● Deaf Black Lives Matter group honors sanitation workers.

In 2017, Kiera Mcghee was pregnant when she noticed something going on behind her car. She pulled over, nervous when officers began to approach her.

“I tried to write to them, that I am deaf,” Mcghee signed. She recalled that officers said they didn’t realize she was deaf, and apologized for startling her. But it was a moment that highlighted the risks she faces as a Black woman who is also deaf. What would happen to her child if she had died?

“That is a risk of ours,” Mcghee said. “We don’t want to lose our children in the future. And that’s one thing that deaf people do experience. So not just Black lives matter, but deaf Black lives matter.”

Mcghee organized a march that began at the National Civil Rights Museum and culminated at the I Am A Man Plaza, where she recalled her story to the Commercial Appeal with the assistance of Paul Forrest and Bridgette Mize, interpreters with Bridgeswest.

She and a group of about 30 others wanted to join the hearing Black community to fight for equality and an end to racism. Protests against police brutality and systemic racism have taken place for 18 days in Memphis.

“We’re doing a march of silence,” Mcghee said. “No justice, no peace. And we’re adding, equality and justice for the deaf.”

They also honored Memphis’ Black deaf sanitation workers who came before them, including William Stewart, who recently died.

“We want to honor them today with our march, because they were the ones who led this originally, that first march with Martin Luther King Jr.,” Mcghee said.

The injustices Black people face are in many ways more pronounced for Black people who are also deaf. Misunderstandings between deaf people and hearing law enforcement officers have led to some deaf people experiencing police brutality and in some cases being killed during interactions with law enforcement, Mcghee explained.

“When you’re getting pulled over, they say ‘Put your hands up,’ but we’re trying to sign and they think we’re becoming violent when we’re actually just signing, trying to communicate,” she said.

Mcghee wants freedom for the deaf community: “Freedom to use their hands, freedom to use their facial expressions, to prevent officers from misunderstanding what we’re trying to say and not getting shot.”

She hopes locally, law enforcement can work with interpreting organizations, like Bridgeswest.

Mcghee also called for improvements for deaf people who are incarcerated. Many don’t have access to interpreters, she said. Without ways to communicate, they are isolated.

“We’ve had enough of that ... If they don’t listen we’re going to continue to fight and not give up so that the deaf community can have equal respect and rights for ourselves,” she said.

Mcghee called on local officials, including the mayor, to investigate community relationships between the hearing and deaf communities.

Deaf people have a hard time securing jobs, education and access to health care, she said, obstacles that are more pronounced for Black deaf people.

“A lot of people do want equal access, but just because we can’t hear, they call us disabled, and we can’t get hired,” said Tawana Whalum, who joined the march with her daughters. “A lot of hearing people do not understand that the deaf culture have all the abilities they have except for hearing. We have the technology to help us to be on the equal par as well. So we’re trying to fight for our rights, that we can do everything that a hearing person can do as well.”

Mcghee also marched with her daughter, Mizya.

“I want her to see who her mother is,” she said, “that a deaf woman can have this kind of power and ability to lead.”