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    Andrew Foster The Gallaudet of Africa

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    Zedrick Roy Canlas
    Andrew Foster was born deaf and became the first black student accepted to Gallaudet College, then went on to found schools and churches for deaf people across Africa, opening a total of 31 schools in 17 countries before dying in a plane crash in Rwanda at age 62 while continuing his missionary work.

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    Andrew Foster The Gallaudet of Africa

    Uploaded by

    Zedrick Roy Canlas
    31 views1 page
    Andrew Foster was born deaf and became the first black student accepted to Gallaudet College, then went on to found schools and churches for deaf people across Africa, opening a total of 31 schools in 17 countries before dying in a plane crash in Rwanda at age 62 while continuing his missionary work.

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    Andrew Foster was born deaf and became the first black student accepted to Gallaudet College, then went on to found schools and churches for deaf people across Africa, opening a total of 31 schools in 17 countries before dying in a plane crash in Rwanda at age 62 while continuing his missionary work.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as txt, pdf, or txt
    31 views1 page

    Andrew Foster The Gallaudet of Africa

    Uploaded by

    Zedrick Roy Canlas
    Andrew Foster was born deaf and became the first black student accepted to Gallaudet College, then went on to found schools and churches for deaf people across Africa, opening a total of 31 schools in 17 countries before dying in a plane crash in Rwanda at age 62 while continuing his missionary work.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    ndrew Foster was born in 1925 in Ensley Alabama.

    When he was 11 years old he


    contracted spinal meningitis and became deaf. He attended the Alabama school for
    the colored deaf in Talladega and when he was 16 he went to high school at the
    Michigan school for the deaf. His family was deeply religious and he found his true
    calling, to become a missionary. Andrew wanted to become a missionary in Africa but
    he knew he needed an education so he wrote to Gallaudet college and they not only
    accepted him they gave him a full scholarship. He knew he wanted to better the
    lives of deaf people around the world and concentrated on the idea of Africa.
    Andrew Foster was the first black student to ever have been accepted. He graduated
    Gallaudet in 1954 and went on to receive two masters degrees one from Michigan
    State and one from Seattle Pacific University. Andrew wanted to become a missionary
    but they would not accept him because he was black. Andrew not only had to deal
    with people not understanding him because he was deaf but he also had to deal with
    the rampant racism in the United States at that time. Andrew decided not to wait
    for existing missionary groups to accept him he raise money and started his own
    missionary church. Andrew traveled for the first time to Africa in the remote
    country of Liberia in 1957.

    The daily lives of deaf people in Africa was even worse than the United States.
    When he first arrived the African officials told him that deaf people did not exist
    in Africa. Many people believed that deaf children were cursed and parents would
    leave them in the wilderness to be eaten by animals. There was no education
    available for deaf children in Africa and many Africans believed that the deaf were
    unable to be educated. Africa was a poor country and they did not want to use what
    little resources they had to teach children many felt would never have a future
    anyway. Instead of building new schools Andrew worked hard building relationships
    with schools that were already open and during off times he rented out the school
    teaching deaf children. In the next 30 years Andrew foster would travel back and
    forth to Africa hundreds of times. He raised millions of dollars over the years. He
    opened up a total of 31 schools in 17 countries in Africa. Many have called Andrew
    foster the Gallaudet of Africa. He also opened churches, camps and teacher training
    facilities for the deaf. Many of these schools are still open today. In 1970
    Gallaudet University honored Andrew with an honorary doctorate in humane letters.
    In 1987 Andrew was on a small plane traveling between schools in Africa when it
    crashed in Rwanda. Andrew was 62 years old. The mission he started in Africa is
    still going strong in his legacy lives on in the tens of thousands of deaf Africans
    who have him to thank for his lifelong effort.

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