Nebraska School for the Deaf

The ban began as Senate File 173, introduced on February 1, 1911 to require oral, aural and lip-reading instruction to the exclusion of sign, and Governor Aldrich signed it that May. Superintendent Frank Booth wrote that he hoped to do away with signing outside the schoolroom as well. Sign came back gradually from the fall of 1970, but the Legislature repealed the law only in March 1977. After the closing the state sold the 23-acre campus to the Genesis Foundation for $2.5 million, and its 11 buildings joined the National Register on June 10, 2019.

What the plaque says

Nebraska School for the Deaf The Nebraska School for the Deaf was established by the legislature in 1867. It opened April 1, 1869, on Twenty-Second Street between St. Mary and Leavenworth, overseen by Principal William DeCoursey French, a deaf man, and Rev. Henry W. Kuhns. Katie Callahan of Omaha was the first student. The school moved to this location in 1871. American Sign Language (ASL) was the mode of in- struction until the Nebraska Legislature banned it from the classroom in 1911. The change was advocated by oralists, who believed the deaf should learn to communicate by voice and lip-reading to better assimilate into society. Nevertheless, students and faculty persisted in using ASL outside the classroom until it was restored to the curriculum in the 1970s. Among the school's achievements was its 1931 Class A state championship boys' basketball team. By the 1990s the trend of enrolling deaf children in public schools caused the school's student population to decline and it closed June 5, 1998. For 129 years the School for the Deaf educated more than two thousand students who achieved success in many walks of life. Nebraska School for the Deaf Alumni Association Nebraska State Historical Society, 2012 Nebraska Deaf Heritage Museum and Cultural Center

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Malcolm X Birthsite — 0.9 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 2.5 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 3.4 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 3.6 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Malcolm "X" — 0.9 mi
• Historic Prospect Hill--Omaha's Pioneer Cemetery — 1.2 mi
• Duchesne Academy — 1.5 mi
• George and Sarah Joslyn Home — 1.8 mi