Kim E. Nielsen

American history examined sensitively and skillfully from the bottom up, grounded in the often shabby and sometimes exemplary treatment of disabled individuals.

Nielsen’s (History and Women’s Studies/Univ. of Wisconsin, Green Bay; The Radical Lives of Helen Keller, 2004, etc.) interest in the treatment of the disabled began with research into the political activism of Helen Keller, perhaps the most famous of severely disabled Americans. The author organizes the book chronologically, show more beginning with the handling of disabled women and men by Native Americans. The disability spectrum within indigenous North American cultures expanded in unwelcome ways as European settlers spread disease among the Indians. Nielsen then moves on to the stories of newly arrived immigrants from Europe and Africa who were not fully functional physically or mentally. "Disability" has always been an elastic term; Nielsen explains how the definitions solidified in the legal and social sense in the 19th and 20th centuries. The definitions would deprive many individuals of full citizenship rights as institutionalization became a trend. That institutionalization fell disproportionately on the enslaved (usually but not always because of skin color), women and those individuals sometimes inaccurately characterized as lunatics or idiots. In a slightly more upbeat chapter, Nielsen explains how those marked as disabled slowly banded together to fight for their civil rights. Slowly, individuals with potential, despite being branded, began to receive educational and vocational opportunities. The final chapter marks the year 1968 as the beginning of improved understanding and enlightened policies. Individuals previously kept out of sight and mind began to enter the mainstream culture.

A lively historical record that fills a gap in the literature.

-Kirkus Review show less

(3.5)

Very brief overview of the disability and disability justice history of the United States (and precolonial United States). I really appreciate the research gone into different indigenous American views of body difference and what we now consider mental illness. I wasn't so happy with the depiction of inspiration porn as a solely positive thing, though. And once the book hit the 1900s the pace became so rapid that movements and events were barely mentioned before the author moved on to show more the next point. But it's an extremely good introduction. show less

Four stars for being good, scholarly historical work; the fifth star for being interesting, thought-provoking material that broadened my mind and worldview. Be aware that some of the material in here is kind of harsh (eugenics, forced sterilization, murder and abuse of enslaved people, decimation of the Native population).

not quite 2 stars? this was almost so much about intersectionality that it was less about disability than i had hoped for, and that i think it should be with this title. still, it was really interesting in parts, just not quite what i wanted.

i will always quote these stats when i see them, though, because they are too easily forgotten: "Disease epidemics were widespread. The first recorded epidemics swept through New England in 1616-1619, killing an estimated 90 to 95 percent of the show more indigenous Algonquian peoples living there. Throughout the 1630s and 1640s smallpox claimed approximately 50 percent of the Huron and Iroquois people living in the Saint Lawrence River and Great Lakes region. Scholars estimate that along what became the southeastern US coastal areas of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Louisiana, less than five thousand indigenous people remained by 1700. Of the more than seven hundred thousand indigenous people in Florida in 1520, only two thousand surviving descendants remained by 1700."

"Given that disability was defined as the inability to labor, white women, free African American women, and slaves came to be associated with the disabled. Political theory linked the denial of property rights with the embodiment of supposed deficiencies."

"The concept of disability justified slavery and racism--and even allowed many whites to delude themselves, or pretend to delude themselves, that via slavery they beneficently cared for Africans incapable of caring for themselves." show less