George W. Veditz and the National Association
of the Deaf
Motion Picture Project
George W. Veditz, a son of German
immigrants, became deaf at the age of eight as a result of scarlet fever. He graduated from Gallaudet College in 1884, where he enjoyed a distinguished
academic career in his quest to become a teacher of deaf students. While at Gallaudet, Veditz was accepted for graduate-level studies at Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore, but chose instead to begin his career as a teacher. He taught at both the Maryland and
Colorado Schools for the Deaf.
It was through his involvement in the Colorado State
Association of the Deaf and his presidency of the National Association of the
Deaf that Veditz became alarmed at the encroachment
of oralism on the use of American Sign Language in American schools
for the deaf. He was concerned
that lingering effects of the infamous 1881 Milan Conference, where educators
of the deaf from around the world decided to ban sign language in favor of lipreading and speech, would sound the death knell of sign
language. To a fighter like Veditz this was totally
unacceptable.
Alerting deaf people throughout the country, Veditz and his colleagues spearheaded a campaign to raise $5,000.00 to fund
the National Association of the Deaf Motion Picture Project that would film
eminent deaf and hearing speakers using sign language in an effort to make sure
sign language in its purest form would be preserved for posterity. Between 1910 and 1920, the project,
which was coordinated largely by Roy J. Stewart,1 an 1899 graduate of
Gallaudet, filmed such well known masters of sign language as deaf Gallaudet
professors John B. Hotchkiss and Amos Draper. Gallaudet administrators Edward Miner Gallaudet and Edward
Allen Fay were also filmed, as were other signers such as the deaf principal of the New York
School for the Deaf at Fanwood, Thomas F. Fox, and Robert P. McGregor, the
first president of the National Association of the Deaf.2 Renditions of
poems, rhetorical speeches, sermons, and stories of the old days all captured
on film were included in this project.
Veditz, who called deaf people “People of the eye, first,
last and all the time” realized that the medium of film was the perfect vehicle
for preserving sign language. He
reasoned that signs could not accurately be portrayed three dimensionally through
drawings, no matter how detailed, whereas film would show the exact movement,
context, beauty and meaning. The
National Association of the Deaf Motion Picture Project was the first recorded
instance of deaf people themselves becoming writers, producers, directors, and
performers in films, which was no mean feat in the infancy of the motion
picture industry. The result of
this project was a series of films that withstood the ravages of time long
enough to be digitally copied for the enjoyment of audiences today.
Sources:
1.
National Association of the Deaf: Proceedings of the
9th Biennial Convention; Colorado
Springs, CO; August 6-13, 1910, at page 99.
2.
Van Cleve, John
Vickery and Crouch, Barry A., A Place of
Their Own; Creating the Deaf Community in America, Washington, D.C.,
Gallaudet University Press 1989, 141.
3. “National Association of the Deaf Motion Picture Project: Address by George W. Veditz,” National Association of the Deaf; 16mm Motion Picture; National Association of the Deaf, Distributors, 1913
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