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22. “Sixth Annual Report—Year of 1917,” Jewish Deaf (February 1918): 45–49; “Eighth Annual Report—Year of 1919,” Jewish Deaf (February 1920): 50–73.

23. On these and other churches, see Otto Berg, A Missionary Chronicle, Being a History of the Ministry to the Deaf in the Episcopal Church, 1850–1980 (Hollywood, Md.: St. Mary’s Press, 1984).

24. Women were active participants in the founding of state and national organizations but were generally excluded from positions of recognized leadership. Thirteen women joined sixty-eight men at the founding of the NAD. Only males were selected for leadership roles. See “Proceedings of the First National Convention of Deaf-Mutes,” [Pamphlet] (New York: New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, 1880), 41–43.

25. Deaf leaders opposed uniform oral instruction for all students—not oral communication itself. After all, many deaf leaders of the era were late-deafened and regularly used their voices in communication with hearing adults.

26. Edward Miner Gallaudet died in September 1917, three months after Gaillard’s visit. He was eighty-one.

27. Not unexpectedly, Gaillard makes little mention of the racial divide that defined not only the deaf community but also the nation at that time. After all, formal segregation was the law of the land and widely reinforced in American society and culture. While we know today that African Americans and their allies regularly resisted segregation, broad disavowal of Jim Crow would not come till the latter part of the century—and then, only grudgingly.

28. On the efforts of women to enlarge their standing in state and national organizations see, Robert Buchanan, Deaf Students and Workers in the United States, 1800–1950 (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995).

29. The Goodyear Corporation was but one of several industrial employers that actively recruited deaf workers during the World War I era. In Ohio and elsewhere across the nation, not only during this era but also again during World War II, employers opened their doors to groups of workers previously shunned, including women, African Americans and other workers of color as well as deaf and disabled individuals. For reference see Buchanan, Illusions of Equality, 69–85.

30. Harry Best, Deafness and the Deaf in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 192, 508. Best cited data from the 1910 and 1920 census indicating that 88.6 percent of white school-aged children attended school. Among African American children, however, the figure dropped to 63.9 percent—and that is likely optimistic. Overall, few private or public schools reported consistent, dependable data regarding the graduation rates of their students. Moreover, the archival information available to contemporary researchers, while invaluable, is uneven at best.