(From The Silent Worker, March 1927 by Joseph Lacy Sewell, page 169)

Looking through the past in the United States, whether is there any Negro people/children with disabilities in the past or not? The answer was YES!
I came across one peculiar interest to me and it was about the lawyer who was deaf and mute. His name is Roger Demosthenes O’Kelly and he became blind first but his eyesight restored until he lost his hearing. He lost his left eyesight during playing football for the second time.

  North Carolina School for the Deaf and Blind Colo(u)red Youths School.

Roger chose his middle name which was rather unusual from the Greek times, “Demosthenes”.  Demosthenes was a Greek statesman and an orator of Ancient Athens. He is best known for his political speeches on the need to resist the aggressive tendencies of Philip II of Macedon (the Philippics). Did you know that Demosthense’s disability – stuttering and he practice speaking while running and practices his speeches at the beach by speaking louder than the sound of the ocean?

I pasted one of his quotes – “Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self; for what we wish, that we readily believe; but such expectations are often inconsistent with the real state of things.” ~ Demosthenes

Roger born in the same year as Helen Keller and the banning of our Sign Language in Milan in 1880. Roger learnt to do manual sign language to become one of three Deaf lawyers in America and he got his law degree from Yale University in 1908.  Roger opened his own legal service firm – ‘O’Kelly’s Legal Bureau’ in Raleigh, North Carolina and Granite Quarry, North Carolina. He served for the African-American community. His manual sign language was the heritage language to develop knowledge of the language and intellectual skills. Roger obtained a license from the Supreme Court to practice law in North Carolina.

Extract from the newspaper – Wadesboro, North Carolina dated May 20, 1909 on page 4…. “That brave determination in this deaf and dumb negro youth, with only one eye and his success, should be told as an incentive to the highest endeavour to young men endowed with every faculty and advantage. his brave statement “I’ve got one good eye yet and I’ll make it anyhow” was heroic …. Please note the word ‘negro’ was in the newspaper and it was for research purposes and I hope it is not intended to offend anyone.

Did you know that Roger listed for the Carnegie hero medal with the Carnegie Hero Fund Award? According to the newspaper, “..He is known both races feel that such heroism gives him a place with those who have won Carnegie hero medals.” The awards founded in 1904 and there is a website which can be found at “Carnegie Hero on the Web, https://www.carnegiehero.org/

Sadly, Roger O’Kelly was not listed in the Carnegie Hero BUT he deserved one.

Roger married to Goldie Weaver in 1920 and they have no children. He died in 1962, Georgetown, South Carolina.