The People's Sidewalks: Curb Cuts in Berkeley, CA

Here is a short article I wrote for the (newish) magazine BOOM: A Journal of California on the curb cuts built along Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, CA in the 1970s. Berkeley was not the first place to have curb cuts for wheelchairs - there are documented cuts in Kalamazoo, MI, and probably the first generally accessible city was Champaign, IL, near the University of Illinois. But as far as I can tell, Berkeley was the first place to have a planned "Wheelchair Route" - a contiguous set of cuts that carved out wheelchair access in a pedestrian district (shopping area near UC Berkeley) and then through a set of well-traveled routes (Telegraph from UC Berkeley to Ashby Ave; Downtown Berkeley along Shattuck Ave). These were planned by an Urban Planning student at UC Berkeley in collaboration with activists/staff at the Center for Independent Living.

online disability history

Image: Grey Sweatsuit, hanging in exhibition case with shelves of folded, identical suits next to it. From "Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember," at Ryerson University.

From the quote accompanying this piece in the exhibition:

[T]he memory that has stayed with me so powerfully is that of the singlemost prevalent institutional “outfit”—the ill-fitting, nondescript, grey sweat suit. In choosing this “object” I was struck by how the sweat suit—devoid of any labels, markers or designer logos— represented the monotony and routines of institutional life.

Preparing a talk on the history of assistive technology and innovation recently, I drew on some great online resources for some of my older images and stories. It made me realize I had some across some of these sites entirely by accident, via links to links to links.. and maybe it would be helpful to compile a couple of them here.

I would love more links, suggestions, etc in the comments!

Top 5 Disability History Websites
Note: all of the sites below include image captions and are (I believe) screen reader accessible.

National Museum of American History: Disability Rights and Polio exhibitions. These sites provide ongoing access to two wonderful exhibitions curated by Katherine Ott at NMAH. I also recommend the volume Ott edited (along with David Serlin and Stephen Mihm), Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics as one of the best (only?) history books on technology and disability.

Disability History Museum: an ongoing, ever growing online database of images and text related to a long history of disability (mainly US oriented). Strengths in ephemera (photos, clippings, brochures) on everyday life. Use the sidebar to search by keywords, time periods, etc.

Bancroft Library (UC Berkeley) Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Collection: Excellent, cross-reference-able source for primary source documents, (some) photographs, and an unbelievable oral history collection related to the Disability Rights Movement (mainly American and Californian). Easiest to get to are names and organizations, many of which have short audio/text clips from oral histories. To go deeper, the full texts of the oral histories are also available - providing hours (or months/years) of reading material. A highlight for Disability History scholars: the late Paul Longmore's oral history - providing a very rich, deep discussion of his and others' origins in disability studies scholarship.

Ryerson University's Out from Under: Disability, History and Things to Remember: This is really more of an experiential site than one with hard facts and famous names - looking at specific objects and short texts that evoke Canadian disability history (such as the sweat suit above). Great images and everyday object interpretations - particularly covering the history of institutionalization and intellectual disability.

The Missouri History Museum's Action for Access: Changing Perceptions of Disability in American Life: a friend recently pointed me to this site, a multimedia presentation on current and recent past perspectives on disability. The "disability rights movement" tab includes a recap of disability history in the US in general, with a special focus on Missouri. A great example of how deeply local disability history is. Includes historical images, videos of people with disabilities telling their personal stories, and reference links.

Honorable Mention
these sources are more limited in focus - but still good sites to hit for disability history.

Museum of disAbility - a virtual museum with artifacts and documents on disability history. I find their interface a little overwhelming, but there are good materials to be found (similar scope/content to the Disability History Museum, above).

Disability History Timelines - someday I would love to see (or make) a compilation of all the disability history timelines I have seen. In the meantime, here are two:
Timeline from the ABC-CLIO Companion to the Disability Rights Movement by Fred Pelka
Timeline from the Disability Social History Project

The New York City Origins of the Disability Rights Movement (link goes to audio mp3 - for the main site click here; no transcript online) - a talk from Warren Shaw, historian of New York City whose father, Julius Shaw, was an early disability rights activist. Very interesting story that has not really been told in standard disability history books/timelines.

Temple University's Disability Studies Blog - posts and links about disability studies and disability history

H-Disability - email listserv for disability history discussion/posts

Remembering Paul Longmore

I was sad to hear yesterday of the passing of Paul Longmore, a leader in the field of Disability History. I have gotten to know Paul over the past three years as I work on my dissertation about disability rights and design. Reading others' remembrances of him online, and talking to fellow young scholars, I know I was just one of many who consider him a great teacher and mentor. Berkeley lawyer Lainey Fairgold wrote on her website that, reading and speaking with him, "I could actually feel my mind opening up to new ideas, new ways of perceiving the world." I have felt that many times as well.

Paul was one of the most generous scholars I have ever met, always willing to chat with me - sometimes for hours, as we sat in the sun outside of his San Francisco State office or in his apartment. As a non-disabled person with little experience in the disability community before I started my dissertation, I felt tentative about my project when we first spoke. He was immediately supportive, and over time was very forthcoming about his own life history and the ways it overlapped with the work I am doing on the everyday lives of people with disabilities in postwar America. I came to think of him as a friend as much as I did a professor - until I would return to his written work, and, like Lainey says, I could feel my mind expanding. His insights on practices of history writing - for example, in his essays on the League of the Physically Handicapped and on the reformer Randolph Bourne, both in the collection Why I Burned My Book and Other Essays on Disability - are seminal works for any historian of 20th century America.

Paul was an accomplished scholar in two fields: Early American History and Disability History. After he completed his MA and PhD at Occidental College and Claremont Graduate School, Paul taught at Stanford and USC before coming to San Francisco State University in 1992. He received tenure in SF State's History Department in 1998 and directed the Institute on Disability starting in 1996. He published The Invention of George Washington, based on his dissertation, and a collection of essays, Why I Burned My Book; at the time of his death he was nearing completion of a new work on telethons. He edited The New Disability History with Lauri Umansky, and has been the organizer of countless conferences, panels, journal issues, and professional groups (including H-Disability, as Penny Richards notes). A more complete bio is here.

I was often bowled over by how openly Paul discussed the difficulties he had faced in his career path. As he details in the title essay of Why I Burned My Book, throughout graduate school and his early career people told him frankly that he would never be hired as a person with a severe disability (though one professor did concede that he was "not bitter like many cripples"). The title of the essay comes from a protest Paul staged in 1988 after he was warned his book royalties would render him ineligible for the Social Security Income (SSI) payments that supported his medical and attendant care (at the time, totaling more than $20,000/year - history book royalties do not come close). He burned copies of The Invention of George Washington on a barbecue grill in front of the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, an action that was part of a years-long battle to change SSI policies that effectively discouraged people with disabilities from pursuing professional career paths. Despite his own battles, he never dismissed or belittled others' problems. He often asked me how I was doing, offering supportive words when the dissertation process got me down. We academics rarely discuss our feelings - Paul did, reminding me to seek support and see the long view of my project. I believe his mentoring and teaching were a part of his activism, changing the profession that had not always treated him fairly. Up until his death he was still planning more projects to encourage disability studies and disability history.

Paul sardonically wrote in Why I Burned My Book, "when I published [The Invention of George Washington], one reviewer remarked that it drew on a 'truly astounding amount of research.' Of course it did . Would a postpolio supercrip do anything less? How characteristically disabled of me to undertake so grandiose a project." Still, as he continues, "I don't want to reduce my work to 'overcoming.'" Neither do I. Paul's work is not only remarkable because he "overcame" odds in a society that did not - does not - imagine that people with disabilities can make a contribution. He will have a long legacy because he investigated topics that few historians had considered critically, if at all, and because he did it while maintaining a personal practice of support and generosity. One has only to skim a few of the personal remembrances popping up online (for example, on Not Dead Yet and Media Dis-n-Dat, as well as Paul's facebook page) to see how many scholars, writers, and activists were influenced by his presence, whether in one-time meetings or life-long friendships.

Thank you, Paul. I will miss you tremendously.

20th anniversary of the ADA, other news

I've been a bit slow on the blogging this summer (well, slow meaning fully stopped) - such is the state of dissertating, researching, traveling, and letting time pass, I guess. I have two longer posts in the works, but in the meantime, some bits and pieces:

- There were many celebrations and reflections this week in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26- the major civil rights act, passed in 1990, that barred discrimination against people with disabilities and mandated equal access to work, employment, and public spaces/services. The best stories, of course, avoided sappy "celebrations" of overcoming and cut to the chase: this Act has made a significant difference in many people's lives, but remains controversial and in many cases, its mandates are unfulfilled (with improvements seen in the 2007 ADA Restoration Act).

NPR's news shows had several stories, many of them authored by, or prominently featuring people with disabilities reflecting on the Act and their lives facing discrimination, like Ben Mattlin telling of how one job interviewer asked, "How would you make photocopies? I mean, you'd be here to help us, not for us to help you," and special education specialist Deborah Peters Goessling talking about the "one inch" that still often prevents her from participating in everyday life (interestingly, she is really touching on "visitability," i.e. being able to visit people's private homes, not covered under the ADA). In a story on the Act's effects on architecture, U. Penn professor Monica Ponce de Leon talked about the more widespread acceptance of the ideal of Universal Design. She described a project for the library at the Rhode Island School of Design, where her firm developed furniture and study space for a diversity of students:

[Robert] SIEGEL: So depending on one's individual needs, one's individual size, or for example if one used a wheelchair, you could find a space that would work for you in that.

Prof. PONCE DE LEON: Exactly. You're actually acknowledging that we all have different degrees of abilities. So at RISD, since you have a student body that is there for four or five years at a time, there was a great possibility that a student may find actually their favorite spot, maybe because their legs are longer than the average or maybe because their height is a little shorter. And it enabled us to embed different ranges of abilities within the design of the space.

- In remembrance of the 20th Anniversary of the ADA, the National Museum of American History's fantastic curator and disability historian, Katherine Ott, presented some objects out of storage on Monday the 26th. I saw the announcement too late (not in DC anyway), but we can all look forward to an exhibition on American disability history in the coming year from the Smithsonian; in the meantime, here are some old links to Katherine's excellent past exhibitions on Polio and the Disability Rights Movement.

- Various spots around the web remember the irreverent cartoonist John Callahan, who spurned the "pathetic" narrative of most disability discourse in pieces like this one:

Image via the New York Times: obituary for Callahan here. A fond and personal remembrance from Portland here (via SDS listserv).

Looking up some of Callahan's old cartoons and illustrations, I also liked this one, which accompanied an article in New Mobility on visitability in housing:

link roundup: city life/facilities edition

San Francisco has unveiled some new bus stops with touch-screen (and audio enhanced) information screens and wifi hubs, once again putting my home city of New York to shame in their public transit accessibility and use of technology: they are currently in testing phase and 1,100 are planned.

The Dallas Morning News describes the experiences of an architect who spent 24 hours as a resident in a nursing home to understand the design issues

Chicago will open a National Public Housing Museum in the last remaining building in the WPA-era Jane Addams Homes. I wonder if there will be any discussion of disability issues, like the poor choices people with disabilities face in public housing and long histories of abuse in public hospitals/nursing homes.

Another tidbit of history: Penny Richards at Temple's Disability Studies blog spends some time in the Library of Congress' "Flickr Commons" and finds evidence of early 20th c. wheelchairs as a public convenience at the Bronx Zoo (much like at zoos/museums/etc today).