Chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, holds the distinction of being the only bilingual university for Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and other Deaf Disabled students in the world. Consequently, it has the world’s largest archives of materials related to deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, with a mission to preserve “the institutional memory of the University and historic material from the global Deaf community,” according to the Gallaudet website.
The Silent Worker Vol. 6 No. 3, November 1893Courtesy of Gallaudet University Archives |
Chartered by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, holds the distinction of being the only bilingual university for Deaf, Hard of Hearing, and other Deaf Disabled students in the world. Consequently, it has the world’s largest archives of materials related to deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, with a mission to preserve “the institutional memory of the University and historic material from the global Deaf community,” according to the Gallaudet website.
Gallaudet began as a school and housing for Deaf and Blind students in 1856, officially named the Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind in 1857. Its mission grew when it became a degree conferring institution in 1864, with its first class graduating in 1869.
In 1894, the institution’s college was renamed Gallaudet College after Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, who established the American School for the Deaf, the first school for Deaf people in the United States, in 1817. The entire school was designated Gallaudet College by another act of Congress in 1954, and in 1986 the institution became Gallaudet University.
For the first half of the 20th century, Gallaudet offered general education classes with a few concentrations in printing and animal husbandry. However, in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a rise in the number of children born deaf because their mothers contracted Rubella during pregnancy. Gallaudet redeveloped its curriculum to fulfill the growing need for an institution of higher education for the Deaf and hard of hearing community. These developments helped grow the archival institution records, said archives Director Jim McCarthy.
Olympic torch carried by I. King Jordan in the 1996 relay for the Atlanta Games, who ran it from the Capitol to the White House before handing it off to Bill Clinton.Photo Credit: J. Jack Johnson, superintendent of the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf |
The Gallaudet library’s first major acquisition, in 1874, was a collection of 528 books focusing on deafness and deaf education owned by Charles Baker, headmaster of the Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf in England. The archives eventually split off from the library in 1967 as the institution continued to evolve, McCarthy explained. In the 1980s, Gallaudet Archivist Corrine Hilton began to concentratedly acquire materials related to Deaf history and communities worldwide.
The archives is “the only one of its kind in the country,” McCarthy pointed out, and they show how Deaf history is closely integrated with that of the country. “Deaf history is American history, [and] vice versa,” McCarthy explained.
The Gallaudet archives contain a wealth of materials, including books and ephemera related to Deafness, Deaf education, and the development and use of American Sign Language; copies of the Gallaudet University student newspaper, The Buff and Blue; rare books; photographs; institutional and personal memorabilia; artworks; and even furniture, comprising four miles of shelving, 16,000 square feet of other artifacts, and 2,000 pieces of artwork related to the Deaf community.
The oldest item in the collection is the 1546 Chiromantia, by German reformist priest Johannes Rosenbach (also known as Johannes ab. Indagine) (1467–1537). Jerrod J. Grill, former Gallaudet University archives preservation specialist, described the book as “the study of palmistry and astrology…. [i]t became a standard work on the Catholic doctrine of the interpretation of the body structure, the face, and the hands.”
The archive also highlights the important role that Gallaudet University and other Deaf schools played in the country’s history of printing. Printing work was a popular subject at many Deaf schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; print jobs were well-paid, and Deaf workers were not bothered by the loud printing presses. The collection contains the printing blocks used when the trade was a major area of focus at the university.
In 2022, Gallaudet debuted The Deaf Printers Pages, a collaborative project between the Drs. John S. & Betty J. Schuchman Deaf Documentary Center at Gallaudet University and Deaf retirees from the Washington Post. The project provides background and archival materials about the history of Deaf people and newspapers.
Deaf printers worked alongside their hearing counterparts at the Washington Post into the 20th century—a unique setup, the Post noted in an article about the online exhibit. “It wasn’t just having a good job, it was seeing the hearing world make accommodations to the deaf world, rather than the other way around. By necessity, hearing employees figured out how to work with a large number of deaf employees: miming, learning to finger spell, or taking the American Sign Language classes that places like the Post offered.” Gallaudet alumni worked at the newspapers such as the Post, New York Times, and Chicago Tribune, and at companies like Kodak.
The archives contain a collection of catalogs called “The Little Paper Family,” newspapers and magazines that Deaf students published in schools across the United States from the late 19th to the early 20th century. These newspapers and newsletters, such as The Silent Hoosier from the Indiana School for the Deaf and The Silent Worker from the New Jersey School for the Deaf, would be informally passed around Deaf communities.
McCarthy likened it to social media: “It was how people stayed in touch with what was going on with people that they might have met at summer camp, or kept informed on how their family was doing, or how well students were reading.” They also shared success stories.
Non-print artifacts in the collection include a plate of glass from a men’s dormitory in the 1880s where students etched their names, found during a renovation in 1972—“everyone has that desire to have their name in remembrance for the next generation,” said McCarthy—and the 1996 Summer Olympic Torch that the first Deaf president of Gallaudet, Irving King Jordan, carried to President Bill Clinton.
The Gallaudet University Archives have been used by scholars, genealogists, and institutions. McCarthy noted that many genealogical researchers have used the archives, since the collection has records for the Deaf community going back more than 150 years.
In 2002, Gallaudet professors Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman edited Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The book, inspired by a joint conference between the two institutions in 1998, explores the history and experiences of Deaf Europeans, including Deaf Jews, in Nazi-controlled territories. The museum frequently contributes to Gallaudet exhibitions, and recently digitized 10 films from the Gallaudet collection.
In 2020, Kathy Jankowski, former dean of Gallaudet University’s Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center, published Agatha Tiegel Hanson: Our Places in the Sun, a biography about the first woman who was admitted to and graduated from Gallaudet in the 1890s. Facing discrimination based on her gender and deafness, in 1892 Hanson created the O.W.L.S., a secret society for women, now the Phi Kappa Zeta sorority. She was a tireless advocate for the rights of women and Deaf people.
Her husband, Olof Hanson, played a huge role in Deaf and U.S. history as well; he is considered the country’s first Deaf architect, who designed a former Gallaudet dormitory that is now the university’s Office of International Affairs.
The staff at the archives give lectures and presentations to classes four to five times a year for research projects on Deaf history. Many focus on other modalities than written English, such as American Sign Language.
Research from the collection was helpful in developing a storytelling app for deaf children through the University’s Research and Development Lab Motion Light Lab (ML2). The app “utilizes deaf characters and different types of motion that help teach sign language and help with English,” McCarthy said. “It's very beneficial for parents specifically, and it uses a lot of pedagogy [and] pedagogical approaches that are often taken from our collection.”
Recently, Apple Original Films announced the future release of the documentary Deaf President Now!, about the 1988 Gallaudet University protests. For eight days, students held protests after a hearing president was appointed over several Deaf candidates; as a result of the protests, the president resigned and Jordan, then dean, became the first Deaf president of the institution. The film, which used the collections extensively, will likely be on the film festival circuit later this year.
The archives are currently working toward the 2026 Plan, a five-year plan to better preserve, conserve, and provide access to its collections.
“We’re now currently focusing on supporting what we’re calling the signing ecosystem. We recognize that the community is built on the area of Gallaudet and where there’s a lot of small, Deaf businesses,” McCarthy explained. “What we’re trying to do is also really reflect the history of the ecosystem, and it also allows us to support other goals that are focused on continued learning and innovating lifespan in general. That all seems to align pretty well with the things that we need to work on and do.”
The archives have been working to make the collection available online, especially since many members of the community may not be able to travel to Washington to view the collection in person. The digitization process includes ensuring that members of the Deafblind community can access materials as well.
“Our digitization process requires the use of OCR [Optical Character Recognition] both for full-text searching and for accessibility purposes,” McCarthy explained. “Additionally, our digital repository, IDA [Interdisciplinary Digital Academics], was selected at least partly due to the platform's compliance to WAI-ARIA [Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications]. The exception is our collection of artwork; the online catalog was established around 15 years ago, and we have not had the staff time required to provide descriptive text, although our more recent uploads include descriptions.”
Latine, Black, and LGBTQ+ Deaf communities have not been well-represented in Gallaudet's archives—an issue that archivists have been working to remediate. “Our approach is trying to rebuild relationships with different groups that represent those communities,” said McCarthy. “Either we can work closely with them to make sure that their history is preserved and given to us, or to fill in those gaps that need to be fulfilled. Or they can preserve their own history, and some of them can decide how they want to contribute to their state archives.”
People who want to access the archives should make an appointment with the Archives two weeks in advance of the visit and two business days (or more) in advance of the visit date to access materials. Currently, the archives are off-site, as the building is being renovated. McCarthy pointed out that people may want to look at what is available in digital format as well.
We are currently offering this content for free. Sign up now to activate your personal profile, where you can save articles for future viewing