Here’s a fascinating internet collection of public documents and video that documents the nation’s changing perception of intellectual disability in the postwar era: Parallels in Time II. Central to its story are the efforts of the administration of President John F. Kennedy in promoting public awareness and launching new programs for people with intellectual disabilities.

Assembled by the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities, the collection reminds viewers that as recently as the 1960s people with intellectual disabilities were routinely locked away, warehoused and abused in institutions. Photographs from the era show inmates who were physically restrained, malnourished, and lacked clothing.

Worth thinking about as you peruse the exhibit: President Kennedy’s sister Rosemary had an intellectual disability that was described as mild in childhood, but became completely incapacitated after being lobotomized in 1941 by Dr. Walter J. Freeman at the direction of their father, Joseph P. Kennedy. Rosemary spent the last 56 years of her life in an institution.

In a videotaped interview included with the exhibit, Elizabeth Boggs, a member of the President’s Panel on Mental Retardation, says the Kennedy family didn’t want Rosemary’s condition mentioned.

A partial chronology of exhibits:

1962 — Video of President John Kennedy explaining his legislative proposals to “help fight mental illness and mental retardation.”

These two afflications have been long neglected. They occur more frequently, affect more people, require more prolonged treatment, cause more individual and family suffering than other condition in American life. It has been tolerated too long. It has troubled our national conscience, but only as a problem unpleasant to mention, easy to postpone and despairing of solution. The time has come for a great national effort.”

1962 — Report to the President: National Action to Combat Mental Retardation. The report noted that approximately 200,000 Americans lived in residential institutions, mostly at public expense. Some of the key concepts of the report:

• Institutional care should be restricted to those whose specific needs can be met best by this type of service. Institutions are one facet in a continuum of care.
• No child or adult should remain in residential care any longer than necessary.
• If and when the child or adult is ready for return to the community, adequate resources and services for his support should be made available.
• Responsibility for the care of persons returned to the community should not be relinquished by the institution until assistance is assured from some other sources.

1962 — Address by President Kennedy at a Kennedy Foundation Awards dinner. Kennedy reflects on the public stigma attached to mental retardation but does not acknowledge his personal experience as a sibling. Introducing the award recipients, he stressed the importance of research in improving the lives of people with mental retardation.

This has really been a field which has been relatively ignored. We hope to put a greater light on it in this country, in other countries around the world. It knows no national frontiers. And I hope that in the 1960s, these years will be known as years in which the United States took the leadership in the great effort to make it possible to discover what we can do to make these boys’ and girls’ lives more hopeful and fruitful.

Among the honorees was Dr. Jerome LeJeune, University of Paris, for “the discovery of chromosomal abnormality in mongolism.”

1965 — Video of Robert F. Kennedy discussing his visit to the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, which he described as bordering on a “snake pit.” The visit led Kennedy to testify before the New York legislature that residents of institutions in New York were being denied access to education and deprived of ther civil liberties.

I think that at the state institution for the mentally retarded, and I think that particularly at Willowbrook, we have a situation that borders on a snake pit, and that the children live in filth, that many of our fellow citizens are suffering tremendously because lack of attention, lack of imagination, lack of adequate manpower. There is very little future for these children, for those who are in these institutions. Both need a tremendous overhauling. I’m not saying that those who are the attendants there, or who run the institutions, are at fault. I think all of us are at fault and I think it’s just long overdue that something be done about it.

1965 — A photographic expose’ on the conditions in institutions by Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan, documenting the horrors of legally sanctioned abuse. Reproduced in Look magazine, Christmas in Purgatory raised the consciousness of professionals and community members. The full text is displayed here.

Undated video, approximately 1972, from a television expose’ of New York’s Willowbrook institution, in which Rep. Mario Biaggi (D-NY) pointedly asks a Willowbrook staff member about why the inmates have no clothing.

Undated video, approximately 1982 — Willowbrook 2, After 10 years — A report by Geraldo Rivera about the destruction by arson of a group home for adults with intellectual disabilities on Long Island. He says it was prompted by “groundless fear and misguided prejudice.” Includes on-camera interviews with neighbors who say group home residents would be frightening to them and their children.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 at 5:14 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, abuse, controversial procedures, history, human rights, institutionalization, intellectual/developmental disabilities, politics, quality of life, segregation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post