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Welcome everyone.
I would like to introduce myself.
My name is Brandon Williams.
I'm the Vice President of the Student Body Government.
I'm majoring in Social Work and minoring in English.
We know it's very wet outside with the rain,
so we're happy that all of you could attend.
We know this is part of our celebration
of the 25th anniversary of the Deaf President Now movement.
We are doing a comparative civil rights panel
with several panelists.
We will start with our guest speaker,
who I have the honor of introducing.
Ella Barkley Brown is a professor of history
from the University Of Maryland-College Park.
She has a joint appointment with History
and Women's Studies.
She's published in many journals
and has received a number of awards, as well.
She received an award regarding the best article
in African-American women's history
and the best article in southern women's history.
She is also Past President
of the Southern Association for Women Historians.
Currently, she's on the editorial board for Women
and U.S. Social Movements.
Her main interests are
African-American political culture with a focus on gender.
So please give a warm Gallaudet welcome
to Dr. Ella Barkley Brown.
[Applause]
Good afternoon!
I'm very pleased to be here today and to participate
in your celebration of the Deaf President movement.
I lived at that time in D.C.,
just a few blocks from Gallaudet.
So I have memories of passing by and standing out
and watching and hoping for the success of the movement
and so it's especially exciting then to be here today.
I've been asked to talk from my own research
on the civil rights movement to think about
how we've seen more diverse kinds of people in a movement.
Often when we think about social movements,
who we see as the spokespeople,
and those get defined as the leadership.
And we sort of see a social movement
through what they do and really give a lot of
and maybe too much importance
to just the spokespeople of the movement.
And so the research that I do looks at women
in the civil rights movement and by looking at women
in the civil rights movement,
you actually see a lot of other people.
You see children.
And young people.
And working class people.
And all other kinds of people.
So I want to talk about some of what I've learned
from that research on the civil rights movement
about thinking about the wide range of people
that make a social movement possible.
And the wide range of kinds of leadership
that are necessary in a social movement.
And hopefully that will be of interest and sort of inform
how you can think about the Deaf President Now movement
and the diverse experiences of people within that.
So the main point I want to make is
that I think the main way that we see the whole range of people
in a social movement is to think about
political organizing as work.
Really as work.
As labor.
As all kinds of work that has to be done
in order for a movement to happen.
And to then think about what all those pieces of work are.
And that most often we are kind of focused on the big events.
Rallies, demonstrations, presentations of statements
of grievances, et cetera.
But those are the big events that often come after
a lot of the work has been done.
And we most often, or in terms of leadership,
focus on the people that we can see standing up in front
and speaking at a big event.
And that's a particular kind of leadership.
But it's not the only kind of leadership.
For a long time, people who studied social movements
thought that the charismatic leader
was responsible for a social movement.
Because that person was charismatic,
they got out and spoke, and people showed up
wherever they were and their speaking and talking
made a movement possible.
So the point I'm making, and that a lot of scholars make,
is actually what makes a movement possible
is the work of a lot of people,
a lot of different kinds of work, and that work takes
a lot of different kinds of leadership.
So I'm going to talk about that
and give you some examples of that.
Most of my examples are from the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
from a movement which I think is familiar to all of us.
But that even if its familiarity,
there might be things that surprise us
about how it operated and who the leadership was
when we think about the work within the movement.
I want us to sort of separate the focus
on the big events.
The demonstrations, the public speakers, the rallies,
from the organizing that went onto make that happen.
And I want us to think about the Montgomery Bus Boycott
as both those big events but also having to get
thousands of people day after day to stay off
of a bus and walk.
So obviously if we think about that,
maybe the most important people in the bus boycott
were the people walking.
But walking required a lot of things.
It required organizing people to do that,
it required people knowing about that.
It required keeping people's morale
so they could do that.
It required raising money to buy cars to transport people
who couldn't walk.
It required raising money to keep people out of jail.
It required raising money if you got fired
by your employee for walking.
It required a lot of things that without those happening,
the big rallies and the public speakers
would not have made a movement.
So one of the groups that I think is really central
to understanding both the Montgomery Bus boycott,
but the entire civil rights movement,
might be a group of people that is surprising to people.
Yes, beauticians.
The women who do our hair.
Really, one of the absolutely most central groups
of people in the entire civil rights movement.
So in the 1950s and '60s, as the Civil Rights Movement
was being organized and people thought about,
"Hmm, who are going to be the leaders of this movement?"
Maybe you would be surprised that people chose
two occupations as the people
who would be the most important as leaders.
One of them wouldn't surprise you.
Ministers.
We often think of ministers as the leaders
of the Civil Rights Movement.
But the other one was beauticians.
Beauticians have many things in common with ministers.
It might not seem like it, but they do.
One of the things they have in common is their access
to large numbers of people, and their ability
to get information and news out about that.
And they also have in common a physical space.
You need to meet.
You have a church and you have beauty shops.
They also have in common that they are paid.
They make their living, they are paid by black people.
They are not likely to get fired from their job
for participating in and leading the Civil Rights Movement.
So in Montgomery, beauticians become central
to almost every aspect
of how the Montgomery Bus Boycott works.
Central to even people knowing about it.
Getting the information out, or knowing
when different kinds of changes were being made,
or when there were important meetings to go to.
But one of the things in any social movement,
you have to make it possible for people to participate
and keep participating.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted for 381 days.
People had to stay off the buses for 381 days.
Many people walked for 381 days.
We can all get sick, and we can all get tired.
Some people could be incapable of walking.
So the Montgomery Bus Boycott also required
that there be alternative forms of transportation
that people could take in order to stay off the bus
and keep their job so they could get to work
even if they couldn't walk.
So car pools were developed.
And those car pools were run out of beauty shops.
All over Montgomery.
The beauticians were the dispatchers for the car pool.
If you needed a ride, you knew where to go
and that was to a beauty shop.
And the beauticians themselves then served
as the dispatchers for that.
Getting information out about that.
So in Montgomery, in that particular way
in getting news out and in serving
in a lot of leadership capacities,
beauticians are maybe invisible to us
in the Montgomery Bus Boycott
and it absolutely would not have operated in the way
that it did without them.
Beauticians were important
not just for what they did in Montgomery.
Beauticians were important because they were connected
in a national organization around the country.
So you know one thing people needed
if they were walking were shoes.
You can't imagine how many shoes you would wear out
in 381 days you had to walk all the way
across the city and back several times.
So all across the country, beauty shops were the places
people went in and took their shoes off
or donated their shoes.
Or people who got fired from their jobs
because they were participating
and needed money, clothes, resources,
beauty shops all across the country
were the place where you went to donate that.
I'm using the Montgomery Bus Boycott as an example,
but what I'm saying about beauticians
in the Montgomery Bus Boycott would be true
about beauticians anywhere in the 1950s and '60s.
Beauticians are central to that and central leadership.
That means in Montgomery when the leadership
of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
was leading and making decisions,
that leadership wasn't just Martin Luther King,
ministers or other people we're familiar with,
the people central in those meetings were beauticians.
They could talk about what it is people are saying,
what are the difficulties people are having
with their employers or participating in the movement.
And those beauticians were central to that.
We see beauticians only if we start to ask
about what are all the layers of work that are involved
in a civil rights movement.
Work is organized differently
in different kinds of movement structure.
So a bureaucratic structure organizes work differently
where you have a leader who started making decisions
and everybody is going to follow those.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was organized
in what's called an umbrella organization.
A shelter over all of us.
An umbrella organization.
That meant that the organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,
it was an organization of organizations.
People didn't join
the Montgomery Improvement Organization,
organizations joined it.
That meant when the leadership got together,
it wasn't individual people,
it was the heads of all those organizations.
Many of those organizations were organizations of women,
organizations of labor activists.
And that meant that the council of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
was a wide range of people.
When I was young, quite some time ago,
we learned in school that Rosa Parks was tired one day
and she sat down
and spontaneously there was a bus boycott.
I hope that's not what you still learn in school,
but it could be.
But the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for it to happen,
for Rosa Parks to get arrested
and the next day there be a boycott
required that somebody had been doing years and years
of organizing people to be ready for this moment.
And the main organization that had been doing those years
of organizing was an organization called
The Women's Political Council.
They had organized the entire city of Montgomery,
so within a matter of hours, if there was information
that needed to get out to the black community,
they had organized the city in neighborhoods and zones
and contacts, those contacts being in beauty shops.
That was in a matter of hours
that they could get information out about the boycott.
That was important in the very beginning of the boycott,
and it became important later when white city officials
come up with a pretty smart plan
that they simply announce in the newspaper
that the boycott is over,
that black people have won and the buses will be desegregated,
though it's not true,
that people will see that in the newspaper,
and get back on the buses, and by the time
they find out it's not true, be too disappointed to continue.
The Women's Political Council finds this out
at 2 o'clock in the morning, and by the time people
get out of bed four hours later,
all across Montgomery, houses occupied by African-Americans,
they all have notes from the Women's Political Council
saying don't believe what you read in the newspaper.
That's a tremendous amount of organizing being done.
It's not something that happens spontaneously.
So one of the important kinds of leadership.
We think about leadership, we think about public leadership,
we think about charismatic leadership,
but one of the most important forms of leadership
in any social movement is the leadership
that creates networks among people.
Networks that can be mobilized, that get out information,
networks that build morale.
Women are often, although not solely,
the people who are operating those kinds of networks.
So one of the important things
about studying a social movement.
When you see a public event, you need to ask what is behind it,
and what organizations have already been in existence
that made that possible.
So then we see a wide range of other kinds of leadership
by looking at those organizations behind it.
What made that possible, and what made it possible
for different groups of people to feel
that they were a part of this movement.
Social movement theorists have often thought
that it took a particular kind of person to be a leader
in a social movement.
It took the more educated, it took the ministers,
it took the charismatic.
Increasingly when scholars look at social movements,
they recognize that what it actually takes is,
number one, a wide range of kind of leadership,
and we have come to actually understand things as leadership
that we might not have thought of before.
And one of those kinds of leadership is a leadership
that's called "bridge leadership."
Who creates connections among a wide, diverse range of people?
In a city, in a student body, there's a wide, diverse
range of people who have both a connection
to what the movement is about and a lot of differences.
Who is it that makes those kinds of connections
and creates those kinds of networks
is absolutely essential to what a movement is.
And looking for those connections,
looking for the pre-existing organizations
and how those pre-existing organizations
get connected to the movement.
Looking for the people who are out there
creating the networks among people, telling each other.
Sometimes we think of that
as just not all that important work.
But that's actually central work.
Getting people there is not really that
that's a great speaker.
Yeah, I might come hear that great speaker.
Whether I'm going to show up and commit myself
to something isn't really about whether I heard a great speech.
It really is about the kind of networks
that made it possible.
It really is about the kind of work that has gone on
prior to that and how that work is brought
into the existing movement.
And so, more recently, scholars have tried to parse out
different kinds of leadership.
Some people try to say that there's a difference
between the kind of leadership of men
and the leadership of women.
I'm less likely to believe that.
But a lot of scholars would tell you that.
I generally think if there's differences
between men and women,
it's because we haven't actually looked for the same thing
when we were looking at men
and when we were looking at women.
One of the things I think is exciting about studying women
in the civil rights movement,
I get to see a lot of different kinds of men, too.
Once I ask questions about who is creating networks,
who's doing that work, who's making that possible,
and when we see social movements as 24 hours a day work
and think about who's doing that 24 hours a day work,
and then who's building people's morale.
So one of the other really important things
beauticians did was clean people up after demonstrations.
People who had stuff thrown at them.
People who had cigarettes burned in their hair.
One of the really important things
that they did was clean people up.
Provide morale and support.
So central to any social movement is
how people feel supported.
And that support doesn't come mainly
from charismatic speakers.
That support comes mainly from the organizations
and the institutions, and the networks
and the 24 hours a day work.
So if we take any social movement,
and actually put on a piece of paper and say,
"What would somebody have to be doing
24 hours a day every day for this to happen?"
I think of social movements principally as work.
As actual work.
As labor.
And who is it that's doing the labor?
How do we think about the important pieces of that labor
and how do we come to recognize that labor
also requires kinds of leadership
that is most often invisible to us.
And when we focus on work, then the wide range of people
who are involved in any social movement
become extremely visible to us and then we can have arguments
and debates about well, is that really leadership or not.
That's what scholars argue about.
Which things will we define as leadership or not.
But we will certainly see a wide range of people
within a movement.
So tracing the work, thinking about how people are mobilized
and then also organized.
Thinking about what institutional structures,
what kind of organizational structures
make possible different kinds of people participating.
Thinking about the work that went on
before the big event, and the work that went on for weeks
or months or years before the actual movement itself.
And thinking about who and how collectivities are built
and understanding that collectivities are seldom built
in the public big events, but rather in day-to-day,
night by night, 24-hour day, 365 days a year,
10 years a decade kinds of movements and work
and then we will have a good idea of how social movements
actually work and a wide, wide range of people
that we'd want to know about in order to understand
social movements.
Thank you.
[Applause]
A round of applause again for Dr. Brown.
[Applause]
Thank you so much.
Before we proceed with our panel, we would like to have
our honored guest and panelists as well
come to the stage please.
We will introduce our panelists,
but we also have a moderator
who will be facilitating the discussion.
He is the executive director for diversity for students.
That is Edgar Palmer.
Hello everyone and welcome.
Today we will have
the Civil Rights Comparative Panel Discussion.
We have several outstanding, well known members
of our community who are with us today.
And I have the honor of introducing them to you.
We have the current superintendent
of the Marie Katzenbach New Jersey School for the Deaf.
He is a Fulbright Scholar.
He is the only Deaf Latino to receive his Ph.D.
from Gallaudet university.
He's an international presenter on education
for deaf students for many years.
He has written many articles and papers.
During the Deaf President Now movement,
he was a chairperson of the Deaf President Now fund.
He's also a well-known, distinguished author.
He's the author
of Deaf President Now Triumph of the Spirit.
And welcome Dr. Angel Ramos.
Also with us today we have Dr. Isaac Agboola.
He is the current dean
of the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Technology.
Dr. Agboola has held this position since 2007.
He holds a Ph.D. in Information Systems
from the University Of Maryland-College Park.
He has spent 28 years teaching, researching,
grant writing, and also in service in higher education.
He has served ten years here at Gallaudet University
as coordinator of Computer Information Systems.
As coordinator of their program.
And for four years
he also chaired the Department of Business
here at the university.
Dr. Agboola has a great interest in the trends
in higher education.
These trends include accountability, assessment,
and continuous improvement
utilizing data-driven methodology.
Welcome Dr. Agboola.
We also have our very own Ruth Reed joining us today.
Ruth is originally from Chicago.
She graduated from the Illinois School for the Deaf.
She graduated from Gallaudet University in 1980
with a bachelors in Sociology.
She has held a multitude of positions
at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf
over her past 33 years here at MSSD.
She has had a number of positions,
multi-cultural specialist, ASL specialist,
performing arts specialist.
And also as an instructor of ASL classes
to hearing families of deaf children.
Ruth Reed is also a long time member
of the D.C. area Black Deaf Advocates.
We would like to welcome her
along with our other panelists today.
Wow, we can definitely say it's been a surprising 25 years
since the Deaf President Now movement.
It occurred in the blink of an eye and time has passed quickly
and many events have occurred since then.
We would like to talk about those events
and that week in Gallaudet history.
I have some questions for you.
But if you would like to also ask questions
of each other, that is also fine.
And it's definitely going to be a challenge,
but that's the whole point of this panel discussion
that we're going to have today.
And you can challenge one another in that way.
We will also leave about ten minutes for audience members
to pose questions to you.
So we'll start with Dr. Ramos.
Can you briefly explain what you've been doing
since D.P.N. occurred over 25 years ago?
Well I think you've said everything already.
At that time in 1988, I was a fourth-year Ph.D. student
here at Gallaudet University.
And after the protest had taken its course,
I left the Ph.D. program for one year.
I just needed to kind of take a break.
I was very involved with D.P.N.
And then I eventually did return to complete my studies.
I am a college professor, I traveled the world,
wrote some books,
and now I'm with the New Jersey School for the Deaf.
It's been a great journey.
I want to thank everybody in that movement
because I think a lot of jobs have opened up since then.
Jobs that historically were occupied by hearing people
now are open to deaf people.
And I want to thank everybody for making that possible.
I've been here for almost 33 years.
I worked as a dorm supervisor for five years
and it was an excellent program.
And I worked also as an I.E.P. coordinator
and doing some volunteer work
as a multicultural specialist as well.
And I was encouraged to do more.
That's actually where I started.
You know, on the boots, ground work.
At the same time I wanted to return to school
to be able to take some graduate courses as well.
I was working as a multicultural specialist.
And at that time I became fascinated
and immersed with different diversity issues.
People of different ethnic groups
including Latinos, Jews and so on.
When the D.P.N. movement started in the year 1988,
it really had a huge impact
and opened doors for progress and development
and helped me to increase my own experience
in those six different jobs that I was able to have.
I don't know if the movement had not occurred,
maybe I would have stayed in that position.
I may have not have been able to be promoted.
D.P.N. allowed me to be assertive
and open the possibility of different positions
and building my skills and experience.
So I could really say that I was definitely here and present.
I was working at the demonstration school.
I could say more, but I'll allow you to question the others.
I was in my fourth year teaching here at Gallaudet
when D.P.N. took place.
I was teaching in the Department of Business.
And the way I see D.P.N. is it was a point
on this campus where deaf people had really felt
like they were not able to succeed
to higher degrees anymore.
And here we were essentially being told
that was the case.
And D.P.N. was the event that let us all know that
that was no longer the case and that was no longer true.
D.P.N. was very inspiring in multiple ways.
And D.P.N. influenced my decision
to stay on the campus and continue teaching.
I thought perhaps I would go elsewhere.
But after the movement,
I realized how important Gallaudet was.
And how important Gallaudet is
to deaf people here and across the world.
And in these 25 years,
I have had a lot of different positions.
And I truly value Gallaudet and the growth that I have had.
This is a special place in the American education system.
It is the only place that exists like this.
You know, it's almost like we're a city on a hill.
There are Deaf people all over the world
that look to Gallaudet.
In those early years, when I was able to move up in my career,
I saw Gallaudet as central in helping me move up.
And I'll expand a little more on that
on some other questions.
So all three of you were on campus here
when this happened.
I was actually working
as a vocational rehabilitation counselor in Baltimore.
I wasn't able to experience it firsthand.
But I got information through news contact.
And my employer told me I needed to be at Gallaudet.
And he immediately gave me his blessing to be here
and be here the entire week.
At that time I was able
to gain that first-hand experience.
Can you talk about what specifically inspired you
and impacted you about this movement?
When D.P.N. started,
obviously there was much involvement before that,
and I was unaware of all the behind the scenes
planning that was happening.
Looking back on the event,
it seemed that the university had accepted the status quo.
I really don't think that the majority of the community
felt that it was time for a deaf president.
There was a core group who did feel it was time for a change.
However, the majority of campus did not reflect that.
So as the movement continued to grow,
and continued to increase and expand, you see more
and more members of the community starting to join in
and participate fully in the movement.
It was as if they had been sleeping and were now awake.
A person at that time was just accepting the status quo.
And they were complacent.
It's just like in the civil rights movement
there was a time when people were complacent
and they had got to a point when they had enough.
It was a very inspiring time.
And things have never been the same again since then.
As I mentioned before, there was a glass ceiling
that we could not get through.
But the D.P.N. movement allowed us to break through
that glass ceiling.
I was a teacher's aide at Kendall.
And I remember Sunday, March 9, when they announced
who they selected as president,
and they selected another hearing person.
And do you know there was no captioning?
There was no captioning, no text back in the day.
And I also at the time had no car.
And I was a bus rider.
I lived in D.C. Northwest.
So I came to work the next day.
And lo and behold, the gates were locked and chained.
I asked myself how am I going to get to work,
and what are we going to do with the kids.
I had to explain to the people at the gate
that I worked at Kendall, and they allowed me on the campus.
So I walked up the hill from the 8th street gate.
You know.
I had to walk all the way up into the back of the campus.
But there weren't any students there.
There were no buses coming on the campus to Kendall school.
And again, I was prepared for work.
And it made me realize how much power
the students at Gallaudet had.
But as was mentioned earlier,
obviously people had information and were coordinating things.
The older deaf people influenced them.
On the second day I wondered if I would get penalized.
And I found out that wasn't the case.
When I found that out, I was ready.
I was ready to involve the parents and the students
and anybody else who would listen.
Kendall school is my family.
I was very grateful to get people involved.
At the time I was telling my mom how excited I was!
I said we're going to march and protest.
She grew up in the '60s when it was violent.
She told me to be careful.
I didn't think about that.
I just said Deaf Power!
Let's go.
I insisted that I would be fine.
She insisted that I be careful.
I was focused on fighting the fight.
There was that full week at the school of involving people
in the process, and sharing information with them,
working it out, being prepared.
And I was with everybody here at Gallaudet every day.
And every single day was a new reason to be inspired.
I'm going to give you three brief examples that inspired me.
The first person was Jerry Covell.
You had Tim Rarus who was a deaf student leader.
We had student apathy at the time.
Jerry was asked to volunteer, and he put true effort in that.
So before the protest had even started, that work had began.
So we had Greg Hlibock who was a student leader,
and Jerry Covell in the fight as well.
We were focused on the Deaf President Now movement.
I commend his leadership.
Looking to the community first
and thinking about himself second.
Before the D.P.N. movement,
as a Latino student, I felt much pressure.
And as an African-American student,
I'm sure you felt oppression and pressure as well.
And in the LGBT community as well.
You had all these intersections.
You had gay persons, lesbian persons,
African Americans, Latinos who were all in solidarity.
Third were the hearing people who were also involved.
You have the leaders in the forefront,
but you also have to think of those persons
who were behind the scene.
There were a multitude of hearing people who supported us.
Jesse Jackson was one of those.
He was the one who mentioned that famous quote
that deaf people can do anything but hear.
He was an inspiration to us.
We also had the museum that actually loaned us
the banner from the Martin Luther King march.
And they weren't even scared
of us students damaging the banner.
They had complete trust in us if you can imagine that.
So we marched that Friday.
We actually went to get permission because the police
said if we went ahead to march without permission,
we would be arrested.
So we had to go to the Capitol and get a permit for that.
And I believe it was Tuesday or Wednesday
that we went to obtain a permit for a march
that was happening in the next two days.
Usually these permits need to be obtained
three weeks in advance.
We were praying and hoping that we would receive that.
And the D.C. government and all the officials
were so supportive of making it happen.
So those three moments were very inspiring for me.
Thank you.
I remember that comment about Jesse Jackson.
That was a truly inspiring comment and time.
I have a follow-up question for you.
I know all of you were very involved with the students,
and I'm sure it disrupted classes.
I'm also sure that you had a lot of engagement
with the students while it was happening.
How did you respond to their questions
or concerns or whatnot?
Isaac?
As a faculty member at that time,
we had the understanding that students would have to be
absent from class in order to participate
and there would be no issues with that.
Most of the students who approached me
were international students.
This concept was inconceivable to think
that a deaf person could have this place of authority.
That was a great discussion.
Comparing their own country's treatment of people
and what was happening here in the D.P.N. movement
and letting them see they could also fight that fight
where they were.
It helped them to be introspective.
There were no reprisals for the students missing class.
We understood that it was a very important event.
It was life changing.
And it was also an opportunity for students to participate.
So for instance, in this building itself,
most of the get-togethers and meetings took place
in this meeting.
It was fantastic.
At the same time the movement was happening,
there were lots of festivities.
And it was also a festival atmosphere.
So you had a positive atmosphere of everyone banding together
with the fight that they were having as well.
Again, I was at Kendall School.
Parents were really key for us.
We needed to get them involved.
It was parents and their children.
And it was about their children's lives.
It was about parents and teachers and the staff
all coming together.
It was about giving the children an opportunity to learn.
So much was going on and so much needed to be explained
and taught and contextualized.
We took that on.
We did all kinds of lessons that resolved around the protest.
We also talked about the history of the deaf president.
And we took that as an opportunity again
to educate them and give them this type of experience.
Yes, you were talking about involving the students
and the parents as well in what was happening.
Right.
Exactly.
And I came every day.
We all went to the field house or the gym
so that we would talk about what to expect for the day.
And I was here every day to show support.
And then I would go back to Kendall and prepare all
of them for the Friday march.
It was truly, truly heartening.
And then the day of the march on 8th street.
The spirit, the visual of everybody marching in masses.
Bystanders were cheering us on.
It was amazing.
The "I have a dream" banner
that you were carrying in the march.
And the NAACP said, "They let you borrow that?"
And they did.
We had to be very careful with it.
It was an honor to carry it.
It was amazing.
It's very important that you understand
that we didn't call and ask for this.
Somebody reached out to us and offered it to us.
Even more poignant.
At that time I was a Ph.D. student.
I wasn't married.
I didn't have a family.
I was very involved with the protest,
and I didn't really care if I got fired.
There were a lot of people here on the campus at the time.
Who had families and financial responsibilities
and mortgages to pay.
But they were a little more hesitant to be involved
with the protest and to say that they were in support of it.
They were intimidated.
And then later, when the board supported it,
other people were more willing to get on the band wagon.
But I really have to commend people
like Dr. Ros Rosen who is a great example of that.
She was willing to take on the risks regardless
because she felt like it was an important movement.
And I thought about all those people
who had those responsibilities, financial and family
and how difficult it would be for them to show up,
which is why you need students in these movements
because they have less to lose.
We have a lot to lose.
Right.
It's more about where you stand individually
in specific situations.
And with issues.
So for yourself as a person, you have to think
about your own personal safety and concern
in addition to the principle of what's happening.
You mentioned as well during that period of time,
it didn't matter what ethnic group
or what race you identified yourself as.
Whether you were a student
or what your *** orientation was.
Everyone came together in solidarity
for that deaf president.
And they had that commonality.
I was wondering how each of you personally identify yourselves?
I'm a Latino deaf person.
At the time I identified just as a Deaf person.
I grew up at the Illinois School for the Deaf.
I was deaf.
I lived at the school, even though the majority
of my classmates were white.
A lot of the black students were in the vocational school.
I was not there.
I was in the academic program.
It wasn't until I came to Gallaudet
and got to know other black-deaf people
that I started to look at myself and my own identity.
And it was one of the first times
that I started to understand that I was a black person.
I was deaf, I was black, and of course I am a woman.
That is how I identify myself.
And I do so in that order.
When people ask me how I identify myself.
I usually say I see myself as a human being.
I try to resist being put into a stereotype or into a box.
My identity doesn't have borders or it doesn't have limits.
Usually in the country where I come from
you identify yourself by your language
and the tribe where you come from.
Many people ask me how was it I became deaf
or was I born deaf.
In Nigeria, where I'm from, it's much different than America.
Here in America, you're required to have a specific identity
and be able to explain yourself as such.
So before and now, I say as I have said before,
that I prefer to identify and see myself as a human being.
And that way I have the freedom to be able to research
and learn and experience as I wish.
I feel that is the best way.
I do understand that identity does shape who we are.
Whether we are a deaf person or a person of color,
that is undeniable.
But again, as I mentioned, I want to be able to explore
who I might identify myself as.
I don't want to limit myself to those boxes
that are checked for what my identity should be.
I prefer to view myself as a human being with the freedom
to have an open mind and an open heart
and be able to learn from the world around me.
You mentioned some of who you are.
And I'm every bit as black as I am deaf.
There is no separation for me.
I am black and deaf.
That is the whole point of it.
And even to be more clear.
When people ask me who I am,
I don't respond by saying I'm Latino.
I always say I'm Puerto Rican.
Latino is a different type of term.
It's an umbrella term that includes Cubans
and other Latino members.
I wanted to be clear about that.
Moving onto another question.
I would like to know your perspective
on the impact of D.P.N. on American Sign Language.
We now know that ASL is
the third most commonly used language in the United States.
And there are hearing students all over the nation
who are fascinated by the language and taking courses.
Can you answer that question?
That week when the movement was on national television,
many people recognized that deaf people
were an essential part of society.
Great applause.
Hallelujah!
We don't really need to move.
Let's just stay here.
I think before the movement occurred,
people saw us as one dimensional.
And I think that was a great opportunity for persons
to see us beyond again those boxes that we check
as far as who we are.
We were able to break through
that one-dimensional viewpoint and how people see us
and we were able to blossom into these different dimensions.
And that had a ripple effect throughout the entire nation
that continues to this day.
It has not stopped yet.
That ripple effect continues to influence
and continues to grow.
I would agree with what he said.
I remember I have taught ASL for many years
and I love doing so.
And then after D.P.N.
I saw other classes, other people teaching.
I saw hearing people teaching.
I was also curious about who was teaching,
and who was being taught.
Whether they were deaf or hearing
and who the audience was.
But I saw real growth with ASL classes.
When I went back to Illinois my family would tell me
hey, guess what I'm taking sign language.
It was being offered in public school.
Over the years I saw a huge boon of classes in ASL
and awareness about it.
A huge growth and awareness to the language.
I believe that D.P.N.
really opened those doors and as a result,
opportunities for Deaf people have become
more available, too.
Interpreting is another area.
Before we used to have the little box on the TV
which wasn't really access.
And now we have captioning.
I know some of you who are really young in this auditorium
probably don't even know what we're talking about here.
But we have to help.
And I do believe D.P.N. helped make all of those changes.
It is a little ironic that we have a lot of hearing parents
teaching sign language to their hearing babies.
Even that is happening.
The language is really out there.
It's everywhere you go.
And that's what happened to ASL.
I would agree with everything that Ruth and Isaac said.
In the interest of time,
we're going to ask one last question.
What are some of the lessons
that you have learned from D.P.N.?
Dr. Ramos you mentioned several that have inspired you.
I really want to talk about these concrete lessons
that have stayed with you throughout the years.
D.P.N. emphasized one critical lesson for me
regarding human rights.
Regarding civil rights.
Civil rights are not given.
They're inherent.
And you need to grab it and take the opportunity.
Because it's not going to be given to you.
You have to work hard for it.
I think that's one of the first lessons that we learned.
You mentioned that at first I. King Jordan
was in support of the board.
And many people thought that he was in support
of that whole mentality that deaf people weren't ready
to take the reigns of authority.
So you had that challenge
where people were saying that you could not do it.
That we as a people can't.
And we accepted that passively.
And we were waiting until the time was ready
because we were told that we were not ready.
Some people mentioned that we probably could have had
a deaf president back in 1901.
Why couldn't that have been the case?
It was because the world at large
was not ready for a deaf president.
It wasn't because we weren't ready.
We had the mental capacity and the education
and everything that was needed.
But it was actually society that wasn't ready for that.
And even in 1988 they continued with that same mentality.
We internalized that.
We internalized that feeling of being unprepared.
We collaborated in our own oppression.
So that was a very important lesson
and an honest lesson that we need to take from that.
Very similar to what Isaac is sharing,
after D.P.N. I felt like there were a lot more opportunities.
And I was inspired by knowing that Gallaudet University
had a deaf president.
And again, it was not only an opportunity for him.
It was an opportunity for Ramos as he says,
I'm sorry, and other people.
And now picking a deaf woman as the superintendent
for the Illinois school for the Deaf.
And that was just this year for the first time.
Up until this point, it had been hearing people.
We did have some women.
I don't have an objection to that.
And I think that's just fine.
But to have a Deaf woman now is the first time.
The other thing that's really taken place is technology.
That's really changed our world.
The way we communicate.
Videos, texting, everything.
And because of that, our opportunities
continue to grow and grow.
And not just here at Gallaudet,
but across the nation and in many other countries.
All, and if Deaf President Now movement didn't happen,
I don't know that these same opportunities
would be present.
And I don't know that any of us would be on this stage today.
A lot of people ask me
why did I choose to write this book?
And I chose to write it because it's very easy to forget
what we learned during D.P.N.
And the biggest lesson of that movement is
that we all need to work together as deaf people
regardless of what our other identities may be.
Whether it's hard of hearing or Latino or Black or Asian.
To understand that we are united in being deaf.
And the second lesson was
that we have to work with people outside our community.
In the Civil Rights Movement
who was there helping and pushing?
There were allies there to help.
Without those allies, they might not have succeeded.
And the same thing is true in the women's fight
for civil rights.
When women were interested in getting the vote,
the allies of men were significant
in pushing that movement forward.
The same thing is true with D.P.N.
It was the deaf community that was front and center.
But without the allies in the hearing community,
we may not have succeeded.
The lesson is to always reach outside of your community
for that kind of assistance and help
and also not see any of us
as better than the other, but all working together.
I agree.
You mentioned about the hearing allies that we have.
And that is so true.
I would also like to mention and emphasize the work
of the interpreters
in providing communication access at that time.
We would like to thank the interpreters back then
and those in the room as well.
In fact, there were interpreters
who flew in from California and Texas.
They paid their own way to be here and provide services
free of charge during that week.
I mean, imagine how it was that we would have been able
to communicate with media without their support.
So kudos to all the interpreters who took on that work.
You know, at Kendall, the teachers
are taking on educating the students about D.P.N.
so those lessons are not lost.
And that historical information is transferred
from generation to generation
and throughout their high school career.
We're going to make sure that they know about this movement
and that they don't forget about it
and continue to expose them to it.
We talk about it, we even do some role plays about it.
We feel that it's really important for them
to learn about this now.
That's what we're doing right now.
So it was all really, really special to me.
Thank you.
On that note, thank you so much panelists.
A round of applause.
We would like to open the floor now for questions
from audience members.
We have about ten minutes to do so.
Line up on the left side of the stage
to begin asking your questions.
Thank you for all of your comments.
My name is Elena Ruiz
I know that we have been celebrating
this movement of D.P.N.
I would like to have an opportunity to look at other aspects of D.P.N.
As a deaf woman of color, as a Latina.
And I'm a masters' student.
And I know that D.P.N. did succeed in many things,
but not in everything.
The way all of the leaders were white.
There was language privilege.
There was a lot of privilege.
Who the media chose to put in the spotlight
were not people of color.
Other people who were very involved were not seen.
There were people who were marginalized.
Deaf people of color were marginalized.
Some were included, some weren't.
Those are all things I think need to be looked at
a little bit more closely.
I did not feel rejected or excluded during D.P.N.
That occurred 25 years ago.
Myself and other international students
were invited to participate and we were invited
to do the March to Capitol Hill.
I personally was carrying a sign that said
Nigerian National Association for the Deaf
fully supports the four demands.
We were all part of it.
Obviously I'm not trying to paint a pretty picture
or try to minimize what you were saying.
There may be some issues regarding color and race.
But we were invited to participate.
I personally did not feel excluded.
Remember, we are talking about 1988
and at that time deaf Hispanic leaders
were pretty much nonexistent.
There may have been less than a handful of us.
And I also recall that the deaf community leaders
came to Gallaudet and they were all on stage.
I think there maybe 15 or 20 deaf leaders.
And they were all white.
And I told this person who was sitting next to me.
And I said listen, you've got to have diversity
in this group.
And at that point Al Couthin was invited up to the stage.
It doesn't mean that these people were racist.
It was a certain time.
There weren't many black people who were leaders at the time.
Al was invited in.
And also they added another black person
to that core group to represent diversity.
Again, it was 1988.
It's 2013 now.
And we have a panel here to talk specifically
about the issues of people of color during the protest.
But they were front and center.
Things have improved.
I don't know if they've improved a whole lot.
I don't work at Gallaudet anymore,
so I can't speak to that.
What about your role in running the Deaf President Now Fund?
Obviously you were taking a leadership role there.
I don't think I was ever really perceived as Latino really.
I think I was Angel Ramos, a human being.
It was the time.
There wasn't a lot of rhetoric around
who belonged to which ethnicity or race.
Before 1988, we had the Deaf Black Advocates
on the national level.
Okay, they had just started as an organization
just a few years before that.
They were in existence for only 8 years.
Now N.A.D. did recognize that all of the leadership was white
and they reached out to Deaf Black advocates
to get more representation.
And they reached out to the Latino community, too.
Before that they were closed to any gay representation.
When I came to Gallaudet, everything was very secretive.
When D.P.N. broke out, so did everybody else in terms
of identifying themselves and what they were about.
Even the Asian deaf community started at that point.
Or started to identify at that point.
So they did reach out.
They recognized that there was a responsibility
to have representation.
Even all those people who fought for closed captioning.
They were all white.
And I think over time things have shifted
and they've gotten a little bit better.
But we need even more.
We need to get beyond where we are now.
We can't be complacent.
It's our responsibility to educate people
and make sure everybody gets involved and does the work.
And if we have representation
from all different communities,
you just need to make sure they're there.
It's our responsibility for that.
I believe that at that time there was only one person
who was black or African-American
who had a Ph.D. at the time.
And that was Dr. Glenn Anderson.
Right.
And if you looked at the Gallaudet Board of Trustees.
We had white and black deaf people.
But I'm not sure we have any Latino deaf person
on the board today.
This is 25 years after D.P.N.
We still have work to do.
Any other questions from the audience?
Please come up.
Hello everyone.
My name is Dr. Elizabeth Moore,
and I'm a member of the Department of Social Work.
I would like to thank you so much for sharing
these inspiring stories with us.
I was trying to remember
where I was during D.P.N. during 1988.
I was actually working in therapy
for a recovery organization in Detroit, Michigan.
I was able to read the newspaper articles
and get information through the media.
Maybe Ruth, maybe you can help me answer this question.
Do you feel that D.P.N.
had a critical impact on the special opportunities program
that was occurring at Kendall School.
This special opportunities program was actually
a place where many deaf children of color came together.
And the reason that we had that is
because they had some needing help with academic skills.
Some academic skill remediation.
Did it have any impact on that?
I worked with that program for many years.
People of color were over represented in that group.
Most of the white students were on an academic track.
I'm going to say this plainly and honestly.
That's the case.
Again, they said it was because of what they needed.
But when we took some of those students
who we thought maybe could make it in the academic setting
and put them in there and maybe we would put them
in that academic track.
But any students who had weaker skills
were put in this special program.
What we realized was that really closed them off.
And what we should do rather than have a separate program
is really work on bridging where they are
with where we want them to be
and not just to abandon the whole program.
We noticed it was a problem
and they were over represented and something needed to happen.
And it was disbanded during D.P.N.
and a lot of those students who were on this S.O.P. program
have gotten into college since.
It's not something we would have expected of them.
It's because we taught them how to be independent.
People believed they could do it
and all they needed was an opportunity.
So if the curriculum was weak,
they needed to figure out how to make it work.
And when the program was disbanded,
I was concerned about those students.
I was.
I thought that it might not be fair to them.
And it wasn't.
You had the academic white kids performing at
a much higher level than the students in the S.O.P. program
even though they were on the same grade level.
But we weren't sure how to solve the problem
and how to make sure every student got exactly
what they needed so they could be independent
after they graduated.
Whether that be after college or go straight
to a working environment.
Or maybe going to R.I.T. or Gallaudet or anything.
But we wanted to make sure that any of them could
move on afterward.
S.O.P. was a very special program.
My question then is do you feel that D.P.N.
had an impact on that program specifically?
Or the academics in school?
Well, we had a large number of students in that program.
And enrollment did decrease after that.
Some of the academics were not quite
where they needed to be.
I think it was an impact.
I think we knew that we needed to raise our expectations
of all of our students and make sure
that we were responsible for their education
and make sure everything was in place
so that they could learn as much as possible.
We had to really look at the curriculum
and kind of dig in there and figure out
how to apply it to them.
You know, we have all our requirements
and all of that needed to be in place to make sure we provided
for them as well.
And over time things got better and better.
Dr. Ramos?
You would like to add?
I think what Ruth is saying is very true.
It's not only true at Kendall School.
I think some of the same things happened
all over the United States.
In my Ph.D. studies,
what I did was compare white deaf people
to Hispanic deaf people.
I was essentially asking the question why was it
that white deaf people were getting into college programs
at a higher rate than Latino deaf people
even when they had a similar G.P.A.
It was markedly different.
What I found out was that the white folks
were taking academic courses,
and the Latino folks were taking vocational courses.
So they didn't have the skills necessary to test into colleges.
I finished that comparison in 1997,
and that is still very much happening.
And we need to fix ourselves as educators
to solve that problem.
As you said, there's a lot of lessons.
And we all did work together during D.P.N.
And when it was over,
we all went back to the status quo.
And we were not working together any longer.
That's what we need to do today.
When we come together that way, anything is possible.
If we exist independently, we will get nowhere.
On that note, I would like to thank all of you panelists
for coming and sharing your experience with us
regarding that seminal period in Gallaudet's history.
It was a huge emotional and exciting time for us
as a community and as deaf people.
I also would like to thank you, the audience,
for coming and participating as well.
Obviously it shows your motivation in coming here
to listen to these panelists
share their experience with you.
Thank you so much
and thank you to the interpreters as well.