A Disability History of the United States

by Kim E. Nielsen

  26. Carey, On the Margins, 112, 115–16; Gerald O’Brien, “Rosemary Kennedy: The Importance of a Historical Footnote,” Journal of Family History 29, no. 3 (July 2004): 225–36; David Braddock, “Honoring Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s Legacy in Intellectual Disability,” Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities 48, no. 1 (February 2010): 63–72; Edward Shorter, The Kennedy Family and the Story of Mental Retardation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000).

  27. Carey, On the Margins, 190; written remembrances of Jane Birk, Minnesota ARC Papers, Minnesota Historical Society.

  28. Steven J. Taylor, Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 2, chap. 7; Frank Leon Wright, ed., Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Philadelphia: National Mental Health Foundation, 1947). Another such example is Albert Deutsch’s The Shame of the States (New York: Arno Press, 1973).

  29. Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan, Christmas in Purgatory (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 1966).

  30. Steven J. Taylor, “Christmas in Purgatory,” in Encyclopedia of American Disability History, vol. 1, ed. Susan Burch (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 175. See also: David Mechanic and Gerald N. Grob, “Rhetoric, Realities, and the Plight of the Mentally Ill in America,” in History and Health Policy in the United States: Putting the Past Back, ed. Rosemary A. Stevens, Charles E. Rosenberg, and Lawton R. Burns (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006): 229–49; Darby Penney and Peter Stastny, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2008).

  31. Bay Crockett, Pueblo, CO, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 23, 1942, FDR Papers as President, Official File, 4920 gasoline rationing, 1942, Hyde Park, New York, FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

  32. Victor L. Lee, Los Altos, California, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, January 29, 1942, FDR Papers as President, Official File, 4740 tire industry, FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

  33. Julia O’Brien, Seneca Falls, New York, to Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 9, 1942, FDR Papers as President, Official File, 4740 tire industry, July–Dec 1942, FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

  34. Ibid.; Letter from Julia O’Brien to Mrs. Beady, White House Executive Office, undated, FDR Papers as President, Official File, 4740 tire industry, July–Dec 1942, FDR Presidential Library and Museum.

  35. Harlan Hahn, “Public Support for Rehabilitation Programs: The Analysis of US Disability Policy,” Disability, Handicap and Society 1, no. 2 (1986): 127; R. K. McNickle, Rehabilitation of Disabled Persons: Editorial Research Reports, vol. 2 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1950), retrieved from CQ Researcher, http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher.

  36. William B. Towns, “The Physically Handicapped on the Industrial Warfront,” Crippled Child, June 1942.

  37. Ibid.

  38. Kathi Wolf, “Teaching of Disability History Is Eminently Right—and FAIR,” Independence Today, August 2011, http://www.itodaynews.com, accessed November 11, 2011.

  39. Andrew Edmund Kersten, Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during World War II (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009), 166, 167.

  40. Legislation passed after World War I includes the 1916 National Defense Act, the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, which created the Federal Board of Vocational Education, and the 1918 Smith-Sears Veterans Rehabilitation Act. For more on this and debates surrounding emerging programs, see: Ruth O’Brien, Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), chap. 2. For more on the emerging rehabilitation profession, see: Martha Lentz Walker, Beyond Bureacracy: Mary Elizabeth Switzer and Rehabilitation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1985); Edward D. Berkowitz, “The Federal Government and the Emergence of Rehabilitation Medicine,” Historian 43 (1981): 530–45.

  41. O’Brien, Crippled Justice, 76–77.

  42. Ibid., 77–78; Audra Jennings, “‘The Greatest Numbers . . . Will Be Wage Earners’: Organized Labor and Disability Activism, 1945–1953,” Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas 4, no. 4 (2007): 37–52.

  43. Jennings, “‘The Great Numbers,’” 66–67; Audra Jennings, “Picnics, Parties, and Rights: US Disability Activism, 1940–1960,” American Historical Association conference presentation, January 2012 (used with author’s permission). For more on disability as a labor issue, see: Sarah F. Rose, “‘Crippled’ Hands: Disability in Labor and Working-Class History,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 1 (2005): 27–54.

  44. Jennings, “‘The Great Numbers,” 56–57. For more on this, see: O’Brien, Crippled Justice; Buchanan, Illusions of Equality; Richard Scotch, “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 375–92.

  45. Thomas L. Stokes, “‘Bravest of the Brave’ Fight Prejudice Caused by Extent of their Sacrifice” State Journal (WI), August 17, 1946.

  46. Jennings, “‘The Great Numbers,” 72, 81.

  47. David A. Gerber, “In Search Of Al Schmid: War Hero, Blinded Veteran, Everyman,” Journal of American Studies 1995 29, no. 1 (1995): 12, 19; David Gerber, “Anger and Affability: The Rise and Representation of a Repertory of Self-Presentation Skills in a World War II Disabled Veteran,” Journal of Social History 27, no. 1 (1993): 5–27; David Gerber, “Blind and Enlightened: The Contested Origins of the Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 313–74; David Gerber, “Memory of Enlightenment: Accounting for the Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association,” Disability Studies Quarterly 18 (Fall 1998): 257–63.

  48. Jefferson, “Enabled Courage,” 1122–24. For more on African American disabled veterans, see: Ellen Dwyer, “Psychiatry and Race during World War II,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 61(2006): 117–43.

  49. See, for example, Felicia Kornbluh, “Disability, Antiprofessionalism, and Civil Rights: The National Federation of the Blind and the ‘Right to Organize’ in the 1950s,” Journal of American History (March 2011): 1023–47; Jacobus tenBroek, “The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the World of Torts,” California Law Review 54, no. 2 (1966); Albert A. Herzog Jr., “From Service to Rights: The Movement for Disability Rights in the American Methodist Tradition,” Methodist History 38, no. 1 (1999): 27–39; Edward Abrahams, “Randolph Bourne on Feminism and Feminists,” Historian 43, no. 3 (1981): 365–77; Paul K. Longmore and Paul Steven Miller, “‘A Philosophy of Handicap’: The Origins Of Randolph Bourne’s Radicalism,” Radical History Review 94 (2006): 59–83; Amy L. Fairchild, “Leprosy, Domesticity, and Patient Protest: The Social Context of a Patients’ Rights Movement in Mid-Century America,” Journal of Social History (2006): 1011–42.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1. “Disabled Miners Threaten Stronger Tactics,” Beckley (WV) Post-Herald, September 6, 1971, 6.

  2. “President of Disabled Miners Claims Strike Imminent,” Uniontown (PA) Morning Herald, September 30, 1971; Robert Payne obituary, Beckley (WV) Register-Herald, October 29, 2009; William Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety in the Progressive Period: The Political Economy of Reform (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 91.

  3. Barbara Ellen Smith, Digging Our Graves: Coal Miners and the Struggle over Black Lung Disease (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 14; Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety, 56. For more on coal mining and the strikes of the 1970s, see: Smith, Digging Our Graves; Paul F. Clark, The Miners’ Fight for Democracy: Arnold Miller and the Reform of the United Mine Workers (Ithaca, NY: New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, 1981); Robert L. Lewis, Black Coal Miners in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1870–1980 (Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 1987); Richard A. Brisbin, A Strike Like
No Other Strike: Law and Resistance during the Pittston Coal Strike of 1989–1990 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Robyn Muncy, “Coal-Fired Reform: Social Citizenship, Dissident Miners, and the Great Society,” Journal of American History 96, no. 1 (2009): 72–98.

  4. Brisbin, A Strike Like No Other, 82; Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety, 92.

  5. “President of Disabled Miners Claims Strike Imminent,” Uniontown (PA) Morning Herald; “Disabled Miners Threaten Stronger Tactics,” Beckley (WV) Post-Herald.

  6. Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 184; Graebner, Coal-Mining Safety, 92; Smith lived in Rhodell, also near Beckley, West Virginia. He credited Arnold Miller with securing him a wheelchair during this period.

  7. “Clara Clow,” Frederick (MD) News, August 15, 1990.

  8. Ibid.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Scholarship on the disability rights movement includes, but is not limited to: Paul K. Longmore, “The Disability Rights Movement,” in Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 101–15; Sharon Barnartt and Richard Scotch, Disability Protests: Contentious Politics, 1970–1999 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2001); Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Disabled Rights: American Disability Policy and the Fight for Equality (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003); Joseph P. Shapiro, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York: Random House, 1993); Richard K. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

  11. Shapiro, No Pity, chap. 2; Barnartt and Scotch, Disability Protests, 42–44. Roberts noted that some of the most treasured care attendants were conscientious objectors, assigned to what a military official thought would be a miserable and punishing job. Like the conscientious objectors who brought public attention to the abuses at institutions for people with developmental disabilities, these young men quickly became valuable allies. Roberts said, “These were the kind of people we wanted to work with. We were very lucky.” Fleischer and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 39.

  12. Fleischman and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 41.

  13. Rick Mayes and Allan V. Horwitz, “DSM III and the Revolution in the Classification of Mental Illness,” Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 41, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 255; Gerald Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America’s Mentally Ill (Boston: Harvard University Press), 287.

  14. Michael A. Rembis, “The New Asylums: Madness and Mass Incarceration in the Neoliberal Era.” Work in progress. Cited with the author’s permission.

  15. Lindsey M. Patterson, “Building Communities and Breaking Down Barriers: Disability Rights Activism 1959–1968,” paper presented at a meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, January 2012. Cited with author’s permission.

  16. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 54. See also Fleischman and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, chap. 4.

  17. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 56–57.

  18. “Handicapped People Draw Notice,” Denton (TX) Record Chronicle, January 8, 1971; “Question Line” of the Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, May 15, 1972; Greeley (CO) Daily Tribune, March 25, 1977; “Helena Handicapped to Organize,” Independent Record (Helena, MT), August 30, 1977; “The Handicapped Join Push for Equality,” Kennebeck Journal (Augusta, ME), September 22, 1977; Lima (OH) News, August 12, 1973.

  19. Department of Education, History: Twenty-Five Years of Progress in Educating Children with Disabilities through IDEA (Washington, DC: Office of Special Education Programs, 2008), available on the website of the US Department of Education, www.ed.gov.

  20. Flesichman and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 51, 59.

  21. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 111–16; Barnartt and Scotch, Disability Protests, 165–66; Fleischman and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 53–56; Independent Press Telegram (Long Beach, CA), April 9, 1977; Independent Press Telegram, April 16, 1977.

  22. Susan Schweik, “Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504,” Disability Studies Quarterly 31, no. 1 (2011); Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 111–16; Barnartt and Scotch, Disability Protests, 165–66; Fleischman and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 53–56; Shapiro, No Pity, 64–70.

  23. “Disabled Woman Claims Bias by Sheriff,” Syracuse (NY) Post-Standard, April 22, 1975.

  24. Greeley (CO) Daily Tribune, March 25, 1977.

  25. Zanesville (OH) Times Recorder, July 16, 1976.

  26. Shapiro, No Pity, 28; Paul S. Miller obituary, Washington Post, October 21, 2010; Paul S. Miller obituary, New York Times, October 21, 2010.

  27. Paul K. Longmore, “Why I Burned My Book,” in Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 231, 249, 253.

  28. Shapiro, No Pity, 26; “Parents without Powers,” Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1992; Jay Mathews, A Mother’s Touch: The Tiffany Callo Story (New York: Henry Holt, 1992).

  29. Termination of Parental Rights (Minneapolis: Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare, University of Minnesota, 2011), available at http://www.cehd.umn.edu/ssw, accessed November 27, 2011; Elizabeth Lightfoot, Katharine Hill, Traci LaLiberte, “The Inclusion of Disability as a Condition for Termination of Parental Rights,” Child Abuse & Neglect 34, no. 2 (December 2010): 927–34; “Bill Seeks to Amend Law to Terminate Parental Rights Due to Mental Illness,” Mental Health Weekly 19, no. 10 (March 3, 2009), 7; Christine Breeden, Rhoda Olkin, Daniel J. Taube, “Child Custody Evaluations When One Divorcing Parent Has a Physical Disability,” Rehabilitation Psychology 53, no. 4 (November 2008): 445–55.

  30. September 9, 1974, press release, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 5, Minnesota Historical Society. Emphasis in original.

  31. Audrey Benson to Lionel Lewis, January 9, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Correspondence, 1974, Minnesota Historical Society. The CIC handled records and finances for the UHF through at least part of 1974. See June 3, 1975, letter from Ronnie Stone, Box 4, Correspondence, June–Dec 1975, United Handicapped Federation, Minnesota Historical Society; Nancy Sopkowiak, “Bjerkesett Honored,” Access Press 19, no. 7 (July 10, 2008), http://www.accesspress.org, accessed November 27, 2011.

  32. Michael Bjerkesett to John Mykelbust, February 12, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Correspondence, 1975, Minnesota Historical Society; Michael Bjerkesett to Hubert H. Humphrey, January 31, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Correspondence, 1974, Minnesota Historical Society.

  33. Michael Bjerkesett to Rep. Russell Stanton, St. Paul, February 14, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Correspondence, 1974, Minnesota Historical Society.

  34. Audrey Benson to Donald Engle, president, Minnesota Orchestral Association, July 11, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Minnesota Historical Society; press release, August 8, 1975, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 5, Minnesota Historical Society; press release, November 21, 1974, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 5, Minnesota Historical Society.

  35. Press release, January 23, 1976, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 5, Minnesota Historical Society; Mary Johnson and Barrett Shaw, eds., To Ride the Public’s Buses: The Fight that Built a Movement (Louisville, KY: Advocado Press, 2001), 140. The latter does a great job of telling the story of disability activism on transit issues.

  36. Thomas Junilla to Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, October 13, 1976, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, 1976; Harry G. Lang, A Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2000); Audrey Benson to Minnesota Teamsters Public Employees Union Local 320, Minneapolis, June 18, 1976, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Minnesota Historical S
ociety.

  37. United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 10, Minnesota Historical Society; Stephan Marincel to William Mahlum (UHF attorney), September 1977, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Minnesota Historical Society.

  38. Scott Rostron, “The Progress,” August 1977, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 2, Minnesota Historical Society.

  39. United Handicapped Federation, July 14, 1978 delegate assembly notes, United Handicapped Federation Records, Minnesota Historical Society; Peg Edel, Director of Rape and Sexual Assault, Neighborhood Involvement Program, Minneapolis, to Frances Strong, January 9, 1979, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 4, Minnesota Historical Society. For more on the early emerging relationship between feminism and disability rights, see: Marian Blackwell-Stratton et al., “Smashing Icons: Disabled Women and the Disability and Women’s Movements,” in Women with Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics, ed. Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), 306–32; Pamela Brandwein and Richard K. Scotch, “The Gender Analogy in the Disability Discrimination Literature,” Ohio State Law Journal 62, no. 465 (2001).

  40. Frances Strong, conference report, July 14, 1979, Conference on Sexual and Physical Assault of Disabled People, United Handicapped Federation Records, Minnesota Historical Society; press release, March 23, 1982, United Handicapped Federation Records, Box 5, Minnesota Historical Society.

  41. Letter to the Editor, September 2, 1975, Minneapolis Star, United Handicapped Federation Records, clippings, Minnesota Historical Society.

  42. Barnartt and Scotch, Disability Protests, 197–201.