Firefighter Andrea Hall Leads Pledge Of Allegiance, Spoken And In Sign Language

Updated at 1:05 p.m. ET

Andrea Hall, a career firefighter and union leader from Fulton County, Ga., led the Pledge of Allegiance during the inauguration of President-elect Biden.

Hall recited the familiar words of the pledge out loud and in American Sign Language.

According to The 19th, a nonprofit news organization, Hall was the first Black woman hired and assigned to a station at the City of Albany Fire Department, and then the first Black woman to serve as fire captain at Fulton County Fire Rescue. She was a rare woman in an industry dominated by men — just 1% of firefighters were women when she transferred in to Fulton County, The 19th reports.

"I just am intending to represent, my family, the city of South Fulton, women, African-American women, firefighters, and everyone in the nation, well," Hall told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Hall presented the pledge in sign language, which is unusual for an inauguration. Biden's Presidential Inaugural Committee has made accessibility a stated priority and is providing ASL interpretation, live closed captioning and audio descriptions for the day's events.

Julia Krieger, of the Biden inaugural committee, tells NPR that to the best of the committee's knowledge, conducting the pledge simultaneously in English and ASL "was a first."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.