Teach Disability History, Center Disability Pride
By Nina Gonzalez
On July 26, 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, a culmination of the work of disability activists across the United States to advocate for civil rights legislation for disabled people. In commemoration of this event, we celebrate Disability Pride Month every July. (Governor Gavin Newsom also recognized July 2024 as Disability Pride Month in California. You can read his proclamation here).
Disability Pride celebrations are particularly meaningful to me. As a student with multiple disabilities, learning has looked different for me than others throughout my life. Because activists fought for legislation like the ADA and Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which both require education to be accessible to disabled students, I have been able to receive accommodations that have made pursuing a PhD possible. Disability rights are a necessity we should all have a vested interest in fighting for. After all, disabled is the only marginalized group that any person, regardless of ethnic, racial, religious, or class background, can join at any time.
Teaching history that acknowledges and features people with disabilities and their experiences is also a requirement of the FAIR Act. We hope the list of resources below can be a great starting point for further integrating and highlighting the history of disabled people in your classroom!
Teaching Resources:
Although the ADA wasn’t passed until 1990, the disability rights movement’s history in the United States dates back to the 19th century. This Disability Rights Timeline from Temple University is a great resource of milestones for disabled rights throughout U.S. history.
For a look into how to bring disability history into existing units and lesson plans, I recommend Daniel Castaneda’s 2022 blog, Bringing the History of Disability Back In. It also features some excellent sources on Hugo Deffner, an accessibility activist.
Many People One Nation, a primary source set for first-grade students, is a great example of how to incorporate disabled people into a broader lesson. The source set, which asks students to respond to the question, “How do many people make one nation?,” features the story of Patrick Day O’Vance, a young child in 1961 with an artificial leg.
How do People Remember the Past, a second-grade inquiry set, introduces students to the concept of primary sources through a study of family history. Students learn about Charles Packard, a student with chronic illness who graduated from the Charles Leroy Lowman School for Physically Handicapped in the 1950s.
In Contemporary Issues in American Society, eleventh-grade students learn about the fight for the 504, the law that granted the rights of people with disabilities to have access to federally-funded programs or facilities. The inquiry set focuses on how different activists over time have fought for policies that better promote equity in education.
Another eleventh-grade primary source set, Civil Rights Movements, examines how the various movements for equality in the mid-twentieth century built upon and inspired each other. Students learn about the 504 Sit-In in San Francisco in 1977, which demanded enforcement of Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
Finally, not only is it important that we teach the history of people with disabilities; we must also make sure we are accommodating students with disabilities in our classrooms. UDL, or Universal Design for Learning, is a strategy for creating a more inclusive learning space. Vanessa Madrigal-Launchland discusses it further in this 2022 blog.
Recent Scholarship:
Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean, Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, (2020)
From University of Illinois Press:
“Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy provides a three-pronged analysis of disability in the context of Atlantic slavery. First, she examines the connections of enslavement and representations of disability and the parallel development of English anti-black racism. From there, she moves from realms of representation to reality in order to illuminate the physical, emotional, and psychological impairments inflicted by slavery and endured by the enslaved. Finally, she looks at slave law as a system of enforced disablement.”
Committed: Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions, Susan Burch (2021)
From UNC Press:
“Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in South Dakota… In this accessible and innovative work, Susan Burch tells the story of the Indigenous people—families, communities, and nations, across generations to the present day—who have experienced the impact of this history. Drawing on oral history interviews, correspondence, material objects, and archival sources, Burch reframes the histories of institutionalized people and the places that held them. Committed expands the boundaries of Native American history, disability studies, and U.S. social and cultural history generally.”
Ordinary Lives: Recovering Deaf Social History through the American Census, Eric C. Nystrom and R. A. R. Edwards (2024)
From University of Massachusetts Press:
“The collective social history of deaf people in America has yet to be written. While scholars have focused their attention on residential schools for the deaf, leaders in the deaf community, and prominent graduates of these institutions, the lives of “ordinary" deaf individuals have been largely overlooked. Employing the methods of social history, such as the use of digital history techniques and often-ignored sources like census records, Eric C. Nystrom and R. A. R. Edwards recover the lived experiences of everyday deaf people in late nineteenth century America.”
Familial Fitness: Disability, Adoption, and Family in Modern America, Sandra M. Sufian (2022)
From University of Chicago Press:
“In Familial Fitness, Sandra M. Sufian uncovers how disability operates as a fundamental category in the making of the American family, tracing major shifts in policy, practice, and attitudes about the adoptability of disabled children over the course of the twentieth century. Chronicling the long, complex history of disability, Familial Fitness explores how notions and practices of adoption have—and haven’t—accommodated disability, and how the language of risk enters into that complicated relationship.”
Stepchildren of the Shtetl: The Destitute, Disabled, and Mad of Jewish Eastern Europe, 1800-1939, Natan M. Meir (2020)
From Stanford University Press:
“Memoirs of Jewish life in the east European shtetl often recall the hekdesh (town poorhouse) and its residents: beggars, madmen and madwomen, disabled people, and poor orphans. Stepchildren of the Shtetl tells the story of these marginalized figures from the dawn of modernity to the eve of the Holocaust. Combining archival research with analysis of literary, cultural, and religious texts, Natan M. Meir recovers the lived experience of Jewish society's outcasts and reveals the central role that they came to play in the drama of modernization.”
Those They Called Idiots: The Idea of the Disabled Mind from 1700 to the Present Day, Simon Jarrett (2021)
From University of Chicago Press:
“Those They Called Idiots traces the little-known lives of people with learning disabilities from the communities of eighteenth-century England to the nineteenth-century asylum, to care in today’s society. Using evidence from civil and criminal courtrooms, joke books, slang dictionaries, novels, art, and caricature, it explores the explosive intermingling of ideas about intelligence and race, while bringing into sharp focus the lives of people often seen as the most marginalized in society.”
Picture Books #KatesBookClub:
Aaron Slater, Illustrator by Andrea Beaty. Aaron Slater loves listening to stories and dreams of one day writing them himself. But when it comes to reading, the letters look like squiggles to him and it soon becomes clear he struggles more than his peers. When his teacher asks each child in the class to write a story, Aaron can’t get a single word down. Printed with a dyslexia-friendly font, this book tells the empowering story of a boy with dyslexia who discovers that his learning disability may inform who he is, but it does not define who he is, and that there are many ways to be a gifted communicator. Many opportunities for classroom discussions and community building.
A Day with No Words by Tiffany Hammond. What an engaging picture book for young readers that shares what life can look like for families who use nonverbal communication, utilizing tools to embrace their unique method of "speaking." The story highlights the bond between mother and child and follows them on a day where they use a tablet to communicate with others. Great read for any classroom teacher and students to develop empathy for others.
I Will Dance by Nancy Bo Flood. Like many young girls, Eva longs to dance. But unlike many would-be dancers, Eva has cerebral palsy. She doesn’t know what dance looks like for someone who uses a wheelchair. Then Eva learns of a place that has created a class for dancers of all abilities. Her first movements in the studio are tentative, but slowly Eva becomes more confident. Eva knows she’s found a place where she belongs. A delightful read, especially for the littles.
Listen: How Evelyn Glennie, a Deaf Girl Changed Percussion by Shannon Stocker. Biography about Evelyn Glennie, a deaf woman, who became the first full-time solo percussionist in the world. Evelyn was told that, as a deaf girl, she could never be a musician. What sounds Evelyn couldn’t hear with her ears, though, she could feel resonate through her body as if she, herself, were a drum. Evelyn Glennie had learned how to listen in a new way. So many extensions to other content, including sound and vibrations in Science. Terrific back matter about Evelyn and her diagnosis.
What Happened to You? by James Catchpole. Every time Joe goes out the questions are the same . . . what happened to his leg? But is this even a question Joe has to answer? A ground-breaking, funny story that helps children understand what it might feel like to be seen as different and how these children navigate these questions. Perfect beginning of the year title.