"Discrimination in every aspect of life, including laws prohibiting people with disabilities to be educated, to marry, to procreate, often resulted in a life of institutional isolation in sub-human conditions."
Arlene Mayerson, Personal Interview - February 22, 2013
Arlene Mayerson, Personal Interview - February 22, 2013
Prior Conditions
Limited access to education, discrimination in employment, and inaccessibility to services prevented the disabled from leading independent lives. The general consensus was that the solution lay in institutionalization.
Education
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"Retarded children were... excluded from public schools, based on the false stereotype that all were ineducable..."
Thurgood Marshall, Supreme Court Justice - 1984 |
 Texas School for the Deaf - 1856 |
Economic Problems
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"He said, 'Well, I don't think you can do this job... you use a wheelchair.'"
Rachel Sartin, Personal Interview - January 6, 2013 |
 "The conditions weren't even there for them [people with disabilities] to get anywhere near applying for a job or getting offered a job."
Susan Schweik, Personal Interview - March 12, 2013 |
Services and Accommodations"I went to college where they had some steps and they weren't interested in putting in a ramp because I was the only disabled student and it wasn't aesthetically pleasing... I had to sign a paper saying I would be responsible for my own mobility."
Maryellen O’Grady, Disabled Activist - April 15, 1977 |
"There was nothing, there was no public transit at all."
Stephanie Thomas, Personal Interview - December 5, 2012 |
Institutionalization
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"For centuries, disabled people had been locked up in state-owned or state-subsidized institutions. We will never know how many lives were wasted...through that system."
Mark O'Brien, Disability Rights Activist and Author - 2003 |