The Life and Times of T. H. Gallaudet

Although rooted in the bottom-up tradition of social history, the intertwined fields of deaf history and disability history have always had their fair share of heroes—men and women who, whether motivated by political conviction or personal sentiment, have challenged the culture of ableism pervasive in the United States. In her gracefully written new biography, Edna Edith Sayers examines the life and times of one such figure, the educator and theologian Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787–1851). Regarded today as a “secular saint,” Gallaudet spent thirteen years as the principal of the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, the nation's first permanent school for deaf people (p. xi). However, Gallaudet's contemporary reputation belies some uncomfortable truths. A white nationalist and religious fanatic, Gallaudet was hostile to anything that challenged his narrow Calvinist world view. Sayers traces Gallaudet's life from his childhood in Philadelphia to his education at Yale College and Andover Theological Seminary to his itinerate career as an educator, minister, and author of children's books. Sayers's study devotes only three of its ten chapters to Gallaudet's years at the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, but this is not necessarily a loss. Harlan Lane's When the Mind Hears (1984) and R. A. R. Edwards's Words Made Flesh (2012) have already addressed this material in greater depth. Indeed, the most interesting chapter of Sayers's book has little to do with Gallaudet's work on behalf of deaf education. In chapter 9, “Toward a White Nation,” Sayers profiles Gallaudet's membership in the American Colonization Society, a national organization that advocated deporting free blacks to Africa. Though “proud of his anti-abolition credentials,” he believed the United States should avoid “rash and imprudent measures” to end slavery without compensating slaveholders (pp. 198, 208). Here and elsewhere, Gallaudet appears less as a visionary and more as a closed-minded bigot, the kind of man “who is so sure he's right that he never dreams of having to check the facts” (p. 91

Biography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation · Gender Studies · Hearing Impairment and Communication · History · Law · Religious studies · Religious Studies