Exploring history through the lens of disability
July 28th, 2009
Editor Carl R Weinberg introduces the Magazine of History’s disability history issue with the observation that the concept of disability offers a “new way to look at history.”
Weinberg says many adults today grew up with a minimal consciousness of the rights and perspectives of people with disabilities. He urges teachers to incorporate an awareness of disability into a wide range of historical topics.
Even with our expanded awareness of disability rights today, it is still a revelation and not an easy one to grapple with that at least some activists for disability rights find offense in the common expression of denigration, “That’s so lame.” But the very difficulty we may have in considering “lame” offensive also conveys an important historical lesson: social change is difficult, painful, and contentious. For many students today, for instance, it may seem “obvious” that Jim Crow segregation was unconstitutional and just plain wrong, or that the word “nigger” was offensive. It clearly did not seem so to millions of white Americans in the 1950s who fiercely resisted the civil rights movement.
The magazine requires a subscription and includes the following articles:
- Letter: Teaching Disability History — Daniel J. Wilson
- Making Disability an Essential Part of American History — Paul K. Longmore
- “Nothing About Us Without Us”: Disability Rights in America — Richard K. Scotch
- Creating Group Identity: Disabled Veterans and American Government — David Gerber
- (Extraordinary) Bodies of Knowledge: Recent Scholarship in American Disability History — Susan Burch
- “No Defectives Need Apply”: Disability and Immigration — Daniel J. Wilson
- Using Biography to Teach Disability History — Kim E. Nielsen
- Disability History Online — Penny L. Richards
(Magazine of History photo)
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