Despite having glaucoma, Ray Charles, who was not born blind, began gradually losing his vision at the age of four.
Was Ray Charles born blind and deaf?
While the boy’s Florida neighbors in Charles’ birthplace of Greenville felt sorry for him, Charles’ mother Retha had no time for pity. You’re blind, you ain’t dumb; you lost your sight, not your mind, she’d get stern and tell me when I got to feeling sorry for myself, Charles later said.
And she would help me realize that I was capable of doing practically anything. Charles carried about for the rest of his life this resolve and rejection of his blindness.
The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, as it was then named, was sent to St. Augustine, Florida, to enroll seven-year-old Charles in 1937.
Males and females, African Americans and whites, and all other groups were rigidly segregated at the school. The African American schools’ facilities, as was typically the case for all segregated institutions, were vastly inferior.
The African American students were given leftover materials from their white sister school, including braille books with dots that were difficult to detect, along with used furniture, food, and chipped crockery.
Although Charles attended primary school, the African American kids were also expected to learn life skills that would support the school. Charles’ primary responsibility was to wrap straw booms in bands.
