37 Deaf culture in the United States

The American School for the Deaf (ASD) originally The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf And Dumb is the oldest permanent school for the deaf in the United States, and the first school for children with disabilities anywhere in the western hemisphere. It was founded April 15, 1817, in West Hartford, Connecticut, by Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Dr. Mason Cogswell, and Laurent Clerc and became a state-supported school later that year.

American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual language that is expressed by facial expression as well as movements and motions with the hands. Besides North America, dialects of ASL and ASL-based creoles are used in many countries around the world, including much of West Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. ASL is also widely learned as a second language, serving as a lingua franca. ASL is most closely related to French Sign Language (LSF). It has been proposed that ASL is a creole language of LSF, although ASL shows features atypical of creole languages, such as agglutinative morphology.

Black American Sign Language (BASL) or Black Sign Variation (BSV) is a dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) used most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States. The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South. Like other schools at the time, schools for the deaf were segregated based upon race, creating two language communities among deaf signers: white deaf signers at white schools and black deaf signers at black schools. Today, BASL is still used by signers in the South despite public schools having been legally desegregated since 1954.

Captionmax is one of North America's largest closed captioning and media accessibility companies. The company is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with additional locations in New York City, New York and Burbank, California. The company provides captions, subtitles, translation, video description, and as-broadcast scripts for over 450 customers including all major broadcast and cable TV networks, production companies, studios, distributors, educational institutions, government agencies, large corporations and Internet portals. Some clients include Warner Bros. Television, NBCUniversal, McGraw-Hill, Viacom Media Networks and Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Charles Thompson Memorial Hall is a historic clubhouse of Deaf culture in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Built in 1916, it was the first social club in the nation designed exclusively for the deaf.

Louis Laurent Marie Clerc was a French teacher called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and was regarded as the most renowned deaf person in American Deaf History. He was taught by Abbé Sicard and deaf educator Jean Massieu, at the Institution Nationale des Sourds-Muets in Paris. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the deaf in North America, the Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, on April 15, 1817 in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently renamed the American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to 139 Main Street, West Hartford. The school remains the oldest existing school for the deaf in North America.

Alice Cogswell was the inspiration to Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet for the creation of the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut.

Deaf President Now (DPN) was a student protest in March 1988 at Gallaudet University, Washington, D.C. The protest began on March 6, 1988, when the Board of Trustees announced its decision to appoint a hearing candidate, Elizabeth Zinser, over the other Deaf candidates, Irving King Jordan and Harvey Corson, as its seventh president.

DeafVideo.tv is a website that allows users to vlog using American Sign Language (ASL).

Ephphatha Church, also known as Faith Tabernacle, is a historic Episcopal church at 220 W. Geer Street in Durham, Durham County, North Carolina. It was built in 1930, and is a small, one-story, six-bay deep, Gothic Revival style brick building. It is one of only four churches in the United States built exclusively for a deaf congregation. The Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina rented the Ephphatha Church building to another congregation from 1977 until early 1981, then sold the building.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher was an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early 20th century. She strongly supported women's rights, racial equality, and lifelong education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in the United States. In addition to bringing the Montessori method of child-rearing to the U.S., she presided over the country's first adult education program and shaped literary tastes by serving as a member of the Book of the Month Club selection committee from 1925 to 1951.

Gallaudet University is a federally chartered private research university for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. It is located in Washington, D.C., on a 99-acre (0.40 km2) campus.

Edward Miner Gallaudet, son of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was the first president of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. from 1864 to 1910.

Sophia Fowler Gallaudet was the wife of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. As the founding matron of the school that became Gallaudet University, she played an important role in deaf history, even playing a key role in lobbying US congressmen in the effort to establish Gallaudet. She was appointed to be the first matron of the Columbia Institution on May 30, 1857 and held the position for nine years, until August 1, 1866.

Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet was an American educator. Along with Laurent Clerc and Mason Cogswell, he co-founded the first permanent institution for the education of the deaf in North America, and he became its first principal. When opened on April 15, 1817, it was called the "Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons," but it is now known as the American School for the Deaf.

Amber Galloway is a sign language interpreter specializing in the interpretation of concerts and music festivals, especially rap/hip-hop, into American Sign Language (ASL). She has been described as "..the most recognizable sign language interpreter in the [United States]."

Samuel Thomas Greene was a Deaf American educator and Ontario's first Deaf teacher in 1870 at the Ontario Institution for the Education of the Deaf and Dumb, which later changed to Sir James Whitney School of the Deaf in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. He was born in 1843 in Portland, Maine and attended to America's first Deaf school in Hartford, Connecticut.

Irving King Jordan is an American educator who became the first deaf president of Gallaudet University in 1988 after the Deaf President Now protest. Gallaudet is the world's only university with all programs and services designed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing students.

Amos Kendall was an American lawyer, journalist and politician. He rose to prominence as editor-in-chief of the Argus of Western America, an influential newspaper in Frankfort, the capital of the U.S. state of Kentucky. He used his newspaper, writing skills, and extensive political contacts to build the Democratic Party into a national political power. An ardent supporter of Andrew Jackson, he served as United States Postmaster General during the Jackson and Martin Van Buren administrations. He was one of the most influential members of Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet", an unofficial group of Jackson's top appointees and advisors who set administration policy. Returning to private life, Kendall wrote one of the first biographies of Jackson, which was published in 1843. He invested heavily in Samuel Morse's new invention, the telegraph. He became one of the most important figures in the transformation of the American news media in the 19th century.

Laurent was a proposed planned community south of Salem, South Dakota and which was designed for Deaf, Hard of Hearing and other American Sign Language users. The town was to be named after Laurent Clerc; it was originally planned that the first residents would start moving into town in 2008.

The Montana Deaf and Dumb Asylum is a site on the National Register of Historic Places located in Boulder, Montana. It was added to the Register on May 10, 1985.

The National Black Deaf Advocates (NBDA) is the leading advocacy organization for thousands of Black deaf and hard of hearing people in the United States. Black Deaf leaders were concerned that deaf and hard-of-hearing African-Americans were not adequately represented in leadership and policy decision-making activities that were affecting their lives.

The National Captioning Institute, Inc. (NCI) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides real-time and off-line closed captioning, subtitling and translation, described video, web captioning, and Spanish captioning for television and films. Created in 1979 and headquartered in Chantilly, Virginia, the organization was the first to caption live TV and home video, and holds the trademark on the display icon featuring a simple geometric rendering of a television set merged with a speech balloon to indicate that a program is captioned by National Captioning Institute. National Captioning Institute also has an office in Santa Clarita, California.

The National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) is the first and largest technological college in the world for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. As one of nine colleges within the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York, NTID provides academic programs, access, ASL in-class interpreters and support services—including on-site audiological, speech-language, and cochlear implant support. As of fall quarter 2012, NTID encompasses just under 10% of RIT's enrollment, 1259 students. Roughly 775 deaf and hard of hearing students are cross-registered into another RIT college's program with support from NTID.

Edith Mabel Nelson was a librarian known for being the first Deaf woman in the Gallaudet Hall of Fame, and the last Deaf library director at Gallaudet University.

No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie is a 2013 American drama film directed by Troy Kotsur and produced by Douglas Matejka and Hilari Scarl, with music score by H. Scott Salinas. The film stars John Maucere as Tony Kane/SuperDeafy and Zane Hencker as Jacob Lang. The film tells the story of a deaf actor who portrays a superhero on a children's television show and wants to help a young deaf boy who gets bullied at school. The film is open captioned in English.

Harvey Prindle Peet was an American educator.

Reasonable Doubts is an American police drama television series created by Robert Singer, which broadcast in the United States by NBC that ran from August 26, 1991 to April 27, 1993.

See What I'm Saying: The Deaf Entertainers Documentary is a 2009 documentary produced and directed by Hilari Scarl. It focuses on the lives of deaf artists Bob Hiltermann, TL Forsberg, CJ Jones, and Robert DeMayo and their struggles in mainstream entertainment.

Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf is a 1989 book by neurologist Oliver Sacks. The book covers a variety of topics in Deaf studies, including sign language, the neurology of deafness, the history of the treatment of Deaf Americans, and linguistic and social challenges facing the Deaf community. It also contains an eyewitness account of the March 1988 Deaf President Now student protest at Gallaudet University, the only liberal arts college for deaf and hard of hearing in the world. Seeing Voices was Sacks' fifth book.

Signing Time! is an American television program targeted towards children aged one through eight that teaches American Sign Language. It is filmed in the United States and was created by sisters Emilie Brown and Rachel Coleman, the latter of whom hosts the series. Between the years 2002 and 2008, it was aired by American Public Television in many cities across the US. Signing Time! is produced and distributed by Two Little Hands Productions, which is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sound and Fury is a documentary film released in 2000 about two American families with young deaf children and their conflict over whether or not to give their children cochlear implants, surgically implanted devices that may improve their ability to hear but may threaten their Deaf identity. The film was nominated for several awards, including an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

William C. Stokoe Jr. was an American linguist and a long-time professor at Gallaudet University. His research on American Sign Language (ASL) revolutionized the understanding of ASL in the United States and sign languages throughout the world. Stokoe's work led to a widespread recognition that sign languages are true languages, exhibiting syntax and morphology, and are not only systems of gesture.

Talk Talk is a 2006 novel by T. C. Boyle. It concerns a young deaf woman who becomes the victim of a credit card fraud and identity theft. When the police are unwilling to help, the woman and her boyfriend attempt to track down the criminal themselves.

TDI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, and was founded in 1968. Its original purpose was to promote widespread distribution of telecommunications devices for the deaf (TTY) and publish a telephone directory of those that used TTY. The organization has evolved to serve as an advocate of equal access in telecom and media for deaf and hard of hearing people. In the 1990s and 2000s, this included encouraging pay telephone providers to incorporate TTY keyboards into pay telephones.

This Close is a dramedy series written by and starring deaf creators Shoshannah Stern and Josh Feldman that premiered on Sundance Now on February 14, 2018.

The United States has been participating at the Deaflympics from 1935 and it is also currently placed first in the all time Deaflympics medal list. US has won more than 1000 medals, the only nation to do so in Deaflympics.