Image from https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/everybody-artifact-history-disability-america
Disability History is under attack Right Now.
There’s a new White House report stating that only some Americans should be represented at the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
The ONLY comprehensive collection of disability history in the US is at that museum.
If the White House wins, we all lose access to histories of disabled people and all Americans stories and materials. The only materials allowed with be White House approved perspectives (i.e. white privileged)
Links:
EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America: https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/everybody-artifact-history-disability-america
Quote:
People with disabilities have been present throughout American history, but rarely appear in textbooks or shared public memories. Curator Katherine Ott introduces a new online exhibition that helps us understand the American experience and reveals how complicated history really is.
Over 100 years ago, an African American woman named Sarah Savage did something that caused her to be institutionalized at Central State Hospital, a "lunatic asylum" in Milledgeville, Georgia. She died there in 1882. Little else is known about her—when and where she was born, who she loved and who loved her, how she died, and what got her locked up. We don't even know if marker #72 belongs to her or a white man named Nathaniel Cowart—the cemetery was segregated and burial numbers used twice.
In the 1860s or 1870s, Benjamin Franklin was caught in a freezing storm in the Dakota Territory, lost his hands and feet to frostbite, and afterwards made a living selling cartes-de-visite (small photographs printed on thick paper cards) of himself.
There are thousands upon thousands of such stories about people with disabilities that never make it into the history books. To broaden the familiar narratives of American history and give presence to some of the "disappeared" in American history, we created an online exhibition about disability drawn from the museum's collections. The online exhibition is at the center of the museum's work in unraveling the intricate ways in which stigma, rights, and everyday realities intertwine.
The museum has dozens of photographic images of people with disabilities. We know neither the name nor circumstances of most of them. Being anonymous or forgotten does not mean that you are invisible. We can piece together past experiences by combining what the image tells us (about age, clothing, location, era, activity) with what we know about the history of disability in America. Such things as surfaced roads, escalators and elevators, the internet, as well as the closing of asylums and even the availability of inexpensive eye-glasses and a host of medical treatments have created circumstances that enabled political and social change. Our artifacts can explain events such as protests, hospitalization, first communion, and graduation and what they meant in the lives of people. Artifacts give shape and substance to historical experiences in ways that retrieve stories of those who did not have the resources, support, or power to leave a mark.
EveryBody: An Artifact History of Disability in America: https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/exhibitions/everybody
Quote:
Many stories and events related to people with disabilities never make it into the history books or shared public memories. Familiar concepts and events such as citizenship, work, and wars become more complicated, challenge our assumptions about what counts as history, and transform our connection with each other when viewed from the historical perspective of people with disabilities, America’s largest minority.
Knowing these histories deepens understanding of the American experience and reveals how complicated history really is. In addition, when history comes through artifacts, distinct themes emerge—for example, the significance of place, relationships, and technology—that are less apparent when only books and words are used.
The EveryBody online exhibition is an introduction to the history of disability in America, covering politics, relationships, work, technology, health and more. Just as language about disability has changed (with movement away from stigmatizing terms such as crippled, handicapped, or invalid), so has understanding of it, with civil rights becoming paramount.
Check this out! Lots of good and important things to see!
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