- Kimberley Guillemet
Geraldine “Jerrie” Lawhorn was a leader in the American deafblind community, a performer, actress, pianist, and an instructor. She was also the first deafblind African American person to earn a college degree in the United States.
Ms. Lawhorn was born on December 31, 1916, in Dayton, Ohio, to musicians Pearl Walker and William Bert Lawhorn. She was about eight years old when doctors discovered she had an eye condition. Shortly thereafter, Ms. Lawhorn learned Braille, but remained in classes with sighted students. Her integration at school was challenging in that her classmates booed, stigmatized, and discriminated against her.
Despite this adversity, Ms. Lawhorn persisted with her education, graduating with honors from Marshall High School. Upon graduating, Ms. Lawhorn became interested in writing and public speaking and won several prizes for her short stories.
At 19 years old, Ms. Lawhorn completely lost her hearing which prompted her to learn a new mode of communication: the One-Hand Alphabet. She did not allow this new challenge to deter her from writing. In fact, she continued entering and winning writing contests. She took a course at Columbia University and then went on to write a novel entitled The Needle Swingers' Baby.
In 1942, Ms. Lawhorn was admitted to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, where she studied for four years. She performed monologues at the United Service Organization’s programs. She launched a one-woman show entitled Projected Hearts, and performed at Carnegie Hall.
After years as a performer, Ms. Lawhorn was offered a teaching position at the Hadley Institute for the Blind and Visually Impaired. She would serve as an instructor for the Hadley Institute for over 40 years.
Obtaining a college degree was a lifelong goal for Ms. Lawhorn, but she had encountered incredible discrimination related to her disabilities and ethnicity whenever she had attempted to achieve this goal in the past. Through a friend, she learned about the University Without Walls program that many colleges offered. She applied to this program and was accepted at Northeastern Illinois University.
On March 23, 1983, Ms. Lawhorn earned her Bachelor's Degree in Rehabilitation of Deafblind Adults from Northeastern Illinois University. At the age of 67, she became the first deafblind African American person to graduate from college. She became only the sixth deafblind person in the United States to earn that achievement.
Ms. Lawhorn was featured on several nationwide television shows in celebration of her achievements. She was known for her optimism, tenacity and encouragement of deafblind people. In 1991, she wrote her autobiography entitled On Different Roads, which was a source of inspiration for the 2005 movie Black by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
To learn more about Ms. Lawhorn’s enduring life and legacy, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldine_Lawhorn and: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/7/7/18325421/geraldine-lawhorn-author-performer-teacher-deaf-blind-pioneer and: https://ps-af.facebook.com/HeritASL/videos/geraldine-Ms. Lawhorn-lawhorn/635082203940072/.
- Kimberley Guillemet
- Gerald Chertavian
One day at lunch several years ago, I ran into a more senior colleague in the parking garage. She had always been friendly with me and despite our ethnic and other differences, we had forged a professional friendship. We stopped for a moment to chat. She asked if anything was new with me and I shared with her some news of a work assignment I had received.
“That might be a bit tricky for you,” my colleague said in the kindest voice she could muster. I suppose she meant to convey concern.
I didn’t respond.
“Not because you’re not smart or anything,” she quickly tried to explain. “It’s just that you need to focus on other things you normally do and shouldn’t worry about this type of issue. It’s really complicated. You know? It’s also kind of a big deal. I wouldn’t want you to be stressed while trying to handle this issue properly. Our supervisor must not have realized that he was assigning it to you. I think you should check with him to make sure that he meant for it to be assigned to you. You know, just to make sure that it wasn’t a mistake.”
I was quiet as I pondered how to respond.
While keeping a smile plastered on my face, I eventually said, “Thanks so much for your concern. I’ll look into it.” With that, I ended the conversation.
As I walked away, I thought about what had just transpired. Admittedly, when I initially received the assignment, it did take me by surprise. Not because I thought I was incapable of doing it, but because it was outside of the scope of the work that I generally did.
However, I was taken aback by this particular colleague’s overblown expression of concern. She thought I lacked the chops to competently handle this assignment.
I wondered to myself: did this colleague genuinely think that she was protecting me from my inevitable fate of failure or was there some other more nefarious intent behind her words? Did she actually want to undermine me and make me second guess my ability for some other reason?
Both prospects were troubling.
If her goal was to “protect me” from what she saw as my inevitable failure by telling me that I was not suited to handle an issue because it was “really complicated,” then she had a lot to learn about the impact of low expectations.[1]
If her goal was to get me to abandon the assignment in a fit of despair so that it would free it up for someone else to take it, like her, that was even worse.
Either way, I had no intention of being complicit in her scheme. Her mission would not be accomplished.
I am no stranger to people underestimating my abilities and if you’re reading this blog, I suspect that you are not either. Being underestimated is hurtful, but we have to choose how to respond when it happens. My colleague’s words did initially sting. I had come to respect her opinion as a more senior colleague. It was quite sobering for her to question my ability to handle an assignment. But after I digested the bitter pill of the reality of my colleague’s true opinion of my abilities, I remembered all of the people who had gone before me who had not only been underestimated, but actually restricted from participating in certain civic, professional and social opportunities. People like our World Changer of the Month for September, Geraldine Lawhorn, who was a deafblind singer, pianist, author and teacher, as well as the first deafblind African American individual to earn a college degree in the United States. Given that she was a Black woman with two disabilities born in 1916, I can only imagine how many times she was told that people like her could not achieve, yet, she persisted.
The memory of Geraldine Lawhorn and so many other women who had gone before me and had accomplished so much despite encountering so much more opposition than I had, reminded me that not only could I forge ahead with that particular assignment, but that I had a responsibility to those who would come after me to do so.
We must keep forging ahead.If we don’t blaze trails for ourselves, who will?You never know who you will inspire
[1] It is well-established that expectations matter and that expectations forecast outcomes. Studies show that teachers’ expectations of students influence outcomes by becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. (See https://www.educationnext.org/power-of-teacher-expectations-racial-bias-hinders-student-attainment/.)
The Honorable Constance Baker Motley was the first African American woman to ever be appointed to the federal judiciary. She was born September 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut to working class parents who were immigrants from the Caribbean Island Nevis. Baker Motley showed an affinity toward civil rights early on and became involved in community activism alongside her mother during her teenage years. After hearing her speak at a community event, local businessman and philanthropist Clarence W. Blakeslee offered to pay for her college education.
Baker Motley began college at Fisk University, but later transferred to and graduated from New York University. She earned her law degree from Columbia University School of Law in 1946. Early in her legal career, Baker Motley joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) as a civil rights lawyer, becoming the LDF’s first female attorney. She was the lead trial attorney in a number of early and significant civil rights cases, representing Martin Luther King Jr., the Freedom Riders, and the Birmingham Children Marchers. She was lead counsel and principal strategist on all of the LDF’s major school and lunch counter desegregation cases, including the landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education. In 1962, she became the first African American woman ever to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court when she represented James Meredith in Meredith v. Fair. Because of her efforts, James Meredith became the first African American student to attend the University of Mississippi.
In 1964, Baker Motley became the first African American woman ever elected to the New York State Senate.
When Baker Motley was appointed to the federal judiciary in 1966, she became the first African American woman ever appointed to that bench. In 1982, she became the first woman and the first African American to serve as the Chief Judge for the Southern District of New York, the largest federal trial bench in the country. She assumed senior status on September 30, 1986. Her service terminated upon her death on September 28, 2005.
To learn more about Judge Baker Motley’s trailblazing life and legacy visit:
https://blackhistory.news.columbia.edu/people/constance-baker-motley and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Baker_Motley.
To view footage chronicling her life, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t74Jhj7Q5oM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_qT7pZMQ20.
