May 28, 2014 • 32 mins
This episode breaks our rule of thumb about covering fairly recent history. In 1988, the appointment of a hearing president at Gallaudet University sparked a protest that changed the course of both the school and deaf culture in America.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class is
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web starts with your website. Welcome to Stuff you Missed
(00:23):
in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Wilson. So just really
a couple of weeks ago, we mentioned our rule of
thumb about the sort of the most recent history we
(00:44):
normally talk about, so like that's the late sixties, early
seventies usually naturally. Having just said that, just now, we're
gonna do something today that breaks that rule just a
little bit um because I've been looking for a while
for a podcast sub that was in some way related
to a disabled person or disability rights. And the trouble
(01:05):
is a lot of these stories have this distinctly inspirational overtone,
and there's this whole thread of like overcoming hardship, and
it's very presented in a way that ultimately comes off
as being like an a heartwarming, uplifting tale told too
non disabled people about a disabled person. Right, it seems
(01:28):
like a very positive take on things initially, but when
you stop and think about it, you kind of realize
that it sets up people with disabilities as other and
having to overcome things to be equal. Yeah, it's not
really how it should be. Yeah, it's not that we
never tell inspirational stories. I mean we do that pretty
(01:49):
often on the show, like when we talked about Elizabeth Blackwell,
who was the first woman to earn an empty in
the United States. That was a hugely inspirational story and
event it especial really inspired other women. But if you
told a story today about a woman going to medical school,
that would be just a story about a woman going
to medical school. Yes, However, if we told not we necessarily,
(02:13):
but like the American media, if the American media told
the story of a blind doctor in eighteen forty nine,
the tone would be pretty similar to the story of
a blind doctor. In drives me a little bit nuts, yeah,
and I know it drives other people nuts also, So
I was really I've been on the lookout for a
(02:34):
while for a story that would not fit that mold
because I kind of don't want the you know, the
podcast to contribute to that pattern of setting people up
as being inspirations for other people rather than you know,
actual human beings with agency and you know, the ability
to do things on their own. Um. Which is why
when we did that threat on Facebook a couple of
(02:55):
weeks ago that said please tell us events to talk
about and someone said death press in it now please
And I looked into what that was about. I said, Okay,
we're going to break our rule. This happened in some
of you may remember it. I don't personally remember it.
I do not either. It was national news at the time, though, uh.
And this is essentially a student protest that changed the
(03:16):
course of both Galatt University. I have also heard it
pronounced galudet with like the U sound. I've heard people
pronounce it both ways. And also deaf culture in America
that makes it sort of exciting and new. It's very
exciting and new. Definitely lake outside kind of our stuff
because it is a little more modern and researching it
(03:36):
was a very different process. Because of that, it's well
documented and recent. So for background, Galata University is a
United States school that's dedicated to the education of Deaf
and Heart of Hearing students. It's also a bilingual university
which has classes taught in both American Sign language and
in English. When it's funding comes from both federal sources
(03:59):
and non government sources. There are also a few hearing
students who enroll every year, and usually these are people
who want to have a career that's in some way
closely related to the deaf and Heart of Hearing community.
So if someone wants to teach at a school for
the deaf, or to work with organizations for the deaf,
things like that, a lot of times those people will
decide to go to college at Caladet. And in addition
(04:22):
to all of that, Galladet is also really viewed as
the heart of the deaf community and of deaf culture
in the United States. And the school started in eighteen
fifty six, so fairly recently compared to some other universities,
and that was when former Postmaster General Amos Kendall donated
some of his land outside of Washington, d C. To
start a school for blind and deaf children. And at
(04:45):
that point, schools for the deaf had really only existed
in the United States for less than forty years, so
the concept was still very new, and twelve of the
first students at Kendall School were deaf, and the other
six of the students that were enrolled that first go
around were blind. A year later, the school was incorporated
as Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and
(05:06):
dum and Blind, and the school's superintendent was Edward Minor Gallaudet,
whose father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, had founded the first permanent
school for the deaf in the United States, and that
was in Hartford, Connecticut. The elder Gallaudet had traveled around
Europe to learn about teaching methods for deaf children after
he had met a young deaf girl who really did
(05:27):
not have any access to education at all. Edwards mother,
Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was deaf and also served as the
Columbia Institution's matron. In eighteen sixty three, Congress passed a
bill to quote authorize the Columbia Institution for the Deaf
anddom and the Blind to confer degrees, and President Abraham
(05:48):
Lincoln signed this into law on April eighteen sixty four,
and so with this the Columbia Institution became the National
College for the Deaf Anddom President Lyndon Johnson signed an
act creating the Model Secondary School for the Deaf at
Galadet in nineteen sixty nine, and Richard Nixon signed a
similar bill the year after that creating an elementary school
(06:10):
for the deaf, and these two schools are actually part
of Galadet today. Acts of Congress have also continued to
shape the university, changing the name to Galadet College in
honor of Thomas Hopkins Galadet and also granting at university
status in nineteen six. Diplomas for graduates of the school
are also signed by the current president, so it's easy
(06:32):
to see all of this governmental involvement in the establishment
and development of the school as a hearing nation attempting
to see to the best interests of its deaf citizens,
and that was one of the sentiments that actually sparked
the deaf president now protest in n Another piece of
this was a schism that kind of starts with two
different schools of thought about the best way to provide
(06:54):
education for deaf people. And this goes all the way
back to the earliest days of schools for the death
on one end, where the oralists who thought that deaf
people should learn to speak and to read lips to
better fit into a hearing world. And then on the
other end of the spectrum are manualists who thought that
deaf people should learn sign language to communicate with each other.
(07:16):
Edward Minor Galladet supported the use of sign language. He
knew when you sign language because of his mother. On
the other hand, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone,
whose mother was also deaf, was completely in favor of
the oral method. So in the earliest days of education
for deaf people in the United States, educators really fiercely
(07:37):
debated which method was better, and the idea of signing
versus speaking really extended into every aspect of of people's lives.
It affected how doctors worked with deaf families, and how
parents raised their deaf children, and in some cases it
even created a schism within the deaf community itself between
the deaf people who could sign and consider themselves to
(07:59):
be what's now called culturally deaf, and the deaf people
who could not. And to add to all of this context,
every president of Galadet University had been a man who
could hear. And we'll talk more about that after a
quick word from our sponsor. So in the earliest years
after Galadet was founded, it was a legitimate claim that
(08:22):
there weren't really any deaf people in the United States
who were qualified to be president of the school, because
before that point there had been really almost no way
for a deaf person to get a college education. They're
just was no educational system for deaf people in the
United States. At Galadet and at other schools for the deaf,
whether they taught manualist or oralist methods, were overwhelmingly people
(08:46):
who could hear. Some schools for the deaf did not
allow deaf teachers at all, believing them to be unqualified
to teach deaf students. And even as we were approaching
the part of history where this protest took place, Galadet
can tenued to be taught and run mostly by hearing people.
This went on for many years of its history. By
the nineteen eighties, only about twenty percent of the faculty
(09:09):
and administrative staff were deaf. In nineteen eighty three, Galladet's
fourth president, Dr. Edward C. Merrill retired. He and all
the presidents before him had all been able to hear.
As we mentioned, he and others actually started to advocate
for a deaf president to lead the university, but that
idea really did not gain much traction. Then, between nineteen
(09:31):
eight three and nineteen eighty seven, Gallaudetts saw this series
of presidents come through in quick succession, and the resignation
of the seventh president, Jerry Lee, was really sudden and
kind of caught a lot of people by surprise. And
at that point the Board of trust Fees brought on
a consultant to try to get the best candidate for
his replacement, and it put together the search committee of faculty, staff, alumni,
(09:52):
and students. At this point, the argument that there weren't
any qualified deaf people that could be president of the
university was really completely invalid. That was gone. Uh. There
were more than one hundred deaf people in the United
States who had doctoral degrees, and many of them were
Galada alumni, as were some of the past hearing presidents,
and had experience in school administrations. So there were some options.
(10:15):
There were lots of options, and a pool of eighty
seven applicants was narrowed down to six finalists. Three of
them could hear and three of them were deaf. Those
six finalists were then narrowed down to three. Dr Harvey
Corson was a deaf man who was superintendent of the
Louisiana School for the Deaf. Dr I King Jordan was
a deaf man who was at the time serving as
(10:37):
Galadet's dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. And
Elizabeth Zenzer was a hearing woman who was assistant chancellor
of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. So at
this point we had two of the three final candidates
who were deaf. The student body, the faculty, and alumni,
along with many deaf advocacy groups, had been lobbying for
(10:57):
quite some time for the university to have a deaf press,
isn't it. They had also been getting letters of support
from people like then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush,
then Senators Bob Dole of Kansas and Bob Graham of Florida,
and other politicians supporting the idea of putting a deaf
person into the presidency. Here's part of George Bush's letter
(11:18):
on the matter. I've become aware of the two basic
principles that underlie the disability rights movement. The right of
disabled people to control their own lives and the right
to integration and involvement in society. Galadat University has a
critical role to play in advancing these principles. It is
held in the highest regard by deaf people throughout the
United States and the world. It provides an excellent education
(11:41):
and a meaningful future for thousands of deaf persons. More importantly,
Galada University is a symbol of leadership and opportunity not
only for deaf people, but for all of us. His
letter also points out that considering how Galadat is funded
by the federal government, it has an obligation to set
an example in this matter. Um the sentiment he's kind
(12:02):
of expressing here a lot of times people here today
expressed as nothing about us without us, which is basically,
don't you go making laws for people without consulting those
people about those laws. You may be well intentioned, but
not well informed. Well, and I feel like we should say, uh,
everyone involved in this story had good intentions, Like there
(12:24):
was nobody who was setting out to just make the
make the deaf community suffer. That's not what anybody had
in mind. No, and I'm sure everyone making decisions they
weren't just you know, throwaway decisions. They were considering them thoughtfully,
but sometimes not always with all of the best information.
A right A letter from the student body government informing
(12:46):
the faculty of a rally being planned to support the
selection of a deaf president began. The idea of a
deaf person being named president of this university is exceptionally
important to us and to the entire community of people
concerned with deafness and education, and in our view, now
demands our action. So the students had been rallying for
a week in advance of the announcement of who the
(13:08):
next president would be. They had been distributing flyers, even
camping out on the president's lawn. The student body president,
Greg Libak, wrote to Zenzor and asked her to withdraw
her candidacy, which would have guaranteed that the next president
would be deaf. The text of a flyer for a
rally that was held on March first reads as It's time.
(13:28):
In eighteen forty two, a Roman Catholic became president of
the University of Notre Dame. In eighteen seventy five, a
woman became president of Wellesley College. In eighteen seventy five,
a Jew became president of Yeshiva University. In nineteen twenty six,
a black person became president of Howard University, and in
nine the Galludet University presidency belongs to a deaf person.
(13:51):
To show our solidarity behind our mandate for a deaf
person of our university, you are invited to participate in
a historical all caps rally. So basically, everyone, seemingly everyone involved,
was really behind the idea of a deaf person being
named president. And with all of these factors combined, like
(14:13):
with such a huge outpouring of advocacy on the part
of the student body and the alumni and everyone else, uh,
and you know, the Vice President of the United States
and senators and all of these other people saying that
we really think this is what's time. People pretty much
thought that what was going to happen was that either
Dr Corson or Dr Jordans, the two deaf candidates, one
(14:34):
of them would be selected as president. However, on March
the six the Board of Trustees announced that the next
president of Gallaudet would be Dr Elizabeth Senser. So basically
everyone had been expecting the Board of Trustees to announce
a deaf president, and what everyone was also expecting and
had been planning for, was for the Board of Trustees
(14:56):
to come to the campus to announce the new president.
But instead, what they did they sent out press releases
at six thirty in the morning, which was about an
hour and a half before anybody thought the announcement was
going to come. Does not perhaps surprising to find out
that the reaction was immediate and it was huge. People
were furious. A crowd had already been forming to wait
(15:18):
for the announcement, and at the encouragement of Gary Olsen
from the National Association of the Deaf, they spontaneously marched
to the hotel where the board had been meeting to
demand an explanation. When they got there, there was basically
a press conference going on the chair of the board,
James Spillman, and Phil Braman, who was one of the
deaf trustees, were answering questions from reporters, and the protesters
(15:40):
interrupted and demanded to speak to the board. Eventually, some
of the protesters were allowed to meet with the board,
and during that meeting, Spillman allegedly said that deaf people
could not function in the hearing world. She denied ever
having said this, claiming that it was a misunderstanding by
her interpreter. Regardless, it really solidified opinion against her, and
(16:01):
many people cited it in letters and speeches afterwards. So
she actually said it or not, it still really was
a big black park became hugely associated with her, and
there are lots and lots of letters that were sent
to the board or to newspapers or things like that
that or like anyone who would say this should not
be running the school death. So as protesters talked to
(16:22):
the board, they didn't reach any kind of agreement, and
eventually the crowd dispersed, but by the morning, a full
scale civil rights protest was in the works. That gallod
It students were holding sit ins, they boycotted, they held
rallies and marches, they wrote letters and supported their objectives
UM and in their letters and their speeches and their
addresses that they gave people framed this as a civil
(16:44):
rights issue. UH. And additionally to all of that, they
blocked access to the campus by forming a human chain
to keep the faculty and administrators out, effectively shutting things down.
And as the news spread UH civil rights leader Reverend
Jesse Jackson wrote letter of support to the students of
the university. This is a portion of it. The Board
(17:04):
of Trustees has an obligation to respond to student concerns
with sensitivity. There is no time to resolve this dispute equitably.
The problem is not that the students do not hear.
The problem is that the hearing world does not listen.
The entire nation owes the students of Galadat its gratitude
for reminding us once again that each of us has
the ability and the right to achieve I urged the
(17:26):
Board of the university to move forward and recognize the
justice of its students demands. By the day after the announcement,
the protesters had created a list of these four demands
to present to the board. They were Number one, Elizabeth
Zenser must resign and a deaf person be elected president.
Number two, James Spillman must step down as chairperson of
(17:48):
the Board of Trustees. Number three, deaf people must constitute
a fifty majority on the board. And number four, there
would be no reprisals against any student or employee involved
in the protest. These demands were presented to the board
in a three hour long meeting. However, the board did
not yield, so following that meeting, uh. The board had
(18:11):
planned to make an announcement in the university auditorium basically
saying that they were not yielding their position, but before
Spellman could begin, a deaf faculty member named Harvey Goodstein
came on stage and announced it himself, and he encouraged
everyone to leave, which they did and spontaneously marched to
the Capitol Building and held an impromptu rally there. I'm
(18:32):
not sure if we have said that the school is
basically in Washington, d C. So a lot of the
rallying and protesting happened sort of in the context of
these huge, important government buildings for the government of the
United States. And the next day was Tuesday, March eight,
and while the campus was open, most of the students
boycotted their classes. It was about this time that the
(18:53):
protests formed the Deaf president Now Council, which included representatives
from the student body, the fact gualty, the staff, alumni,
as well as people who worked as interpreters, fundraisers, and
legal liaisons. Greg Libach, president of the student body, became
one of the protests prominent leaders. Also among the students
leading the protests were Jerry Covell and Brigitta Bourne, who
(19:15):
had been running mates to lead the student government, and
Tim Rariss, who was majoring in government, and together they
were all known as the Galadet four cited frequently is
like the foremost prominent student leaders of the protest, and
the protest was really ongoing, it became national news. And
as these meetings and protests and rallies went on, with
(19:37):
both sides becoming just more and more entrenched in their stances.
Greg Libok, Elizabeth Sencer, and actress Marley Matlin appeared on
ABC's Nightline on Wednesday, March ninth, talk about the protest.
Nightline closed captioned the broadcast for all viewers, with anchor
Ted Copple saying it was because the network had learned
that many deaf people did not actually have access to
(19:58):
close captioning. You can see the on YouTube today. Pretty cool,
which is also kind of one of the weird things
about working on this episode is like footage that still
exists of the easy, easy to find and watch at
your desk. Um. So, after several days of protests and
(20:18):
boycotts and sit ins and marches and rallies and letters,
Elizabeth Senser announced her resignation on the night of March tenth,
and so for a sort of a brief moment, all
of these rallies of protest briefly turned to celebration. But
the students also recognize that they still had a long
way to go. A lot of them started wearing buttons
that said three and a half, since at this point
(20:40):
only half of one of their four demands had actually
been met. And at this point it was Friday and
spring break was scheduled to start, but many students decided
to stay on campus. The start of the weekend was
fairly quiet, and then the board reconvened on Sunday. That night,
the board held one last press conference, and that's the
event in which they made a number of announcements. The
(21:03):
first was that James Spellman had resigned as the board chair.
The second was that Phil Braven, who was deaf, had
been named as her replacement. The third was that a
task force was going to be established, and that task
force's job would be to figure out the best way
to get of the Board of Directors to be comprised
of deaf people. They also announced that there would be
(21:24):
no reprisals for the people who had been participating in
the protest and Their last announcement was that I King
Jordan's would be the next president. And in the words
of Greg Libach quote, now we have respect, we have everything.
It's just the beginning for all of us. And in
the words of Jerry Koble, he said, dp N has
(21:44):
profoundly and significantly affected my life. It made me more
committed to serve my people. It made me more determined
to have America and the public accept and respect deaf people.
Allow deaf people to control their destiny, and preserve the beauty, tradition,
and values of our culture and language. The ultimate goal
is to see deaf people empower themselves and know their rights,
(22:05):
resulting in necessary changes in all walks of life. So,
in addition to serving as President, I King Jordan actually
became a huge advocate for deaf people and for the
disabled community in general. He was a lead witness in
support of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Kind of interesting
side note about his story is that he was able
(22:26):
to hear when he was born, and he became deaf
as a result of an accident when he was in
his early twenties. He was a young man UH and
he enrolled at Gallatt as a deaf person that he
did not yet know how to sign, so he sort
of had to learn how to do sign language and
(22:47):
everything else at the same time as he was studying
at university. I would think that would be extremely stressful,
and I think that was extremely stressful. He actually did
this talk at my alma mater, which I found on
the internet, which I'll just makes it a weird circle
of events where he talks about this story and talks
about how there were some people who were very patient
with him and some people who were not h in
(23:08):
part because of the schism that we've talked about before
between manual and oral instruction. There were people who um
really firmly believed that being taught sign language was the
only way to do it, and we're not really patient
with someone who knew how to speak and not sign.
So anyway, uh. Following DPN, a number of other laws
(23:28):
were passed that gave the deaf community better access to
jobs and schools and technology, as well as legal protection.
And the five years after the protest was over, there
were more laws and bills passed related to the rights
of the deaf community and access to resources and education
that had been passed in the entire previous history of
the United States as a nation, and the protests also
(23:49):
united the deaf community in many ways. So the schism
between oralists and manualists has continued until today, with deaf
people who know sign language sometimes considering themselves quote culturally deaf,
while people who speak and read lips are not. Tim Raris,
who was one of the galladet for described it this
way quote. Before d p N, I was not one
(24:11):
to interact with deaf people who were not culturally deaf,
like myself. Deaf people have a history of fighting among themselves.
Yet during dp N we all work together for that
common goal a deaf president. Never mind the mode of
communication our president would choose or his background, as long
as he was deaf, and together we accomplished that goal.
So today, most children who are deaf UH learn sign language.
(24:34):
There's there's much less debate on the front of UH,
do I teach a child sign language or do I not?
A much bigger debate now is about cochlear implants, and
that is a whole other issue that we're not going
to talk about on this podcast. You know, that's like
a can of worms, both medical and cultural. They're beyond
the scope of today's way outside of the scope I
(24:57):
King Jordan was president of Gallaudet until December already first
two thousand and six, and in a weird twist of events,
after having been this, you know, this historic person put
into this role, the end of his tenure as president
was also marked with protests, as the student body objected
to the way the search um for his replacement was
(25:18):
handled and for the candidate that was selected for that
as well. Um, that story does not have quite the
civil rights implications as this one did, but uh, it
was kind of an odd thing to have his entire
time as president kind of bookended by these two massive
student protests. Yeah, part of it. I mean, having worked
(25:38):
in the university, I can imagine that since he served
for roughly eighteen years, they haven't had to put together
one of those committees yea, So it becomes kind of
a starting from scratch every time. Even if you have guidelines,
it's still most of the people that are in those
positions have never done that job before searching for somebody.
He did have a long tenure, so I can't imagined
(26:00):
there would be some what do we do this? And
students feel strongly about their universities, which is good. I
remember being just all angry about various administrative decisions when
I was in college. I know, mom, It's okay. Yeah,
I was busy with other things. Do you have listener
(26:24):
mail for us? Do you have listener mail our our
listener mails from Ashlyn who wrote to us. I'm surprised
she was able to write a letter of this link
as quickly as it came after the episode that it's about,
which is our our phone? It was lickety split, it
really was. I would like to did we give you
an advanced copy of this? Um, I'm not trying to
tease you. I really was happy about this, so Ashlyn says.
(26:47):
I'm a graduate student working on a PhD in genetics,
so I love when you guys do episodes on science
related history. I also love to spot all the other
topics you guys pick. But I'm also a huge history nerd. Anyway,
I just listened to your flu epidemic episo it and
I had a few things I thought you might find interesting.
The first is about one idea as to why the
flu epidemic killed so many healthy young people who would
normally deal well with the illness. One leading hypothesis is
(27:10):
that the nineteen eighteen flu triggered an immune response that
was much stronger than usual. Young people typically have much
more robust immune systems than children and the elderly, which
is why the latter groups are the usual fatalities during epidemics.
In the nineteen eighteen flu epidemic, however, a strong immune
system worked as a disadvantage. The immune systems of young
(27:30):
people essentially overreacted to the nineteen eighteen flu, leading to
massive levels of inflammation of the lungs that cause fluid
build up conducive to bacterial infection. Additionally, the inflammation could
be so strong that patients would stop breathing. On the
right side, our medical knowledge and technology is better today,
and this type of immune system overreaction is better treated.
So holly, even if you do get some kind of
(27:52):
crazy flu, you're much more likely to get better, especially
because you're over paranoia or paranoia, and help you get
to the doctor early. Another interesting thing is the way
our modern flu vaccines are made. This is a thing
side note that I knew but we didn't say, and
so I was glad someone wrote to us to give
us an excuse to talk about it. Now, the flu
travels around the globe each year, with the cycle starting
(28:14):
in China. Producing the vaccine takes a long time eight
months of memory serves, and so the vaccine producers have
to guess what strains will hit the US far in advance.
They do this by looking at the flu strains that
are active in China as the global flu cycle starts up.
Usually those strands end up coming over to the US
and the vaccines are effective. Other times, the flu strains
mutate before they get to the US, or a different
(28:35):
strain makes a late surge. In this case, the vaccine
is much less effective. The last thing I wanted to
write to you about is and this is the thing
that made me want to read the letter the most.
The plague incorporating game that Tracy mentioned. It is a
siultaneously super fun and kind of creepy since the goal
is to wipe out the human race. Every time I
do it. Every time I beat a level, I would
(28:55):
think victory. OMG, I just killed millons of people. I'm
a monster. Do it again. And but fear not, Tracy,
there are several flaws in the science of the game
that make a plague inc style infection unlikely. The biggest
problem is the mutation feature in the game. You click
a button that allows you to turn your points, which
you earn for infecting and killing people seeing creepy and mutations.
(29:17):
For all the bacteria that are already infecting people in
real life and entire population in bacteria can't pick up
a new mutation all at once. Bacteria mutate on the
individual level, so a super deadly bug wouldn't be able
to infect people silently then suddenly switched to kill mode
by mutating. Any deadly mutations would have to start up
in one location and then spread so we'd have a
better chance at containing it. So it's not very advantageous
(29:40):
for a pathogen to be super deadly in the first place.
Over time, most diseases involved to be less deadly. This
makes sense if you think like a bacteria. If you
infect and kill someone in a single day, you don't
have much time to spread to other people. If you
make someone mildly sick for two weeks so they can
go to work in the movies, you can infect all
kinds of people. Really deadly diseases are the ones usually
(30:02):
in animals and then switch over to infecting humans. They
haven't had time to get better at not killing people.
That's why swine flu and avian flu, which are not
used to infecting people, are worse than the regular flu
that's been infecting people forever. And then she went on
with some other ideas for future podcasts. Thank you so much, Ashland. Yes,
(30:23):
reassuring and informative. Yes, I played. I played that game.
They have scenarios now in in that game where you
can play as various things, and I played one on
the airplane last night that was basically black plague to
play um and it always makes me a little nervous
(30:43):
to play it on the airplane because you're looking at
this little screen that has countries slowly going red and
planes flying on it, and I'm always afraid someone's gonna
think I'm doing something nefarious could be but I'm not. Also,
I think playing something like that on a plane, when
you're basically trapped in the steel tube with a bunch
of other people who may or may not be carrying credit,
(31:04):
adds an extra layer of paranoyant. Yes, So you'd like
to write to us about this or anything else, or
a history podcast at Discovery dot com or Facebook is
Facebook dot com slash mist in history and doct twitter
is miss in history. Are Tumbler is miss in history
at dot tumbler dot com. At our pinterest is pentest
dot com slash missed in history. If you would like
(31:26):
to learn more about what we've talked about today, you
can come to our website and you can put the
word sign language in the search bar and you will
find an article called how sign language Works. You can
do that and I'll pull up more at how stuff
works dot com. And you can find us at misston
history dot com for more on this and thousands of
(31:47):
other topics because it has stuff works dot com
This episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class is
brought to you by Squarespace, the all in one platform
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web starts with your website. Welcome to Stuff you Missed
(00:23):
in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Wilson. So just really
a couple of weeks ago, we mentioned our rule of
thumb about the sort of the most recent history we
(00:44):
normally talk about, so like that's the late sixties, early
seventies usually naturally. Having just said that, just now, we're
gonna do something today that breaks that rule just a
little bit um because I've been looking for a while
for a podcast sub that was in some way related
to a disabled person or disability rights. And the trouble
(01:05):
is a lot of these stories have this distinctly inspirational overtone,
and there's this whole thread of like overcoming hardship, and
it's very presented in a way that ultimately comes off
as being like an a heartwarming, uplifting tale told too
non disabled people about a disabled person. Right, it seems
(01:28):
like a very positive take on things initially, but when
you stop and think about it, you kind of realize
that it sets up people with disabilities as other and
having to overcome things to be equal. Yeah, it's not
really how it should be. Yeah, it's not that we
never tell inspirational stories. I mean we do that pretty
(01:49):
often on the show, like when we talked about Elizabeth Blackwell,
who was the first woman to earn an empty in
the United States. That was a hugely inspirational story and
event it especial really inspired other women. But if you
told a story today about a woman going to medical school,
that would be just a story about a woman going
to medical school. Yes, However, if we told not we necessarily,
(02:13):
but like the American media, if the American media told
the story of a blind doctor in eighteen forty nine,
the tone would be pretty similar to the story of
a blind doctor. In drives me a little bit nuts, yeah,
and I know it drives other people nuts also, So
I was really I've been on the lookout for a
(02:34):
while for a story that would not fit that mold
because I kind of don't want the you know, the
podcast to contribute to that pattern of setting people up
as being inspirations for other people rather than you know,
actual human beings with agency and you know, the ability
to do things on their own. Um. Which is why
when we did that threat on Facebook a couple of
(02:55):
weeks ago that said please tell us events to talk
about and someone said death press in it now please
And I looked into what that was about. I said, Okay,
we're going to break our rule. This happened in some
of you may remember it. I don't personally remember it.
I do not either. It was national news at the time, though, uh.
And this is essentially a student protest that changed the
(03:16):
course of both Galatt University. I have also heard it
pronounced galudet with like the U sound. I've heard people
pronounce it both ways. And also deaf culture in America
that makes it sort of exciting and new. It's very
exciting and new. Definitely lake outside kind of our stuff
because it is a little more modern and researching it
(03:36):
was a very different process. Because of that, it's well
documented and recent. So for background, Galata University is a
United States school that's dedicated to the education of Deaf
and Heart of Hearing students. It's also a bilingual university
which has classes taught in both American Sign language and
in English. When it's funding comes from both federal sources
(03:59):
and non government sources. There are also a few hearing
students who enroll every year, and usually these are people
who want to have a career that's in some way
closely related to the deaf and Heart of Hearing community.
So if someone wants to teach at a school for
the deaf, or to work with organizations for the deaf,
things like that, a lot of times those people will
decide to go to college at Caladet. And in addition
(04:22):
to all of that, Galladet is also really viewed as
the heart of the deaf community and of deaf culture
in the United States. And the school started in eighteen
fifty six, so fairly recently compared to some other universities,
and that was when former Postmaster General Amos Kendall donated
some of his land outside of Washington, d C. To
start a school for blind and deaf children. And at
(04:45):
that point, schools for the deaf had really only existed
in the United States for less than forty years, so
the concept was still very new, and twelve of the
first students at Kendall School were deaf, and the other
six of the students that were enrolled that first go
around were blind. A year later, the school was incorporated
as Columbia Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and
(05:06):
dum and Blind, and the school's superintendent was Edward Minor Gallaudet,
whose father, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, had founded the first permanent
school for the deaf in the United States, and that
was in Hartford, Connecticut. The elder Gallaudet had traveled around
Europe to learn about teaching methods for deaf children after
he had met a young deaf girl who really did
(05:27):
not have any access to education at all. Edwards mother,
Sophia Fowler Gallaudet, was deaf and also served as the
Columbia Institution's matron. In eighteen sixty three, Congress passed a
bill to quote authorize the Columbia Institution for the Deaf
anddom and the Blind to confer degrees, and President Abraham
(05:48):
Lincoln signed this into law on April eighteen sixty four,
and so with this the Columbia Institution became the National
College for the Deaf Anddom President Lyndon Johnson signed an
act creating the Model Secondary School for the Deaf at
Galadet in nineteen sixty nine, and Richard Nixon signed a
similar bill the year after that creating an elementary school
(06:10):
for the deaf, and these two schools are actually part
of Galadet today. Acts of Congress have also continued to
shape the university, changing the name to Galadet College in
honor of Thomas Hopkins Galadet and also granting at university
status in nineteen six. Diplomas for graduates of the school
are also signed by the current president, so it's easy
(06:32):
to see all of this governmental involvement in the establishment
and development of the school as a hearing nation attempting
to see to the best interests of its deaf citizens,
and that was one of the sentiments that actually sparked
the deaf president now protest in n Another piece of
this was a schism that kind of starts with two
different schools of thought about the best way to provide
(06:54):
education for deaf people. And this goes all the way
back to the earliest days of schools for the death
on one end, where the oralists who thought that deaf
people should learn to speak and to read lips to
better fit into a hearing world. And then on the
other end of the spectrum are manualists who thought that
deaf people should learn sign language to communicate with each other.
(07:16):
Edward Minor Galladet supported the use of sign language. He
knew when you sign language because of his mother. On
the other hand, Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone,
whose mother was also deaf, was completely in favor of
the oral method. So in the earliest days of education
for deaf people in the United States, educators really fiercely
(07:37):
debated which method was better, and the idea of signing
versus speaking really extended into every aspect of of people's lives.
It affected how doctors worked with deaf families, and how
parents raised their deaf children, and in some cases it
even created a schism within the deaf community itself between
the deaf people who could sign and consider themselves to
(07:59):
be what's now called culturally deaf, and the deaf people
who could not. And to add to all of this context,
every president of Galadet University had been a man who
could hear. And we'll talk more about that after a
quick word from our sponsor. So in the earliest years
after Galadet was founded, it was a legitimate claim that
(08:22):
there weren't really any deaf people in the United States
who were qualified to be president of the school, because
before that point there had been really almost no way
for a deaf person to get a college education. They're
just was no educational system for deaf people in the
United States. At Galadet and at other schools for the deaf,
whether they taught manualist or oralist methods, were overwhelmingly people
(08:46):
who could hear. Some schools for the deaf did not
allow deaf teachers at all, believing them to be unqualified
to teach deaf students. And even as we were approaching
the part of history where this protest took place, Galadet
can tenued to be taught and run mostly by hearing people.
This went on for many years of its history. By
the nineteen eighties, only about twenty percent of the faculty
(09:09):
and administrative staff were deaf. In nineteen eighty three, Galladet's
fourth president, Dr. Edward C. Merrill retired. He and all
the presidents before him had all been able to hear.
As we mentioned, he and others actually started to advocate
for a deaf president to lead the university, but that
idea really did not gain much traction. Then, between nineteen
(09:31):
eight three and nineteen eighty seven, Gallaudetts saw this series
of presidents come through in quick succession, and the resignation
of the seventh president, Jerry Lee, was really sudden and
kind of caught a lot of people by surprise. And
at that point the Board of trust Fees brought on
a consultant to try to get the best candidate for
his replacement, and it put together the search committee of faculty, staff, alumni,
(09:52):
and students. At this point, the argument that there weren't
any qualified deaf people that could be president of the
university was really completely invalid. That was gone. Uh. There
were more than one hundred deaf people in the United
States who had doctoral degrees, and many of them were
Galada alumni, as were some of the past hearing presidents,
and had experience in school administrations. So there were some options.
(10:15):
There were lots of options, and a pool of eighty
seven applicants was narrowed down to six finalists. Three of
them could hear and three of them were deaf. Those
six finalists were then narrowed down to three. Dr Harvey
Corson was a deaf man who was superintendent of the
Louisiana School for the Deaf. Dr I King Jordan was
a deaf man who was at the time serving as
(10:37):
Galadet's dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. And
Elizabeth Zenzer was a hearing woman who was assistant chancellor
of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. So at
this point we had two of the three final candidates
who were deaf. The student body, the faculty, and alumni,
along with many deaf advocacy groups, had been lobbying for
(10:57):
quite some time for the university to have a deaf press,
isn't it. They had also been getting letters of support
from people like then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush,
then Senators Bob Dole of Kansas and Bob Graham of Florida,
and other politicians supporting the idea of putting a deaf
person into the presidency. Here's part of George Bush's letter
(11:18):
on the matter. I've become aware of the two basic
principles that underlie the disability rights movement. The right of
disabled people to control their own lives and the right
to integration and involvement in society. Galadat University has a
critical role to play in advancing these principles. It is
held in the highest regard by deaf people throughout the
United States and the world. It provides an excellent education
(11:41):
and a meaningful future for thousands of deaf persons. More importantly,
Galada University is a symbol of leadership and opportunity not
only for deaf people, but for all of us. His
letter also points out that considering how Galadat is funded
by the federal government, it has an obligation to set
an example in this matter. Um the sentiment he's kind
(12:02):
of expressing here a lot of times people here today
expressed as nothing about us without us, which is basically,
don't you go making laws for people without consulting those
people about those laws. You may be well intentioned, but
not well informed. Well, and I feel like we should say, uh,
everyone involved in this story had good intentions, Like there
(12:24):
was nobody who was setting out to just make the
make the deaf community suffer. That's not what anybody had
in mind. No, and I'm sure everyone making decisions they
weren't just you know, throwaway decisions. They were considering them thoughtfully,
but sometimes not always with all of the best information.
A right A letter from the student body government informing
(12:46):
the faculty of a rally being planned to support the
selection of a deaf president began. The idea of a
deaf person being named president of this university is exceptionally
important to us and to the entire community of people
concerned with deafness and education, and in our view, now
demands our action. So the students had been rallying for
a week in advance of the announcement of who the
(13:08):
next president would be. They had been distributing flyers, even
camping out on the president's lawn. The student body president,
Greg Libak, wrote to Zenzor and asked her to withdraw
her candidacy, which would have guaranteed that the next president
would be deaf. The text of a flyer for a
rally that was held on March first reads as It's time.
(13:28):
In eighteen forty two, a Roman Catholic became president of
the University of Notre Dame. In eighteen seventy five, a
woman became president of Wellesley College. In eighteen seventy five,
a Jew became president of Yeshiva University. In nineteen twenty six,
a black person became president of Howard University, and in
nine the Galludet University presidency belongs to a deaf person.
(13:51):
To show our solidarity behind our mandate for a deaf
person of our university, you are invited to participate in
a historical all caps rally. So basically, everyone, seemingly everyone involved,
was really behind the idea of a deaf person being
named president. And with all of these factors combined, like
(14:13):
with such a huge outpouring of advocacy on the part
of the student body and the alumni and everyone else, uh,
and you know, the Vice President of the United States
and senators and all of these other people saying that
we really think this is what's time. People pretty much
thought that what was going to happen was that either
Dr Corson or Dr Jordans, the two deaf candidates, one
(14:34):
of them would be selected as president. However, on March
the six the Board of Trustees announced that the next
president of Gallaudet would be Dr Elizabeth Senser. So basically
everyone had been expecting the Board of Trustees to announce
a deaf president, and what everyone was also expecting and
had been planning for, was for the Board of Trustees
(14:56):
to come to the campus to announce the new president.
But instead, what they did they sent out press releases
at six thirty in the morning, which was about an
hour and a half before anybody thought the announcement was
going to come. Does not perhaps surprising to find out
that the reaction was immediate and it was huge. People
were furious. A crowd had already been forming to wait
(15:18):
for the announcement, and at the encouragement of Gary Olsen
from the National Association of the Deaf, they spontaneously marched
to the hotel where the board had been meeting to
demand an explanation. When they got there, there was basically
a press conference going on the chair of the board,
James Spillman, and Phil Braman, who was one of the
deaf trustees, were answering questions from reporters, and the protesters
(15:40):
interrupted and demanded to speak to the board. Eventually, some
of the protesters were allowed to meet with the board,
and during that meeting, Spillman allegedly said that deaf people
could not function in the hearing world. She denied ever
having said this, claiming that it was a misunderstanding by
her interpreter. Regardless, it really solidified opinion against her, and
(16:01):
many people cited it in letters and speeches afterwards. So
she actually said it or not, it still really was
a big black park became hugely associated with her, and
there are lots and lots of letters that were sent
to the board or to newspapers or things like that
that or like anyone who would say this should not
be running the school death. So as protesters talked to
(16:22):
the board, they didn't reach any kind of agreement, and
eventually the crowd dispersed, but by the morning, a full
scale civil rights protest was in the works. That gallod
It students were holding sit ins, they boycotted, they held
rallies and marches, they wrote letters and supported their objectives
UM and in their letters and their speeches and their
addresses that they gave people framed this as a civil
(16:44):
rights issue. UH. And additionally to all of that, they
blocked access to the campus by forming a human chain
to keep the faculty and administrators out, effectively shutting things down.
And as the news spread UH civil rights leader Reverend
Jesse Jackson wrote letter of support to the students of
the university. This is a portion of it. The Board
(17:04):
of Trustees has an obligation to respond to student concerns
with sensitivity. There is no time to resolve this dispute equitably.
The problem is not that the students do not hear.
The problem is that the hearing world does not listen.
The entire nation owes the students of Galadat its gratitude
for reminding us once again that each of us has
the ability and the right to achieve I urged the
(17:26):
Board of the university to move forward and recognize the
justice of its students demands. By the day after the announcement,
the protesters had created a list of these four demands
to present to the board. They were Number one, Elizabeth
Zenser must resign and a deaf person be elected president.
Number two, James Spillman must step down as chairperson of
(17:48):
the Board of Trustees. Number three, deaf people must constitute
a fifty majority on the board. And number four, there
would be no reprisals against any student or employee involved
in the protest. These demands were presented to the board
in a three hour long meeting. However, the board did
not yield, so following that meeting, uh. The board had
(18:11):
planned to make an announcement in the university auditorium basically
saying that they were not yielding their position, but before
Spellman could begin, a deaf faculty member named Harvey Goodstein
came on stage and announced it himself, and he encouraged
everyone to leave, which they did and spontaneously marched to
the Capitol Building and held an impromptu rally there. I'm
(18:32):
not sure if we have said that the school is
basically in Washington, d C. So a lot of the
rallying and protesting happened sort of in the context of
these huge, important government buildings for the government of the
United States. And the next day was Tuesday, March eight,
and while the campus was open, most of the students
boycotted their classes. It was about this time that the
(18:53):
protests formed the Deaf president Now Council, which included representatives
from the student body, the fact gualty, the staff, alumni,
as well as people who worked as interpreters, fundraisers, and
legal liaisons. Greg Libach, president of the student body, became
one of the protests prominent leaders. Also among the students
leading the protests were Jerry Covell and Brigitta Bourne, who
(19:15):
had been running mates to lead the student government, and
Tim Rariss, who was majoring in government, and together they
were all known as the Galadet four cited frequently is
like the foremost prominent student leaders of the protest, and
the protest was really ongoing, it became national news. And
as these meetings and protests and rallies went on, with
(19:37):
both sides becoming just more and more entrenched in their stances.
Greg Libok, Elizabeth Sencer, and actress Marley Matlin appeared on
ABC's Nightline on Wednesday, March ninth, talk about the protest.
Nightline closed captioned the broadcast for all viewers, with anchor
Ted Copple saying it was because the network had learned
that many deaf people did not actually have access to
(19:58):
close captioning. You can see the on YouTube today. Pretty cool,
which is also kind of one of the weird things
about working on this episode is like footage that still
exists of the easy, easy to find and watch at
your desk. Um. So, after several days of protests and
(20:18):
boycotts and sit ins and marches and rallies and letters,
Elizabeth Senser announced her resignation on the night of March tenth,
and so for a sort of a brief moment, all
of these rallies of protest briefly turned to celebration. But
the students also recognize that they still had a long
way to go. A lot of them started wearing buttons
that said three and a half, since at this point
(20:40):
only half of one of their four demands had actually
been met. And at this point it was Friday and
spring break was scheduled to start, but many students decided
to stay on campus. The start of the weekend was
fairly quiet, and then the board reconvened on Sunday. That night,
the board held one last press conference, and that's the
event in which they made a number of announcements. The
(21:03):
first was that James Spellman had resigned as the board chair.
The second was that Phil Braven, who was deaf, had
been named as her replacement. The third was that a
task force was going to be established, and that task
force's job would be to figure out the best way
to get of the Board of Directors to be comprised
of deaf people. They also announced that there would be
(21:24):
no reprisals for the people who had been participating in
the protest and Their last announcement was that I King
Jordan's would be the next president. And in the words
of Greg Libach quote, now we have respect, we have everything.
It's just the beginning for all of us. And in
the words of Jerry Koble, he said, dp N has
(21:44):
profoundly and significantly affected my life. It made me more
committed to serve my people. It made me more determined
to have America and the public accept and respect deaf people.
Allow deaf people to control their destiny, and preserve the beauty, tradition,
and values of our culture and language. The ultimate goal
is to see deaf people empower themselves and know their rights,
(22:05):
resulting in necessary changes in all walks of life. So,
in addition to serving as President, I King Jordan actually
became a huge advocate for deaf people and for the
disabled community in general. He was a lead witness in
support of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Kind of interesting
side note about his story is that he was able
(22:26):
to hear when he was born, and he became deaf
as a result of an accident when he was in
his early twenties. He was a young man UH and
he enrolled at Gallatt as a deaf person that he
did not yet know how to sign, so he sort
of had to learn how to do sign language and
(22:47):
everything else at the same time as he was studying
at university. I would think that would be extremely stressful,
and I think that was extremely stressful. He actually did
this talk at my alma mater, which I found on
the internet, which I'll just makes it a weird circle
of events where he talks about this story and talks
about how there were some people who were very patient
with him and some people who were not h in
(23:08):
part because of the schism that we've talked about before
between manual and oral instruction. There were people who um
really firmly believed that being taught sign language was the
only way to do it, and we're not really patient
with someone who knew how to speak and not sign.
So anyway, uh. Following DPN, a number of other laws
(23:28):
were passed that gave the deaf community better access to
jobs and schools and technology, as well as legal protection.
And the five years after the protest was over, there
were more laws and bills passed related to the rights
of the deaf community and access to resources and education
that had been passed in the entire previous history of
the United States as a nation, and the protests also
(23:49):
united the deaf community in many ways. So the schism
between oralists and manualists has continued until today, with deaf
people who know sign language sometimes considering themselves quote culturally deaf,
while people who speak and read lips are not. Tim Raris,
who was one of the galladet for described it this
way quote. Before d p N, I was not one
(24:11):
to interact with deaf people who were not culturally deaf,
like myself. Deaf people have a history of fighting among themselves.
Yet during dp N we all work together for that
common goal a deaf president. Never mind the mode of
communication our president would choose or his background, as long
as he was deaf, and together we accomplished that goal.
So today, most children who are deaf UH learn sign language.
(24:34):
There's there's much less debate on the front of UH,
do I teach a child sign language or do I not?
A much bigger debate now is about cochlear implants, and
that is a whole other issue that we're not going
to talk about on this podcast. You know, that's like
a can of worms, both medical and cultural. They're beyond
the scope of today's way outside of the scope I
(24:57):
King Jordan was president of Gallaudet until December already first
two thousand and six, and in a weird twist of events,
after having been this, you know, this historic person put
into this role, the end of his tenure as president
was also marked with protests, as the student body objected
to the way the search um for his replacement was
(25:18):
handled and for the candidate that was selected for that
as well. Um, that story does not have quite the
civil rights implications as this one did, but uh, it
was kind of an odd thing to have his entire
time as president kind of bookended by these two massive
student protests. Yeah, part of it. I mean, having worked
(25:38):
in the university, I can imagine that since he served
for roughly eighteen years, they haven't had to put together
one of those committees yea, So it becomes kind of
a starting from scratch every time. Even if you have guidelines,
it's still most of the people that are in those
positions have never done that job before searching for somebody.
He did have a long tenure, so I can't imagined
(26:00):
there would be some what do we do this? And
students feel strongly about their universities, which is good. I
remember being just all angry about various administrative decisions when
I was in college. I know, mom, It's okay. Yeah,
I was busy with other things. Do you have listener
(26:24):
mail for us? Do you have listener mail our our
listener mails from Ashlyn who wrote to us. I'm surprised
she was able to write a letter of this link
as quickly as it came after the episode that it's about,
which is our our phone? It was lickety split, it
really was. I would like to did we give you
an advanced copy of this? Um, I'm not trying to
tease you. I really was happy about this, so Ashlyn says.
(26:47):
I'm a graduate student working on a PhD in genetics,
so I love when you guys do episodes on science
related history. I also love to spot all the other
topics you guys pick. But I'm also a huge history nerd. Anyway,
I just listened to your flu epidemic episo it and
I had a few things I thought you might find interesting.
The first is about one idea as to why the
flu epidemic killed so many healthy young people who would
normally deal well with the illness. One leading hypothesis is
(27:10):
that the nineteen eighteen flu triggered an immune response that
was much stronger than usual. Young people typically have much
more robust immune systems than children and the elderly, which
is why the latter groups are the usual fatalities during epidemics.
In the nineteen eighteen flu epidemic, however, a strong immune
system worked as a disadvantage. The immune systems of young
(27:30):
people essentially overreacted to the nineteen eighteen flu, leading to
massive levels of inflammation of the lungs that cause fluid
build up conducive to bacterial infection. Additionally, the inflammation could
be so strong that patients would stop breathing. On the
right side, our medical knowledge and technology is better today,
and this type of immune system overreaction is better treated.
So holly, even if you do get some kind of
(27:52):
crazy flu, you're much more likely to get better, especially
because you're over paranoia or paranoia, and help you get
to the doctor early. Another interesting thing is the way
our modern flu vaccines are made. This is a thing
side note that I knew but we didn't say, and
so I was glad someone wrote to us to give
us an excuse to talk about it. Now, the flu
travels around the globe each year, with the cycle starting
(28:14):
in China. Producing the vaccine takes a long time eight
months of memory serves, and so the vaccine producers have
to guess what strains will hit the US far in advance.
They do this by looking at the flu strains that
are active in China as the global flu cycle starts up.
Usually those strands end up coming over to the US
and the vaccines are effective. Other times, the flu strains
mutate before they get to the US, or a different
(28:35):
strain makes a late surge. In this case, the vaccine
is much less effective. The last thing I wanted to
write to you about is and this is the thing
that made me want to read the letter the most.
The plague incorporating game that Tracy mentioned. It is a
siultaneously super fun and kind of creepy since the goal
is to wipe out the human race. Every time I
do it. Every time I beat a level, I would
(28:55):
think victory. OMG, I just killed millons of people. I'm
a monster. Do it again. And but fear not, Tracy,
there are several flaws in the science of the game
that make a plague inc style infection unlikely. The biggest
problem is the mutation feature in the game. You click
a button that allows you to turn your points, which
you earn for infecting and killing people seeing creepy and mutations.
(29:17):
For all the bacteria that are already infecting people in
real life and entire population in bacteria can't pick up
a new mutation all at once. Bacteria mutate on the
individual level, so a super deadly bug wouldn't be able
to infect people silently then suddenly switched to kill mode
by mutating. Any deadly mutations would have to start up
in one location and then spread so we'd have a
better chance at containing it. So it's not very advantageous
(29:40):
for a pathogen to be super deadly in the first place.
Over time, most diseases involved to be less deadly. This
makes sense if you think like a bacteria. If you
infect and kill someone in a single day, you don't
have much time to spread to other people. If you
make someone mildly sick for two weeks so they can
go to work in the movies, you can infect all
kinds of people. Really deadly diseases are the ones usually
(30:02):
in animals and then switch over to infecting humans. They
haven't had time to get better at not killing people.
That's why swine flu and avian flu, which are not
used to infecting people, are worse than the regular flu
that's been infecting people forever. And then she went on
with some other ideas for future podcasts. Thank you so much, Ashland. Yes,
(30:23):
reassuring and informative. Yes, I played. I played that game.
They have scenarios now in in that game where you
can play as various things, and I played one on
the airplane last night that was basically black plague to
play um and it always makes me a little nervous
(30:43):
to play it on the airplane because you're looking at
this little screen that has countries slowly going red and
planes flying on it, and I'm always afraid someone's gonna
think I'm doing something nefarious could be but I'm not. Also,
I think playing something like that on a plane, when
you're basically trapped in the steel tube with a bunch
of other people who may or may not be carrying credit,
(31:04):
adds an extra layer of paranoyant. Yes, So you'd like
to write to us about this or anything else, or
a history podcast at Discovery dot com or Facebook is
Facebook dot com slash mist in history and doct twitter
is miss in history. Are Tumbler is miss in history
at dot tumbler dot com. At our pinterest is pentest
dot com slash missed in history. If you would like
(31:26):
to learn more about what we've talked about today, you
can come to our website and you can put the
word sign language in the search bar and you will
find an article called how sign language Works. You can
do that and I'll pull up more at how stuff
works dot com. And you can find us at misston
history dot com for more on this and thousands of
(31:47):
other topics because it has stuff works dot com
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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