This study is a retrospective view of the protective factors that are critical to African American deaf and hard of hearing students’ successful transition through postsecondary programs. The data come from a qualitative study of nine African American men and women who were each interviewed twice. During the interviews, some participants used American Sign Language (ASL) only, and some used a combination of voice and ASL to communicate their responses to the questions. Since ASL is a visual language and not a written language, I translated the data from ASL to English