PREFACE

A Mighty Change celebrates writing by deaf people in the United States between 1816 and 1864. While histories of the American deaf community often quote deaf people, I believe this anthology is the first to foreground deaf Americans’ words during this transformative period, to let them share their stories, experiences, and opinions themselves. In selecting the works for this collection, I followed two basic criteria. First, I looked for quality writing that merits preservation and provokes interest. Second, I limited potential authors to those who lost their hearing before age eleven and who identified primarily with the signing deaf community. This latter criterion excluded figures like Frederick A. P. Barnard and George Catlin, who became deaf as adults. The selections cut across genres, running from essays, lectures, and letters to poetry and fiction. I hope these texts will introduce readers to deaf leaders and issues during this remarkable period, and invite more in-depth study. While documents have been edited to fit space constraints, I have made every effort to preserve the integrity of the authors’ intentions.

Perhaps not surprisingly, several of the first deaf authors to achieve prominence in the United States actually became deaf after they had learned some English. Of the seven writers who have individual sections in this volume, four—James Nack, John Burnet, Edmund Booth, and Laura Redden Searing—fall into this category. They became deaf between the ages of four and ten. Their situation was not unusual; in nineteenth-century America, meningitis, high fever, and other illnesses deafened more children and adults than today. Such individuals were profoundly deaf, but they were sometimes called “semi-mutes” or “semi-deaf” to acknowledge their difference from congenitally deaf people. In contrast, Laurent Clerc, John Carlin, and Adele Jewel were born deaf or lost their hearing as infants, making their accomplishments with the written word that much more impressive.

The writers in this volume are, with the exception of Searing and Jewel, all white males. Despite searching for writing by deaf people of color and women from this period, I regrettably did not have much success. Oppression probably explains much of this lack. In every southern state except Maryland and Kentucky, it remained illegal to teach a slave—hearing or deaf—to read and write until after the Civil War. Information on education of African American deaf people in the North during this period is exceedingly difficult to locate. In 1834, the American Annals of Education reported that “in the Northern institutions, colored pupils are received as well as white; but … a very small number are yet under instruction.”1 Most black deaf people presumably went without education or attended segregated schools. Given such dire circumstances, we perhaps should not be surprised that we do not have much black deaf writing from this time. Jewel mentions a private school for deaf African Americans near Niagara Falls, indicating that such institutions did exist. Moreover, in the chapter on the proposal for a deaf commonwealth, Booth and John J. Flournoy touch on the subject of slavery (Flournoy was a slaveowner who apparently wanted to ship all black people to Africa). For the most part, however, African Americans, let alone deaf African Americans, are lamentably absent from the following documents.

Deaf women also have a disappointingly small presence in these pages. They did attend residential schools, and many, such as Booth’s wife Mary, were literate. Yet most deaf women seem to have stayed out of the public eye. Almost all published deaf writing from this period is by men. The first issue of The Deaf-Mutes’ Friend contains “An Appeal to the Ladies” asking deaf women to contribute to the new periodical. “Let us not be afraid to send articles to the Editor,” a woman identified only as Stella writes. “No one but himself will know who writes articles so there is no need to be afraid.”2 The references to fear suggest that writing for publication was an unfamiliar activity for deaf women. Jewel confirms such a view, saying that when it came to writing her autobiography, “I shrunk from it, and could never have done so, had it not been really necessary for me to do something for my own maintenance.”3 Only Jewel’s poverty and extreme situation caused her to write the valuable memoir we have today. Women also seem not to have played an active role at deaf events. During the 1869 meeting of the Empire State Association of Deaf-Mutes, a Mr. Fitzgerald moved to repeal the right of women to vote in elections, since “the ladies never availed themselves of the privilege.”4 In antebellum America, deaf women appear to have remained largely in the domestic sphere.

This anthology represents only a beginning. We need additional research to uncover letters, journals, notes, published articles, and other writing by deaf people of color and women during the first part of the nineteenth century. Certainly more such writing exists. With continued scholarship, we can likely recover more of these voices and obtain a better and more complete understanding of this important period.

I am indebted to many people who helped with this project. I would like to thank John Vickrey Van Cleve, Ivey Pittle Wallace, and Christina Findlay at Gallaudet University Press for their patience and enthusiasm. David Halberg, Winfield McChord, Jr., and Chris Thorkelson at the American School for the Deaf in Hartford gave me useful tips and free access to the school’s valuable museum. The library staffs at Gallaudet, Yale, Harvard, the University of Virginia, and the University of Chicago provided much assistance in locating archival materials. Stephen Railton, Eric Lott, Lisa J. Berke, Ellen Contini-Morava, Douglas Baynton, Lakshmi Fjord, and Margaret Croskery, among many others, challenged my ideas and offered helpful suggestions. Finally, I wish to thank my parents and siblings for all of their encouragement, love, and support.

Christopher Krentz

Charlottesville, Virginia

January 12, 2000

1. Reprinted in The Deaf and Dumb, or, a Collection of Articles Relating to the Condition of Deaf Mutes, ed. Edwin Mann (Boston: D. K. Hitchcock, 1836): 15.

2. Stella, “An Appeal to the Ladies,” The Deaf-Mutes’ Friend 1 (Sept. 1869): 30.

3. Adele M. Jewel, A Brief Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Adele M. Jewel (Being Deaf and Dumb) (Jackson, Mich.: Daily Citizen Steam Printing House, circa 1860), 17.

4. “Empire State Association of Deaf-Mutes: Proceedings of the Third Biennial Convention,” The Deaf-Mutes’ Friend 1 (Sept. 1869): 269.