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.