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Desegregated Schools
"When we were moved
from the Black school on Madison Street to the Arkansas School campus,
the white house mother didn't know how to take of Black hair, she made
us shampoo every day and my hair went back!"
Lynda
Carter, Student at the segregated Madison School and then the Arkansas
School for the Deaf and pictured below in pigtails.
Schools for deaf students in the
South like other public schools were racially segregated. Some states
had separate schools, such as the Oklahoma Industrial Institution for
the Deaf, Blind, and Orphans of the colored race, while others had
segregated buildings on one campus. Although these schools were
generally underfunded and overcrowded, graduates often had fond
memories of their school years. Desegregation for deaf students came in
the 1960s and 1970s. For deaf children, desegregation often meant
sharing not only a classroom, but a dormitory.
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Because of racial segregation in
Arkansas, African American deaf students were relocated from the campus
of the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock, to the Madison
School (right) a few miles away. In the 1960s they returned to the main
campus.
Courtesy of Lynda Carter
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At Kendall School, on the
Gallaudet campus in Washington, D.C., African American and white
students were taught in separate buildings and had segregated
dormitories. This 1954 photo shows Kendall School students receiving
oral training.
Gallaudet University Archives
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