A Fair Chance in the Race of Life: The Role of Gallaudet University in Deaf History

4. The Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell Statue: Controversies and Celebrations

4 The Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell Statue: Controversies and Celebrations Michael J. Olson Editors’ Introduction Michael J. Olson’s meticulously researched article directly challenges benign interpretations of Edward Miner Gallaudet’s presidency. Drawing heavily from primary sources, Olson looks at a previously unexplored controversy that sparked intense debate among American deaf leaders in the late 19th century and raised troublesome questions about Gallaudet’s commitment to equality for deaf people. Olson depicts Gallaudet as ironfisted and essentially absolute in his decisions. Gallaudet operated under the guise of hosting an open competition to hire a sculptor to create a statue of his father and Alice Cogswell, but, Olson shows, even before receiving proposals from deaf candidates, he had already commissioned the wellknown hearing artist, Daniel Chester French, for the job. Olson’s research suggests that audism and paternalism were characteristics of Gallaudet’s first president. IN 1883, AT THE SECOND CONVENTION of the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), held in New York City, C. K. W. Strong, a Deaf member from Washington, D.C., proposed that the NAD sponsor the erection of a bronze statue of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet on the 100th anniversary of Gallaudet’s birth in 1887. The statue would be situated on the grounds of the National Deaf-Mute College—soon to become Gallaudet College —at Kendall Green.1 The resolution passed, and the NAD formed a committee of fifteen members to manage the project. The next conven33 34 Michael J. Olson tion was to be held in Washington, D.C., in August 1888, at which time the new statue would be unveiled.2 No one could have anticipated the controversy this project would entail or the insight that it provides into the Deaf community and the actions of Edward Miner Gallaudet, the college’s first president. The controversy created not only friction between some of the nation’s prominent Deaf leaders of the time but also involved identity struggles over a hearing sculptor being chosen to create Gallaudet University’s iconic statue. Lars M. Larson, an 1882 graduate of Gallaudet, initiated the first controversy . He made no objection to having the statue erected, but he argued that the statue should not be located in Washington, D.C. He thought that it should be erected in Hartford, Connecticut, where Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, Laurent Clerc, and Mason Fitch Cogswell founded the first school for the deaf, eventually called the American School for the Deaf.3 Others countered that the statue should be situated in Washington, D.C., where Deaf people from all over the United States could come to view the statue instead of going to remote Hartford. Some believed that the nation’s capital was the most fitting place for such memorials and statues. Also, they argued, Kendall Green, site of the national college, was the ideal place.4 The Larson controversy lasted for a month but eventually faded away. A Gallaudet Centennial Commission was formed in November 1883 to collect funds for the statue and to arrange the time and place for holding the celebrations honoring the centennial of Thomas H. Gallaudet ’s birth. The committee members then appointed agents and subagents for each state and territory of the United States to collect contributions . Their preliminary fund-raising goal was not less than $2,500. It was impossible to know the exact amount needed, since they had not selected an artist to design the statue. The members of the committee chose Theodore A. Froehlich of New York City as their chairman and William H. Weeks to be the commission treasurer.5 The fund became known as the Gallaudet Centennial Memorial Fund (hereafter, the Memorial Fund). Pennsylvania quickly announced that they had formed a committee to select their own agents to solicit funds, but not before more controversy erupted.6 An anguished correspondent wrote in the November 1883 National Deaf-Mute Leader that he felt that it was not necessary for Deaf people to contribute money to erect another monument in honor of Thomas H. Gallaudet, as there was already a monument to his memory in Hartford. He suggested dropping the idea and starting a new movement. Instead The Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Alice Cogswell Statue 35 of raising funds for a Gallaudet memorial, Deaf people would collect money for a monument to be erected in honor of an unnamed person in his native Vermont.7 The Gallaudet memorial project nevertheless went ahead...