In January 2005, I had the pleasure of serving on Carolyn McCaskill’s doctoral dissertation committee at Gallaudet University. At the conclusion of what had been a successful dissertation defense and amid much cheering and hugging, by happenstance I observed a brief conversation between Carolyn and Ceil Lucas (now professor emerita of linguistics at Gallaudet University). In essence, Ceil said, “Let’s do research and write a book together.” For those who know Ceil, she means what she says. Ceil had a vision and Carolyn had passion. The outcome was the formation of a marvelous partnership that has evolved into the publication of a book and DVD (now online: https://tinyurl.com/rev29ay) titled The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: Its History and Structure.
The book, now in its paperback edition, and accompanying online video are organized around four guiding questions: (1) what was the sociohistorical reality that would make a separate variety of ASL possible? (2) what are the features of the variety of ASL that people call Black ASL? (3) can the same kinds of features that have been identified for African American English be identified for Black ASL to show that it is a distinct variety of ASL? and (4) if unique features exist, what are they, and what are the linguistic and social factors that condition their use? The answers to these questions should, at least in part, shed light on an observation made by Hairston and Smith (1983) that “there is . . . a Black way of signing used by Black deaf people in their own cultural milieu—among families and friends, in social gatherings, and in deaf clubs” (55).
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL is the first and most comprehensive study of Black ASL undertaken since Bill Stokoe’s colleague Carl Croneberg stated nearly fifty years ago that “a study of ASL dialects of the Negro deaf will constitute an important part of the full-scale sign language dialect study” (1965, 315). I enthusiastically welcome The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL because it paves the way for a deeper understanding and appreciation of what many in both the Black and White Deaf communities have talked about anecdotally as “a Black way of signing used by Black deaf people in their own cultural milieu.” The book and companion video also offer a conceptual framework and road map to help inspire and foster further research and scholarship on Black ASL.
This book also includes a rich collection of stories about life in segregated schools for Black deaf students and about initial encounters with White teachers and students when the Black and White schools integrated. Readers will especially enjoy the variety of interviews interspersed throughout the video, including that with Mary Herring Wright, author of the book Sounds Like Home: Growing up Black and Deaf in the South and an alumna of the North Carolina State School for the Blind and Deaf in Raleigh. Mrs. Wright attended school during the Great Depression and the WWII era.
The chapter on the history of Black deaf schools and the sociohistorical reality that contributed to the transmission of Black ASL from one generation to another, particularly in the South, is one of the most fully developed and well-documented reports published to date. The authors provide valuable insight into how it was possible for a Black variety of ASL—separate from that used in the White Deaf community—to evolve and be passed on from one community of Black deaf users to another over multiple generations. Furthermore, I was especially heartened to learn about the linguistic differences between Black and White ASL. The authors did not find evidence that the ASL used by White signers was better or more advanced than Black ASL. What they did note was, at least in part perhaps as a result of the maintenance of segregated schools throughout much of the twentieth century, that Black ASL had not undergone processes of change such as those that occurred with the variety of ASL used in the White Deaf community. Perhaps Black ASL could be considered akin to a more orthodox or traditional variety of ASL. I also suspect that their findings have the potential to help dispel a common misperception of Black ASL. Their findings challenge members of both Black and White Deaf communities to reassess and reconsider how they perceive and talk about Black ASL. Moreover, how one perceives and talks about Black ASL also has potentially significant implications for the teaching of sociolinguistic variation in ASL courses and for the training of professional personnel such as interpreters and teachers of deaf students.
The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL is a product of an outstanding, as well as unique, collaborative effort among a diverse group of people. It involved a partnership between two departments at Gallaudet University—the Department of ASL and Deaf Studies and the Department of Linguistics—and the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis. The research team, which comprised Drs. Carolyn McCaskill, Ceil Lucas, and Robert Bayley, along with Dr. Joseph Hill (a doctoral student in the Gallaudet University Department of Linguistics during the project and now Associate Professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf), and Roxanne Dummett (2008 graduate of the MA degree program in ASL and Deaf Studies), Dr. Randall Hogue (2011 PhD graduate from the Gallaudet University Department of Linguistics and now Associate Professor and ASL program coordinator at Kent State University), and community representative Pamela Baldwin, brought a powerful synergy of scholarly expertise, as well as diverse multicultural and multilingual perspectives, to the project. Additionally, both Carolyn McCaskill and Pamela Baldwin brought firsthand personal experiences to the project as alumnae of segregated schools for the deaf in the South and later as members of the first group of Black students to attend integrated classes on White deaf campuses (Alabama and Arkansas, respectively).
The success of this collaborative effort also involved reaching out to and developing partnerships with target groups of deaf people who, for the most part, have been historically underrepresented in research involving the American Deaf community. The large and diverse number of Black deaf individuals who participated in the research project through interviews and free conversation was remarkable. They reflected a microcosm of the Black Deaf community on the basis of educational attainment, socioeconomic status, type of school attended (segregated, integrated, or a combination of both), use of Black ASL, and a host of other factors. Not only did the team members reach out to the Black Deaf community to develop partnerships for the purposes of collecting data for the project, but they also devoted significant time sharing their results with numerous audiences. These included informal social gatherings such as cookouts and alumni reunions as well as formal gatherings such as national and regional conferences of the Black Deaf Advocates and the national conferences of Deaf People of Color.
It has now been nearly a decade since the book and companion DVD were published (with the DVD now available on YouTube as part of this updated version). In that time, public awareness, understanding, and appreciation of the history and structure of Black ASL has become a more prominent topic of conversation and discussion among scholars of languages and cultures as well as among Black Deaf Americans and the American Deaf community at large. I am also delighted to note the emergence of a new partnership between the Black ASL Project and the Language & Life Project (LLP). The LLP was established at North Carolina State University to document and celebrate dialects, language, and cultures in the United States. The project aims to promote awareness and appreciation of linguistic diversity by creating educational resources, television programming, and documentaries. This partnership has resulted in the production of the first-ever documentary about the Black Deaf community and its culture and language titled Signing Black in America. The production of the documentary is a remarkable achievement in the annals of Black Deaf history and a source of pride.
Though Carl Croneberg made his observations more than fifty years ago about the need for research on “a Black way of signing used by Black deaf people in their own cultural milieu,” I believe if he has an opportunity to take stock of the success and accomplishments of The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL, he will be pleased. In fact, I think he would more likely be grinning from ear to ear and signing, “Job well done!” I, too, heartily applaud the tireless efforts of the research team that authored The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL.
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Former Chair, Gallaudet University Board of Trustees (1994-2005)
February 2020
REFERENCES
Croneberg, Carl G. 1965. “Sign Language Dialects.” In A Dictionary of American Sign Language on Linguistic Principles, ed. William C. Stokoe Jr., Dorothy C. Casterline, and Carl G. Croneberg, 313–19. Washington, DC: Gallaudet College Press.
Hairston, Ernest, and Linwood Smith. 1983. Black and Deaf in America: Are We That Different? Silver Spring, MD: TJ Publishers.
Wright, Mary Herring. 1999. Sounds Like Home: Growing up Black and Deaf in the South. Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press.