Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850-1950

7. ‘‘To Stand on Their Own’’: Looking to the Future

7 ‘‘To Stand on Their Own’’ Looking to the Future World War II ushered in an era of unparalleled industrial opportunity for the nation’s sixty thousand deaf workers, who were suddenly in demand.1 As one acerbic deaf commentator noted, ‘‘[t]he deaf come into their rights only when the world is in a midst of a terrible human holocaust.’’2 Almost from the outset, deaf people were aware that the war would not continue forever and looked ahead to the postwar era. In 1942, Arthur Roberts, president of the National Fraternal Society of the Deaf (NFSD) worried that industrial leaders would exclude deaf employees after the war. He asked if it would take an ‘‘interplanetary eruption’’ to convince future employers that deaf adults were capable workers.3 Between 1941 and 1946, in the midst of wartime prosperity, deaf Americans participated in a divisive debate over strategies for sustaining their economic position after the war. They contested three points in particular: (1) whether to join other citizens with disabilities who also sought a stable position in the private work force, (2) whether to support federal intervention to secure private-sector jobs, and (3) whether to have the federal government assume supervision of the nation’s uneven and incomplete system of vocational training and general education for deaf people. The debates waged and decisions made during this pivotal period deeply influenced deaf students and workers for decades afterward. F Conservative deaf leaders opposed federal intervention in the private sector. Akron’s Ben Schowe, chairman of the Industrial Committee of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), argued that deaf 102 Looking to the Future 103 adults put themselves at risk by relying on state or federal agencies and administrators, and noted that during the Depression government administrators had hindered deaf workers almost as much as they had helped. If deaf workers were to advance, he argued, they needed to bypass government and educate business leaders to see that it was in their interest to hire deaf applicants.4 In short, the model of industrial employment demonstrated in Akron during World War I should be used for the nation as a whole.5 As the United States edged toward war in 1941, Jay Cooke Howard, leader of the recently established bureau for deaf workers in Michigan, sided with Schowe, adding that federal intervention could drive away friendly employers who would misinterpret their activity as evidence that deaf adults needed state protection and were incapable of succeeding on their own.6 At the other end of the spectrum, a small contingent of deaf leaders and individuals demanded federal intervention on behalf of deaf workers. Leaders of New York’s Empire State Association of the Deaf (ESA) were among the first to petition the Roosevelt administration, writing to the president and federal agencies to demand that training opportunities and employment programs include deaf adults.7 In late June 1941, Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), a council mandated to prohibit discrimination by all federal agencies, unions, and companies engaged in war-related work. At the same time, an entrepreneur with an all-deaf workforce urged the government to mandate that federal contracts be directed to firms with deaf workers.8 By the fall of 1941, another deaf adult urged the deaf community to practice the vigorous activism exemplified by A. Philip Randolph and other African Americans whose efforts had been pivotal in establishing the FEPC. Denver resident Richard Fraser wrote to NAD president Thomas Anderson urging him to mobilize members and demand that Roosevelt ‘‘open the Defense doors to the Deaf’’ as he had done for African Americans. However, he warned, ‘‘we can expect hard times after the war is over. No doubt of it.’’9 Several individuals from outside the deaf community also called for deaf people to align with disabled Americans and to pressure the federal government and industry into providing employment. One day before the nation entered the war, for example, Anderson received 104 ‘‘To Stand on Their Own’’ a letter from H. Jay McMahon, a private citizen who had recently lost a leg, urging him to link the NAD to workers with disabilities and to spearhead a national publicity drive.10 McMahon was not alone in endorsing an alliance of deaf adults and other people with disabilities. Harvey Barnes, an instructor at the residential school in Illinois, also urged Anderson to endorse a coalition of...