Minnesota’s First Deaf School (1863): The Birth of MSAD in Faribault
On September 9, 1863, an emergency trial unfolded in a rented storefront on the streets of downtown Faribault when five isolated children gathered for Minnesota’s first public deaf education classes. Amidst the Civil War and local turmoil, state leaders faced a stark moral choice: leave vulnerable wards without access to language or invest public funds to unlock human agency. In this episode of Pionerd: The Minnesota Edition, host Robert Thomas details the dramatic establishment of the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf, the fight to preserve American Sign Language against national oralist…
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