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The enduring legacy of a D.C. mother who fought for Black deaf children

2023-12-12 00:00:00.0 华盛顿邮报-华盛顿特区原网页

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Carol Miller still remembers when her brother Kenneth was forced to leave their D.C. home and live in another state.

She remembers seeing his belongings packed into a trunk. She remembers watching a family member take a trip every month to visit him. She remembers the excitement that the end of each school year brought, because it meant her brother was coming home.

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When her brother first left home, he was 8 years old, recalled Miller, who is three years younger than he. Their parents didn’t want to send him away. They also had no choice. He was Black and deaf, and at the time, those two parts of his identity placed him among children who faced a unique injustice in the nation’s capital. They were forced to travel far from their homes to get an education.

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A letter the Miller family saved shows what happened when the children’s mother, Louise B. Miller, tried to enroll Kenneth in the only school in D.C. for deaf children.

“You do not mention in your letter that your child is a Negro child,” the letter reads. “Of course that makes a difference. There is segregation in the school system in the District of Columbia.”

The letter informed her that the school had a contract with the District to serve White deaf children. Black deaf children who lived in the city, it said, were expected to enroll in a school hours away in Maryland. Carol Miller said her mother visited that school, and when she saw the conditions, she refused to leave her son there. The family instead paid to send him to a school in Pennsylvania.

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Louise B. Miller could have quietly accepted that those children had to leave their city and families to get a basic education. What she did instead marks a significant moment in American history that has gone mostly unseen and unacknowledged.

When we talk about civil rights activists, Louise B. Miller’s name does not usually come up. But it should. The D.C. mother stood up for her son and other Black deaf children, and in doing so, she forced the campus of Gallaudet University to enroll Black students before other schools across the country were ordered to desegregate.

A national museum about – but not just for – the deaf community

A historical account from the university shows that Black students were permitted to attend the Kendall School, which served students from kindergarten through 12th grade on campus, between 1898 and 1905. Then parents of White students complained, and Black students were no longer allowed to enroll. That changed in 1952, after Louise B. Miller led a group of Black parents whose children had been denied admission to the school in filing a class-action lawsuit against the District of Columbia Board of Education.

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The families won their case in July 1952. That victory has been credited with setting an important precedent. It occurred two years before the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that laws mandating and enforcing racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional.

While that legal win by Miller and other parents allowed them to keep their children in the city, it’s important to note that those students did not receive the same treatment as their White peers. For the first two years, they were enrolled in a separate school, the Kendall School Division II for Negroes, and placed in a separate building with separate teachers. Later, when it came time for them to graduate from high school, unlike White students, they were not given diplomas.

At last, a diploma for Black deaf students who set historic precedent

The University took steps to right that wrong this past July when it held a poignant, long-belated graduation ceremony. I shared with you in an earlier column what that day looked like. University officials handed out diplomas for 24 students who should have received them more than six decades earlier. Family members accepted the honor for students who did not live long enough to see that day, and five surviving students attended the ceremony. Kenneth Miller was one of them.

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“At last!” he said through sign language as he crossed the stage, using a walker for support.

It was a powerful scene to witness, and it felt a full-circle moment. His mother fought for him to get an education on the campus, and there he was, onstage, wearing a cap and gown.

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For those who had never heard of Louise B. Miller, the ceremony offered a powerful introduction. But it was also just that — an intro, a beginning. The university has put in place plans that will allow future generations who step on the campus to know her name.

The university recently announced the official launch of the public phase of a fundraising campaign that aims to honor Miller’s legacy. The Necessity of Now campaign will fund an outdoor learning space on the campus called the “Louise B. Miller Pathways and Gardens: A Legacy to Black Deaf Children.” The funds will also go toward supporting the university’s Center for Black Deaf Studies, which is described as “the first of its kind in the world to preserve and advance Black Deaf history and culture.”

“Louise Miller is an unsung hero of educational and racial justice in America,” Evon Black, the interim co-director of the Center for Black Deaf Studies and co-chair of the Necessity of Now campaign, said. “Mrs. Miller’s impact is truly a story of how one mother, through her love, courage, resilience and determination, profoundly and positively impacted generations of the Black deaf community and helped reshape our nation’s educational landscape. Because of her fight, Black deaf education matters.”

She described the Necessity of Now campaign as “an important step forward, not only for our Black deaf community but for all to see the critical need for and the power of restorative justice.”

The campaign aims to raise $23 million. Of that, the university has said, $13 million will go toward the Pathways and Gardens, and $10 million will be dedicated to the Center for Black Deaf Studies.

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Carol Miller said her mother majored in music at Howard University, was a skilled seamstress and had a way of making holidays unforgettable.

“She always attended to our needs and some of our wants,” she recalled.

Miller, who now has partial hearing loss, said that, like Kenneth, her two younger brothers, Gerald and Justin, were born deaf. She said her younger brothers attended special classes in D.C. public schools until their needs could not be met. Then they were transferred to Kendall.

I asked her what she wanted people to remember about her mother’s legacy. “If you see a wrong you must try to correct it,” she said.

“As students and visitors walk along the pathways and through the gardens, it would be a good time to ask themselves, ‘Why? What was accomplished by sending Black children away?’” she said. “They will see the statue of a mother who represents all of the parents who had no choice but to send their children away.”

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