Employment: Labor Bureaus

The turn of the century brought new employment opportunities and challenges to deaf workers and leaders across the United States. Would deaf citizens gain access to and secure opportunities in the growing field of manufacturing as they had sought in agriculture and as skilled artisans? What was needed to enable eager deaf workers to succeed in this new era? The previous half century had brought notable gains as Deaf leaders, joined by hearing allies, constructed an impressive network of schools that provided educational and employment skills for often isolated deaf women and men.

Deaf leaders understood that most employers knew little about the education, training, and potential of the deaf citizens gathering in urban areas and in proximity to the residential schools that had brought them ...