Edith Mansford Fitzgerald

Edith Mansford Fitzgerald (1877–1940) was a deaf American woman who invented a system for the deaf to learn proper placement of words in the construction of sentences. Her method, which was known as the 'Fitzgerald Key,' was used to teach those with hearing disabilities in three-quarters of the schools in the United States.

Biography Edith Mansford Fitzgerald was born in 1877 in Memphis, Tennessee. After attending public schools, she believed that her disability stunted her learning process. At these schools, she was taught through the method of lip reading. Later on, she enrolled in the Illinois School for the Deaf in Jacksonville, Illinois. After graduating, she then attended Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. completing her B.A. in 1903 and graduated as valedictorian of her class.

Career Fitzgerald began teaching soon after her graduation and taught in regular sessions and also trained teachers at Training Colleges over the summers. Fitzgerald returned to Cave Spring, Georgia in 1938, and died 2 years later on 26 June 1940. Because the "Fitzgerald Key" gave additional visual support to those who had not heard language construction, it allowed students to correct their own grammar and syntax mistakes. At one time, her system was so widely used that three-quarters of the schools in the United States teaching those with hearing difficulties used it. Her book had been through nine editions by 1962.

In 2018 the Virginia Capitol Foundation announced that Fitzgerald's name would be on the Virginia Women's Monument's glass Wall of Honor.

Selected works