A Clemson shout out on Martha’s Vineyard

A recent partnership between a Clemson University Sign Language faculty member and students has produced special recognition on Martha’s Vineyard, island off the Massachusetts coast.  An exhibit on the Vineyard’s deep-rooted ties to the deaf community in the 19th and 20th century is displayed in the island museum.  A sign inside that museum “gratefully” acknowledges the contributions of assistant professor of American Sign Language Jody Cripps and his students in the helping shape the exhibit.  Cripps led more than one dozen students to Massachusetts as part of a Creative Inquiry to start a community outreach program to help revive Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language.  Research determined deaf settlers arrived there in the late 1690s and spread out into the towns if Chilmark and West Tisbury.  The deaf language effectively evaporated there when the last resident who knew and used the language died in 1952.