While serving a 57-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter at California’s San Quentin prison, Tommy Wickerd found purpose in an unexpected way: teaching fellow incarcerated people and corrections officers American Sign Language.
Growing up with a deaf older brother, Wickerd witnessed the isolation of a world without proper accommodations. So when legal advocates won a 2019 petition to move a group of deaf men from underresourced prisons to program-rich San Quentin, Wickerd created his class.