User:Nqm5156/Kendall School Division II for Negroes
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The Kendall School Division II for Negroes was a segregated school division of the Kendall School for the Deaf (now Kendall Demonstration Elementary School), and it was established after Louise B. Miller, a hearing parent of a black deaf child living in Washington, D.C., sued the Board of Education for not providing black deaf children access to education within the district's limits.[1] At the time, black deaf children were being educated at schools for the deaf that were out of town.[1] In the Miller v. Board of Education case, a judge ruled that black deaf students living in Washington, D.C. must be provided education within the district.[1] The Miller v. Board of Education case prompted the opening of the Division II school and enrollment of black deaf students in September 1952.[1][2] Given the segregated nature of the school, black deaf students and their teachers and parents had vastly different experiences compared to white deaf students, their teachers, and parents.[2][3][4][5][6][7] However, for the 1954-1955 academic year the Kendall School for the Deaf was desegregated, in response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case, which overturned the "separate but equal" doctrine previously established by the Plessy v. Ferguson case.[1][7] In 1998, a plaque was set up at the Kellogg Conference Center on Gallaudet University campus to mark the same location where the Division II classroom buildings and dormitories once stood.[8] In 2017, a discussion about the current memorial plaque on the Gallaudet University campus prompted the planning and design of a new memorial.[9]