction you're able to see what it memorializes
and if you're seated in the outdoor patio area at the hotel you can actually face that plaque and see what it's all
about there are many members of our black deaf community who've time and time again
have just expressed their discontent in the insufficiency of that plaque
it's striking to me how even our own alumni as you saw here from kendall school and
mssd at the claire center didn't know anything about the history related to this memorial and louise b
miller's lawsuit this is exactly what our community is
all about doing in terms of making changes the center for black deaf studies is a
significant way to recognize that it was established to do the very thing we're seeing it
doing now to capture the stories and to capture the history that relates to our black
deaf community and their experiences throughout their educational systems here in our country
within our communities and all that they have faced and struggled with along the way
always in that fight seeking freedom and civil rights i want to thank the leadership for our
students here at gallaudet particularly our black deaf student union and our staff faculty people such as
yvonne and dr mccaskill dr liz moore
bernie palmer mumiana and so many others far too many to name who
have served on this committee since we began this work in 2017 the most activity began around
this committee as we began designing the vision for this memorial it is one of the most exciting things we
have happening now the community is engaged in helping us build out that vision as to how we can
tell the story going forward today was a beautiful and powerful
webinar we heard from so many individuals and learned greatly as a result
i wanted to echo something that was shared by um dr sandra and i'm just looking to
make sure i have her last name right dr sandra jowers as she talked about change being local
and we should never forget that change can happen right here right where we are every single day
that changes only evidence through us and our involvement we always have to
keep an eye out for one another because we are bringing the change we are bringing change to the world to our
local actions and this is one example of that very thing
i also wanted to highlight that the success of our bringing these
stories as we have over the last couple of webinars and of course more will be coming
the success is made possible through the partnerships that have been formed through collaborative efforts we've come
together to create the vision around this work and how we can move this work forward
every one of us plays a role any free one of us has a possibility to create change
as we look back to the legacy and black history especially black deaf history
and we continue to understand that history to the present so that we can build a future that's different
i invite everyone who's listening today to join with us in this journey to help us continue
movement forward on this vision as we honor a pure champion a mother an activist
a heroine that really represents all that we are as a community so i want to thank you for being with us
today keep finding those stories keep bringing those stories to us and allow
us to keep learning and changing the world to make it a better place thanks to everyone who's involved in the
webinar today and all of you who are watching in i'm so very grateful for everything that's
happening and all the work you've been doing we will continue to support you through your journey ahead thank you all so much
thank you president cordano for your thoughtful remarks and some of your thoughts after
viewing today's program you know this is a community effort and we rely on each other
in order to truly share this story
and looking at some of my notes from karen miller she said that none of the students uh
none of the 23 students that graduated in the class of 1952 were able to enroll in college
and we know that there's already been an apology that you've given to kevin and the miller family but this is
a conversation that will continue and we will not stop talking about this thank you absolutely no doubt about that
we need more research to be done and more stories to be shared about the history as to what's happened over time
especially as it relates to the black deaf community so much about their experience and their journey and the
educational system is just not sufficiently being told the stories aren't out there
i mean seeing our three alumni say i have to mention now how proud i am to see our alumni here from mssd and
the clair center and absolutely their presentations the story they shared are beautiful and it's a
lovely example of what's possible when we have you know sheroes like louise b miller who fought for the
future of people even today and there are other stories like that so thank you yvonne
thank you president cordano wonderful message
now i'd like to go on with the program uh when we're nearing its end but we're not
finished just yet we were able to reach out to various kindle alum who graduated and went to mssd
and really the essence of what i'm sharing is that the focus is on students that were enrolled in kendall so i want to
give a special thanks to louise b miller and her family for the fight that
they fought and thank you for sharing that with us so please take a moment to watch the
video of our various alumni members so these
are i am a yuke
and i come from cameroon in western africa i was enrolled in kendall in the state
sixth grade and i graduated in 1990 i want to extend a deep heartfelt thank
you to louise and her family for encouraging the rights of black deaf
children to be educated at kendall if it were not for the work that was done by the miller family
i would have stayed in africa thank you so much for everything that you've done for us
hello everyone my name is velma stanton i was at kindle in 1975 and
graduated in 1978 to enter mssd thank you miss louise b miller we
appreciate meeting all of your family thank you hello i'm tais wright
and i'm a former kindle student i enrolled in 81 graduated in 93 and i want to say
thank you to mrs miller for being such an advocate for the black deaf community
and black deaf children hi i'm vernon shorter
my mom is barbara shorter and my father's name
is robert melbourne i want to can go
uh and i wanted to thank the 23 students and louise miller for in the miller family
for freeing us to go to kendall hello i'm latrell i'm in seventh grade
at kindle and i remember seeing a presentation on
black history um at kendall and it talked about the segregation of black and white students
and that really struck me i am so happy that we're setting up this memorial to honor
mrs miller hello my name is lamont and i'm in the seventh
grade i want to say thank you to miss miller because she helped kindle the students
who were black and white come together and i'm so happy to be able to learn
and to thrive hi my name is sherman smith
my hometown is dc and i also went to school here at kendall and mssd on gallaudet campus
this was around 1968 or 1969 i graduated in 1978
and i wanted to point out an interesting fact that kendall school mssd or all on
gallaudet's campus
and i've actually had a personal experience first hand there was a lot of impact from the
history that was talked about today i was a young kid in kendall school
and that's really where i began my my childhood in my early years
as i went on i learned more became more educated
and then eventually moved to the red park school that was on campus and it was a red building a very very
old building that was on campus so in my time on campus i learned i was
educated i remember during the summer time especially during the month of july for
a whole 30 days we will go to different outdoor activities like camps
learn how to develop more independent skills our leadership skills and all that
started at kendall the connection between kindle and mssd
was very inspiring i had an opportunity because of the
freedom to attend kendall to learn and become educated and that would benefit me in my future
that gave me a strong foundation to be a student
i graduated in 1978
and ever since then i can't appreciate i can't appreciate enough the impact
that kendall has had on me i recognize that even today
if you're deaf i suggest that you send your child i suggest that you learn at kendall
if it weren't for kendall i probably wouldn't be here
i probably would not have succeeded without kendall so i do want to recognize the school
thank you to gallaudet mssd and kendall for setting up my education
thank you i'm inna harrison
williams and i enrolled in kindle
in april of 71. i then graduated in 78
and i want to say thank you mrs miller for fighting on our behalf on behalf of all black deaf children
hi i'm ethan i graduated from kendall school in 2010
and i want to thank the miller family
everyone my name is darian burwell gambrell
and i went to kindle from 1984 to 1988
i want to thank louise b miller and her family
for changing my life thank you for making sure that all of us had an
excellent education at kendall thank you hi i'm emmanuel perdon
joku graduated from kendall in 2010 and i wanted to say thank you so
much to louise miller if it weren't for the fight that she put up i wouldn't be where i am today
thank you so much hello i'm christine [Music] and i can share with you a short story
i'm really a proud kindle alum you see i'm supporting my wildcats gear a washington dc native graduated in the
class of 97 also graduated from gallaudet and being a kindle student has given
me so many gifts mrs miller and her family really made a difference for her son
kenneth and her other deaf children i just appreciate her so much
hi i'm daisy wooten and i graduated from kindle
in 1977. i actually went into the school i believe the year
was 1965 or 1966. i remember my mother telling me that i
went to the school and to be honest i have been
absolutely touched to learn so much from the center for black deaf studies
description of louise b miller in her fight i sort of vaguely remember that story but i have to tell you right now it is
crystal clear and has had such an impact on me it actually brought me to tears
and so i think to myself where would i be without kendo where would i have gone
you know i graduated from kendo i was able to get an advanced education to get my bachelor's my
master's without kendall where would i be i would be lost you know a child who was
language deprived so it's a really scary thought to think of what my role might have been
hi i'm ikea aj for short i graduated from kendall
i went to mssd um i've been a kennel product my whole life thank you to the louise b
miller family for everything that they've done and the fight for education and having access
to education especially during times of segregation they work to desegregate
i absolutely love the kendall school it's been an inspiration and i've
enjoyed learning there
oh my goodness seeing these alumni just touches my
heart it shows you that the fight was worth it
now we know we haven't gotten everything that we need a hundred percent so the fight still continues
i would like to say thank you so much for each and everyone who participated today it's been an
honor to see your face
next we have a song that will be performed by kendall alum ronnie bradley
and as a tribute to louise b miller
in all of her efforts and fighting along the journey towards
freedom although it hasn't been achieved 100 percent we're getting there
is called a song from
[Music] you taught me everything and everything you've given me
you will always be
i know
your love is like tears from the stars
my soul
[Music] you're always down for me you've always been around for me
even when i was
you always
looking back when i was so afraid and then you come to me and you take me
you'll always be
me
is
hopefully everyone enjoyed today's program and everything that we had put together
for you today
before we call up dr moore and others i would like to thank everyone who
individually contributed in one way or another to this program
so dr moore dr
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