September-October 2001

“At first Gordon refused to believe that she was deaf. When people talked to her, she read their lips and thought that she heard their voices. She could still “hear in her mind,” she said.

The Story of
Claudia Gordon

by Abi Odunlami 

Claudia Lorraine Gordon had a dream—and she made her dream come true. Gordon is an attorney. She works for the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) Law Center, fighting for the rights of deaf people.

Gordon was born in Jamaica, an island in the West Indies. When she was eight years old, she developed a severe pain in her middle ears. There were no towns or big hospitals nearby, so she went to a small health clinic. There were no doctors at the clinic and the nurse did not know what to do. When she went back home, her aunt told her that the nurse believed that she was deaf.

At first Gordon refused to believe that she was deaf. When people talked to her, she read their lips and thought that she heard their voices. She could still “hear in her mind,” she said.

But when they talked behind her back, she heard nothing at all.

“You can escape,” she says. “If you are a prisoner of other people’s expectations, you can escape. If you are a prisoner of poverty, you can escape.

Her mother, living in New York, learned about Gordon’s deafness. She brought Gordon to New York to get an education.

Gordon was pleased to go to New York.

In Jamaica, she could not go to school.

“All I did every day was stay home and do laundry,” she remembered.
In New York, she first went to public school. But she could not communicate, so she transferred to Lexington School for the Deaf. At Lexington, she felt better. She started to learn sign language.

“My world opened up,” she said.

She was involved in sports—volleyball, basketball, and track. She was also involved in the Student Body Government. She began to dream about becoming a lawyer.

People didn’t believe she could do it.

“They would give me a little pat on the head,” she said, “and let me keep talking.”

When she graduated, she decided to go to Howard University, a well-known historically black college in Washington, D.C.

“I had found my deaf culture at Lexington,” she said. “I felt I was already proudly deaf. And I wanted to explore my black culture.”

She believes that she was the first deaf undergraduate at Howard. She had to fight to get an interpreter, she said. And she did fight—all the way to the office of the Howard president.

“You have to know your rights,” said Gordon.

She graduated with a degree in political science, worked for a while, then decided to attend law school.

She graduated in 2000.

The work at NAD came soon afterward.

Gordon’s message to deaf students is always the same.

Abi Odunlami, Reporter

“You can escape,” she says. “If you are a prisoner of other people’s expectations, you can escape. If you are a prisoner of poverty, you can escape.

“You can do it.”

She escaped, she says—and you can, too.

“Attitude is the biggest disability,” she says.

Abi Odunlami is a student at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on the Gallaudet University campus in Washington, D.C.