History & Milestones

Before the schools

Deaf people have always existed, and wherever enough of them lived together, signed languages grew on their own.

The most famous example is Martha’s Vineyard, off Massachusetts, where a high rate of hereditary deafness from the seventeenth into the early twentieth century produced a community in which hearing and Deaf islanders alike used a shared sign language. As the historian Nora Ellen Groce documented in Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language, deafness there was so ordinary that people struggled to remember who had been deaf at all. It is the clearest proof that the barriers Deaf people face are built by societies, not by deafness.

The first schools & the birth of ASL

In 1817, the minister Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and the Deaf French teacher Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut — the first permanent school for Deaf children in the United States. Gallaudet had traveled to Europe and learned from the Paris school for the Deaf; Clerc, himself Deaf, brought French Sign Language with him.

At Hartford, that French signing blended with the home signs and village signs students already used — including signers from Martha’s Vineyard — and from this fusion American Sign Language took shape. As similar residential schools spread across the country, they became the cradles of Deaf culture: places where children met a shared language and a community for the first time.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the charter authorizing what would become Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. — the world’s first institution of higher education designed for Deaf students. Edward Miner Gallaudet, son of the Hartford founder, served as its first president.

Milan 1880 & the oralist century

In 1880, the Second International Congress on the Education of the Deaf met in Milan and, dominated by hearing educators, resolved that Deaf children should be taught only through speech and lip-reading — and that sign language should be banished from the classroom. Deaf teachers were largely excluded from the vote.

The consequences lasted nearly a hundred years. Across much of the world, signing was punished in schools, Deaf teachers lost their jobs, and generations of children were denied access to a language they could fully use. The American inventor Alexander Graham Bell — whose mother and wife were deaf — was an influential champion of oralism and warned against Deaf people forming a separate community.

The community fought back. The National Association of the Deaf was founded the same year, 1880, and in 1913 its president George Veditz filmed himself signing The Preservation of the Sign Language, urging Deaf people to protect their language for the future. They did.

A language, recognized

For decades, even sympathetic hearing people dismissed signing as mere gesture or broken English. That changed in 1960, when William Stokoe, a professor at Gallaudet, published Sign Language Structure. Using the tools of linguistics, he showed that ASL has its own phonology, grammar, and structure — that it is a complete natural language in its own right.

Stokoe’s work, often resisted at first even by Deaf people taught to see their language as inferior, eventually transformed Deaf education and pride. It laid the intellectual groundwork for bilingual education and for the civil-rights surge that followed.

Deaf President Now

In March 1988, Gallaudet University had never in its 124-year history been led by a Deaf president. When its board passed over two Deaf finalists to appoint a hearing candidate who did not know sign language, students shut the campus down.

For a week, the Deaf President Now protest captured national attention. Students and supporters made four demands: a Deaf president, the resignation of the board chair, a Deaf majority on the board, and no reprisals. They won all four. I. King Jordan became the university’s first Deaf president, and the movement became a global symbol of Deaf self-determination.

The modern era

The momentum of 1988 fed directly into the broad disability-rights coalition that won the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. The same era saw television captioning mandated, video relay services emerge, and bilingual-bicultural education — teaching through both ASL and written English — gain ground.

It has not been a straight line. The spread of cochlear implants reopened old debates about identity and choice; in 2006, Gallaudet students protested again over the selection of a new president. But Deaf visibility has never been higher: Marlee Matlin won an Academy Award in 1987, and in 2022 the film CODA won Best Picture while Troy Kotsur became the first Deaf man to win an acting Oscar. For the full legal story, see Laws & Rights.

Timeline

• 1700s–1900sMartha’s Vineyard

  A hereditary-deaf community where hearing and Deaf islanders share a sign language for generations.

• 1817American School for the Deaf

  Gallaudet and Clerc open the first permanent U.S. Deaf school in Hartford; ASL begins to coalesce.

• 1864Gallaudet chartered

  Lincoln signs the charter for the world’s first university for Deaf students.

• 1880Milan Congress & the NAD

  Educators vote to suppress sign language; in the same year, Deaf Americans found the National Association of the Deaf.

• 1913Veditz films sign language

  NAD leader George Veditz records ASL to preserve it against the oralist tide.

• 1960Stokoe’s breakthrough

  Sign Language Structure establishes ASL as a true language.

• 1973Section 504

  The Rehabilitation Act bars disability discrimination in federally funded programs.

• 1988Deaf President Now

  Gallaudet gains its first Deaf president after a week-long student uprising.

• 1990The ADA

  Sweeping U.S. civil-rights protections, including effective communication, become law.

• 2010The CVAA

  Communication and video-accessibility law updates captioning and relay for the internet age.

• 2022CODA wins Best Picture

  Troy Kotsur becomes the first Deaf man to win an acting Academy Award.