47 pages • 1 hour read
Kim E. NielsenA Disability History of the United States
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “I Am Disabled, and Must Go at Something Else Besides Hard Labor: The Institutionalization of Disability, 1865-1890”
In Chapter 5, Nielsen focuses on the years following the Civil War and examines the ways in which the definition, perception, and consequences of disability changed during this time. Because of the devastation of the war, in which more than 620,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands more became physically and psychologically disabled, disability became more visible across the nation, and medical advances began taking place. The primary consequence of the war—namely, emancipation—meant new experiences of disability for African Americans and renewed national debates about race, but another consequence was the sheer number of veterans with disabilities who were without employment. One solution to the latter was the creation of the Invalid Corps in 1863, which put nearly 20,000 disabled veterans to work. Another solution was the continuation of veterans’ pensions begun after the Revolutionary War. Because disability pensions were reliant on medical determinations, “the pension system once again defined disability as incapacity to perform manual labor” (86). Nielsen argues that “wartime made disability heroic—but only for male veterans, and only for men with physical, and visibly exhibited, disabilities” (87).
Nielsen argues that as a consequence of “ugly laws,” in which cities banned “diseased” and “maimed” individuals from public spaces and prohibited street beggars, people with disabilities were made invisible. Laws such as these, as well as the prevalence of traveling “freak shows,” in which individuals with disabilities were put on display, reflected both unease with visions of disability and a certain curiosity (89).
The decades following the Civil War saw an expansion in the number and types of institutions for people with disabilities. This period also saw increased industrialization and urbanization, in which the populations of major cities began exploding. As formerly enslaved people gained emancipation and industrialization and urbanization took place, institutions for people with mental illness and schools for deaf and blind people began opening across the US. Additionally, the common school movement, which sought to establish and expand tax-funded public schools, was taking place simultaneously. Nielsen argues that “while schooling was still limited by race, gender, and class, more Americans had access to basic literacy than ever before” (94). The nation’s premier educational institution for deaf students, the National Deaf-Mute College in Washington, DC, which would later be renamed Gallaudet University, opened in 1864 and began allowing female students to attend in 1887. Nielsen explains that “by the turn of the century, over 130 residential schools served deaf students, 31 served blind students, and approximately 14 schools had been established for those diagnosed as ‘feeble-minded’” (96).
The biggest change for deaf people in general and deaf students at residential schools was the rise of oralism, “the belief that deaf people can and should communicate without the use of sign language, relying exclusively on lip reading and oral speech” (96). Once called “manual education,” sign language was regularly taught in the early years of deaf education in the United States because it was argued that it “liberated deaf people from their confinement” and allowed them to receive Christian teaching (96). However, educational theorists in the post-Civil War era argued that sign language “made deaf people outsiders” because “the gesturer is, and always will remain, a foreigner” (97). The movement against sign language and toward oralism intensified so much that by World War I, 80% of deaf students were taught by that method only. Nielsen argues that despite the movement toward oralism, American Sign Language “remained alive and vibrant due to the sometimes covert, sometimes overt insistence and resistance of deaf people” (98).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough: The Progressive Era, 1890-1927”
The primary focus throughout Chapter 6 is the Progressive Era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the first portion of the chapter, Nielsen examines mass immigration to the United States and the policies and consequences that grew from it. She explains that “since the early twentieth century, a growing wave of concern about the changing nature of the nation’s citizens had overwhelmed the United States, its politics, and its culture” (100). This concern led to the notion that certain characteristics regarding race, ethnicity, and disability made some people “undesirable.” Many politicians, educators, and religious leaders argued that criminality, “feeble-mindedness,” sexual perversions, and immorality were hereditary traits, just as leadership and responsibility were (101). Although it was widely discredited, many people during this time embraced the gospel of eugenics—the belief that the way to improve society is through better human breeding practices so that only those with “positive” hereditary traits reproduce (101). Two strategies emanating from this belief were restrictive immigration policies and forced sterilization.
The Immigration Act of 1882 prohibited entry to any “lunatic” or “idiot” or anyone who was determined “likely to become a public charge,” known as the LPC clause (103). In 1903 people with epilepsy were added to the list, and in 1907, “imbeciles” and the “feeble-minded” were as well (103). Nielsen points out that more than 26 million people entered the United States at Ellis Island between 1870 and 1924. Immigration laws already excluded nearly all Africans, Asians, and South Americans, but even Europeans attempting to enter faced vigorous examination. For the thousands of potential immigrants being inspected every day, those who drew suspicion for “defects, derangements, and symptoms of disease” were marked with chalk for closer inspection (104). While the LPC clause was allegedly an economic matter because it assumed that certain people would not be able to support themselves and should thus be deported, Nielsen argues that it was more likely ableism and the desire for “a specific form of American bodies” (109).
Originating directly from the pervasiveness of eugenics in the early 20th century, 37 states passed forced sterilization laws beginning in 1907. Developed by educator Harry Laughlin, the very broad “socially inadequate classes” of people who faced forced sterilization statutes included the “feebleminded,” “insane,” criminalistic, “epileptic,” inebriate, diseased, blind, deaf, “deformed,” and dependent (113-15). Nielsen argues that “civic undesirability was slippery and broad; and the definitions of disability, degeneracy, and immorality vague and permeable” (115). In the Progressive Era, a period of social reform, institutions for people considered either “insane” or “feeble-minded” transitioned from places where education and assimilation took place to places that were primarily custodial. During this time, institutions began to serve an ideological purpose rather than a practical one focused on treatment. According to Nielsen, “the warehousing of those considered deviant in one way or another, combined with the threat of sterilization, policed behaviors and literally controlled the reproduction of social norms” (119).
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
Nielsen begins Chapter 5 with a poem composed by a Union soldier who had lost his arm during the Civil War. Throughout Chapters 5 and 6, she uses case studies such as this describing the experiences of specific individuals dealing with disabilities in the decades following the Civil War and through the Progressive Era into the 1920s. Nielsen’s reliance on case studies indicates that limited formal information was gathered about people with disabilities at the time. She must therefore rely on individual accounts concerning people with disabilities in order to form a picture of what it was like for them. She argues that in these decades, medical advances became necessary as disability became more visible in America because of returning Civil War soldiers. Additionally, emancipation meant new experiences of disability for African Americans, and industrialization and urbanization resulted in new meanings and perceptions of disability. The nation’s population more than quadrupled between 1870 and 1920, leading to the spread of disease in major urban centers. Industries such as steel and textiles brought new employment opportunities but also created pollution and increased disability from industrial accidents. Institutionalization for people with disabilities continued to increase in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as well, as did the number of schools for those with disabilities.
The text also highlights The Changing Definitions and Perceptions of Disability. The definitions and perceptions of disability evolved in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, just as it had in the late colonial and antebellum eras. As it related to disability pensions for returning Civil War soldiers and immigration restrictions on those trying to enter the country, the clearest definition of disability remained the inability to perform manual labor. This began to change, with new perceptions and notions emerging, as disability became more visible across the nation.
In the 20th century, the meaning and perception of disability continued to evolve as new concerns grew about mass immigration and the “changing nature of the nation’s citizens” (100). At the same time, ableist attitudes and notions began to develop among many politicians, religious leaders, and educators about ideal Americans and those who were considered “undesirable.” As a result of these concerns, a restrictive immigration policy developed that limited entry based on not only race and ethnicity but also disability. Nielsen’s analysis thus suggests that the more neutral perception of disability during the colonial era gave way to a negative and ableist interpretation of disability as a quality that made one “undesirable” and unfit for full citizenship. This furthermore indicates a normative conception of the “ideal American” that was heavily inflected with ableist bias.
Another result of the growing concern over the changing nature of the citizenry was forced sterilization laws that were passed in 37 states beginning in 1907. Nielsen’s consideration of forced sterilization laws underscores the idea that normative conceptions about the “ideal American” were not merely intellectual; they impacted and informed the concrete, material conditions for those who fell within and outside of these norms. Ideas about who constituted the ideal American were potent enough to justify the forced sterilization of people with disabilities on the grounds that they deviated from this ideal. Nielsen also links the rise in these laws to The Intersectionality of Disability With Race, Gender, and Class. While proponents of sterilizations spoke about it in patriotic terms, claiming that it was needed to protect the nation from “degenerative elements,” the broad list of qualities that made one a candidate for sterilization was based on elements of race, gender, class, and disability. Disability became more visible in America not only because of the consequences of war and immigration but also because mass industrialization in mines, steel plants, railroad yards, and textile factories inevitably led to illness and disability. With this visibility came an increased scrutiny of whether people with disabilities, like other demographics such as women and people of color, were worthy of the rights and privileges granted to other citizens.
As the federal government and states became more activist to correct what were viewed as societal ills, The Impact of Legislation and Policy on Individuals With Disabilities was felt during the Progressive Era perhaps more than any other time. Actions taken after the Civil War, such as soldiers’ pensions, the formation of the Invalid Corps, and the expansion of institutions for people with disabilities, are examples of this, but so are the increasingly restrictive immigration policies and forced sterilization policies, which are also examples of the intersectionality of disability with race, gender, and class. In closing Chapter 6, Nielsen argues that “policies were put in place to carefully monitor the bodies of those entering the United States and sterilize the deviant bodies of those already within the nation’s gates. Sexuality, race, class, gender, and ethnicity forcibly intersected with notions of disability and quality citizenship” (129).
