October 2010
Presented by the HHSC Civil Rights Office
History of the Observance
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. The effort to
educate the American public about issues related to disability and employment
began in 1945 when Congress enacted a law declaring the first week in October
National Employ the Physically Handicapped Week. President Harry Truman
founded the President’s Committee on the Employment of the Handicapped in
1947 to assist physically disabled veterans in finding employment.
In 1962, the word “physically” was removed from the
title to acknowledge the employment needs and
contributions of individuals with all types of
disabilities. In 1988, Congress expanded the week to
a month and changed the name to National Disability
Employment Awareness Month.
Each annual awareness month celebration provides
a time to honor our employees, clients, families and
friends who have a disability.
President Harry Truman
Introduction
This year, our National Disability Employment
Awareness Month presentation profiles
15 Famous People Who are Deaf or
Hard of Hearing
Michelle Banks
Michelle Banks, a native of Washington, D.C., is an award
winning actress, writer, director, producer, and teacher. Deaf
since age one from spinal meningitis, Banks received her
bachelor’s degree in drama studies from the State University of
New York. She founded Onyx Theatre Company in New York
City, the first Deaf theater company in the United States for
people of color. Her first television role was on the popular
series "Soul Food." She watched the show during its first
season and contacted the executive producer to propose the
creation of a Deaf character on the show, a role which she got. Banks is the
founder and artistic director of Onyx Theatre, Inc. Her films credits include
Malcolm X and Compensation. Her one-woman show, Reflections of a Black Deaf
Woman, has toured several cities. She can also be seen in Hilari Scarl’s
documentary about the Deaf entertainers, See What I’m Saying. Banks credits
Jadolphus CW Fraser, an independent filmmaker, for introducing her to filmmaking
and co-directing his feature debut, Always Chasing Love. Banks is an active
member of the National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA).
Linda Bove
Born in 1945 to Deaf parents, Linda Bove is a famous actress
who has a hearing disability. She is mainly remembered for
her role as Linda the Librarian on Sesame Street which began
in 1971. She brought American Sign Language to the world
through the show and her books. Her role on Sesame Street
continued until 2003, and it is the longest running role in
television history for a Deaf person. Bove was in the soap
opera Search for Tomorrow in the 1970s and was Fonzie's
girlfriend in 1980 on Happy Days. More recently, she has
been involved with the Non-Traditional Casting Project, a non-profit organization
that helps people of different ethnicities and handicaps get into the television,
performance, and film industry. In 1991, Bove and her husband founded
DeafWest Theater, a theater for the Deaf in Los Angeles. She is such an
inspiration for all Deaf actors and actresses. Despite being in an industry run
primarily by hearing people, Bove retained her culture and her values. She
always used sign language and successfully introduced the Deaf and Deaf
Culture to families across the country.
Bernard Bragg
Bernard Bragg is an accomplished performer, writer, director, poet, and artist.
Born in 1928, he became interested in theater at an early age and he studied it at
Gallaudet University. After graduation he began teaching at the California School
for the Deaf (CSD), where he spent the next fifteen years. In 1956 he met the
internationally renowned mime Marcel Marceau and he was invited to France to
study under Marceau. After he returned, Bragg continued working at CSD, but
began to perform mime more and more throughout the U.S. and Europe. In 1967
he left CSD to help found the National Theater of the Deaf.
NBC offered to film an hour-long program featuring Deaf
performers, which became a historic program as it was the
first time Deaf performers used sign language on television.
Bragg spent ten years with the National Theater of the Deaf.
In 1977 he began an international tour demonstrating the
use of sign-mime. He taught at National Technical Institute
for the Deaf, wrote plays and began directing. In 1989 his
autobiography was published. Bragg continues to lecture,
write, consult, and perform nationally today.
Andrew Foster
Andrew Foster was born in Alabama in 1925, and at an early age he lost his
hearing because of spinal meningitis. He attended to Gallaudet University in
Washington D.C. where he was the first Black student to be admitted and to
graduate from the university. While attending college in Washington, he worked
with the inner city Deaf kids. In 1957 he began missionary work in Africa for Deaf
children. The cultures in most of Africa were so oppressive of Deaf people that
parents often hid or abandoned their Deaf children. Even hearing missionaries
told Foster that Deaf children didn't exist in Africa. But he found the children and
established schools for them—31 schools in all during his lifetime. For much of
his life he spent six months of the year in Africa establishing
schools and the other six months in the U.S. raising money to
support these schools. In 1970, Gallaudet University awarded
him a Doctoral degree, making him the first Black person to
receive such degree from this university. Foster trained many
teachers and continued his missionary work as more schools
opened. Foster met his untimely death in a plane crash in
1987 and the Black Deaf community lost an extraordinary
leader.
Patrick Graybill
Patrick Graybill is a well-known international actor, director, teacher
and an American Sign Language (ASL) role model. Renowned for
his acting work with the National Theatre of the Deaf, he has
worked as a consultant, theater director, actor and teacher at
Rochester Institute of Technology and its National Technical
Institute for the Deaf Performing Arts Program. He earned a
bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree in Deaf
education from Gallaudet University. After graduation he taught at
the Kendall School for the Deaf, but he wanted to teach literature and theater using
ASL, which was not the accepted practice at the time. Graybill decided to enter the
seminary, but his pursuit of priesthood was put on hold when he joined the National
Theatre of the Deaf in 1969. In between his numerous acting roles and directing
and teaching assignments Graybill completed studies for his diaconate, and he
has been deacon for 25 years. He has been a college professor for 23 years and a
professional actor, guest actor, director and consultant for more than 31 years. He is
active in the Deaf Catholic community, and he provides workshops for clergy and
students. In 1999 he taught others how to translate mass into ASL, even though
the Vatican has not given approval for ASL to be used as a liturgical language.
Monique Holt
Monique Holt is an actress, poet and storyteller. She is the
author of The Night Was so Hungry That it Ate the Moon, a play
she wrote because she needed a simple story for her
kindergarten students to perform when she was the Artist-InResidence at Fanwood School for the Deaf. The story, a myth
about the changing moon, was performed completely in action
without any words. Holt first caught the theatrical bug from
watching a PBS production of Swan Lake when she was a
young child. She finally got her chance to perform at Model
Secondary School for the Deaf in her freshman year. She
earned a bachelor’s degree in acting from Tisch School of the Arts at New York
University. Her training is mostly in acting, physical movement, and modern dance.
She was taught herself how to translating from English text into American Sign
Language (ASL) and langue des signes française or LSF (sign language of the Deaf
used in France). Most of her work entails acting in a variety of roles, translating from
English text to ASL (especially Shakespearean plays), creating original poems, adapting
Asian folktales, directing plays, instructing students in theater and the acting business,
and advocating for Deaf artists.
William Hoy
Hoy was born in 1862 and at three years old, he lost his hearing from meningitis. He
enjoyed a long and successful career in baseball: 18 seasons on professional teams,
including 5 with the Cincinnati Red Stockings. He was one of the few players to have
played in 4 of the 5 recognized major leagues: The National League, the short-lived
Players’ League, the original American Association, and the American League. Hoy
taught his teammates how to communicate in sign language—very useful on the field.
Many sources say that Hoy played a pioneering role in the creation of the hand
signals still used today in baseball. When he began his career, all umpires’ calls
were shouted, and Hoy had to ask his coach what the call was. He wrote a request
to the third-base coach, asking him to raise his left arm to indicate a
ball, and his right arm for a strike. Thus, the intricate system of
baseball hand signals—the umpire’s signals, manager’s call signals
to batters, and the outfielders’ call signals—has been traced to him.
After racking up 1,792 games in the major leagues and a .288
lifetime batting average, Hoy finished out his career at age 42. In
1951, Hoy was unanimously voted the first player to be enshrined in
the American Athletic Association of the Deaf’s Hall of Fame. He was
inducted into the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 2003.
CJ Jones
CJ Jones is a producer, director, writer, actor, comedian, musician, and
motivational speaker. He has traveled with the National Theatre of the Deaf and
toured with Children of a Lesser God on Broadway. He has also appeared on
numerous television shows and movies. In addition, Jones can rightly add
educator and advocate to his credits. He heads Hands Across Communications to
produce events for international Deaf artists to share their talents and receive
recognition for their artistic work. The goal is to make their
dream come true through performances on stage. When not
pursuing these goals, he takes his one-man show on the
road. For more than 35 years, Jones has shared his talents
with Deaf and hearing schools, events, and universities
across the country and around the world. Having appeared
on Broadway stage, in television, video, and on the big
screen, he has experienced what he calls the “double
whammy” of being an actor who is both Deaf and Black. He
vigorously spreads the message to students and adults
alike, that being different does not mean being less
worthwhile.
Harold MacGrath
Harold MacGrath was an American author and screenwriter who
is most famous for writing The Drums Of Jeopardy (1920). Born
in 1871, he started his career writing as a reporter for the
Syracuse Herald. Many of his short stories and novels were first
serialized in such publications as The Saturday Evening Post
and Ladies Home Journal. His first novel was Arms and the
Woman, published in 1899. In 1912 he became one of the first
nationally-known authors to write directly for the movies when
he was hired by the American Film Company to do screenplays. The Vengeance
That Failed, a black and white silent Western film was MacGrath's first foray into
screenwriting. He would go on to adapt a number of his stories and novels for the
screen including The Mollycoddle, released in 1920 and starring Douglas
Fairbanks. In 1932 he published an article in The Saturday Evening Post titled "The
Short Autobiography of a Deaf Man,” in which he told the public how he had
struggled early in life because of having a hearing impairment. At a time in history
when Deaf people were almost automatically considered to be lacking intelligence,
he hid his impairment from his employer and others. MacGrath died in 1932, a few
months after the article was published.
Marlee Matlin
Marlee Matlin was born in 1965 and at 18 months old she
caught the German measles, which left her completely
deaf in her right ear and 80% deaf in her left ear. She
started her acting career at the age of seven. Her first role
in a play as an adult was a supporting character in a
production of Children of a Lesser God. She was cast in
the lead for the film adaptation of that play, and her
performance won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1986. She
was the first Deaf actress to win an Academy Award and at age 21, she became
the youngest recipient of the Best Actress Oscar and one of only four actresses to
receive that honor for a film debut. In addition to the Oscar, Matlin was honored by
the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with the Golden Globe Award for Best
Actress in a Drama. Matlin continues to act and has produced several projects as
well. She has also written three novels for children, the first titled Deaf Child
Crossing, and is a spokesperson for the National Captioning Institute. Her New
York Times Best Selling autobiography, I’ll Scream Later, was published in 2009.
Shanny Mow
Shanny Mow is an actor, teacher, playwright, and director. Born in 1938 in
Stockton, California, he lost his hearing at age of five due to spinal meningitis. He
attended Gallaudet College and California State University and has taught
academic subjects for ten years at schools for the Deaf in Great Falls, Montana;
Santa Fe, New Mexico and Honolulu, Hawaii. He was a member of the National
Theater of the Deaf (NTD) acting ensemble and served as NTD’s playwright in
residence for numerous years, authoring The Iliad, Play by Play, The Ghost of
Chastity Past, Odyssey, Shakespeare Unmasked and
Parzival, From the Horse's Mouth, which was performed at the
Kennedy Center. Recently he has appeared on Sesame
Street. During his artistic career he has written and directed
plays for over twenty years. He served as Artistic Director of
Fairmount Theatre of the Deaf. Since 1980 he has served as a
faculty member for the NTD Professional Theatre School.
Shanny also works as a commercial printer, free-lance
photographer and research assistant in sign language at the
Salk Institute.
Angel Ramos
Dr. Angel Ramos was the first Deaf Hispanic to receive a doctorate degree from
Gallaudet University and is the superintendent at Sequoia School for the Deaf
and Hard of Hearing in Arizona. Ramos is president and executive director of the
Angel Ramos Foundation and president and CEO of R&R Publishers, a book
publishing company. He has taught various subjects at the middle school, high
school, and college levels in Texas, Washington, and New York. He has over 35
years experience in Deaf education. In 1994, he founded the National Hispanic
Council of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He also founded the Spanish Deaf
Association of Dallas, Texas, and has been a consultant and
board member of dozens of organizations around the country.
Ramos has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from
Manhattan College, a master’s degree in education of the
Deaf from the State University of New York, a master’s degree
in educational administration from California State University,
and a Ph.D. in special education administration from
Gallaudet University. He is also a member of the National
Advisory Group for the National Technical Institute for the
Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology.
Johnnie Ray
Johnnie Ray’s musical talent was evident at an early age as
he could play anything he heard once. When he was 13, he
sustained an injury that resulted in a loss of 50% of his
hearing. As a young man, Ray moved to Detroit, Michigan,
and became the only White performer at the time singing
blues at The Flame Show Bar. Hearing aids of the time were
not music friendly as they were made for speech, and Ray
performed wearing his then cumbersome hearing aid in his
left ear. Ray's fantastic gift of communicating emotion in song
completely over-shadowed the hearing aid dilemma. His most famous song was
"Cry" which hit number one in 1951. Ray was one of the first performers to take
the microphone off the stand and roam and run over the entire stage. His
performing style included theatrics later associated with rock 'n roll, including
beating up his piano and writhing on the floor. Ray officially established the Ray
Foundation in 1953 for the hearing impaired; he opened the foundation using the
$1,000 fee he earned when he appeared on Ed Sullivan's Toast Of The Town. He
performed through the 1980s, and had a huge fan base in the U.K. and Australia.
Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend, guitarist and principal songwriter for
The Who, began noticing that he had hearing damage in
the 1970s. The Who was at the forefront of the British
musical boom of the 1960s, and Townshend is the
driving force behind the group. He is recognized as one
of the most visual guitarist of all time. He developed a
unique guitar style, a cross between rhythm and lead,
which veered from furiously strummed chord patterns
and power chords to chromatic scales and delicate
arpeggios. On top of this he frequently smashed his guitar into pieces at the end of
a performance. In the 1980s The Who temporarily disbanded, and Townshend
began performing solo. Long acknowledged as one of the most intelligent and
articulate of rock performers, Townshend has run his own book publishing
company and worked as an editor at the literary house of Faber & Faber. He has
run successful websites and blog sites, and he is always looking at ways of using
the Internet to present musico-dramatic works. In 2006 The Who released Endless
Wire, the band’s first new album in 24 years. He is presently working on an
autobiography due for publication in 2010.
Heather Whitestone
In 1995, Heather Whitestone became the first woman with a disability to be
crowned Miss America in the pageant’s 75-year history. She lost her hearing when
she was only 18 months old. She had haemophilus influenzae and was rushed to
the hospital where doctors gave her strong antibiotics to save her life; the
antibiotics, however, left her with a profound hearing loss. She attended the
Central Institute for the Deaf in Missouri, where she learned two grade levels per
year and eventually she returned to Alabama to graduate from public high school
in 1991. She attended Jacksonville State University and
completed in 62 pageants. Since her Miss America win, she
has continued to promote awareness of Deaf issues and has
written four books including Listening with My Heart and Let
God Surprise You. She volunteers for Republican causes
and spoke at the party's National Conventions of 1996 and
2000. In 2002 she had surgery to have a cochlear implant
placed in her right ear. She is a motivational speaker and
lives in the Atlanta area.
Conclusion
Please join the Civil Rights Office in celebrating the 2010
National Disability Employment
Awareness Month
and in honoring the contributions people with
disabilities make every day as part of our families,
our agencies, our state and our nation.
If you would like to provide feedback on this presentation or any of the services
provided by the HHSC Civil Rights Office, please take our survey here:
http://hhscx.hhsc.state.tx.us/Admin/CR/survey/CSS.asp
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