FYI all
-----Original Message-----
From: Shannon Edwards [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, 31 July 2000 23:36
To: SAMPSON Lisa
Subject: Re: FW: Smithsonian Exhibition - Disability Civil Rights
movement
A slight correction to the website address for the Smithsonian exhibit:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/disabilityrights/index.html
--- SAMPSON Lisa <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>Hello All
>
>A forwarded message about the new exhibition at the Smithsonian. Many of
>you may have either participated in the compilation of this or know about
it
>but as I had not seen it posted on the list, thought I would pass it on.
>
>Cheers,
>Lisa Sampson
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
>--------------
>
>The Struggle for a Curbless World
>
>Around the corner from the massive American flag, symbol of the struggle
for
>independence, and just next to the Greensboro lunch counter, from the first
>civil-rights sit-in, is a tombstone, which represents the thousands of
>unmarked graves of people with disabilities.
>
>It's part of a new exhibit that showcases the struggles of the disability
>rights movement. Three handmade keys, created from a tobacco tin, a nail
>and wire, show the desperation of individuals trying to escape from the
>Winnebago, Wis., Mental Health Institute. Enlarged copies of protest
buttons
>on the floor read "Not Dead Yet," "Cripple Power" and "Independence for 36
>Million."
>
>In time for the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Americans With
>Disabilities Act on July 26, the small collection of objects at the
>Smithsonian's National Museum of American History may be the first to
>commemorate the movement. "I don't know of any place in the country or
world
>that has assembled an exhibit focusing on the disability movement as a
>coherent entity," said Jonathan Young, the White House liaison to the
>disabled community.
>
>Curator Katherine Ott said one of the exhibit's goals is to encourage
>visitors to see the disability rights movement as a civil rights struggle.
>"The issues are the same whether you're African American, Latino or a
woman:
>autonomy, self-definition, being allowed to vote. It plays out differently
>if you're disabled--you may have the right but you can't get into the
voting
>booth," she said. "I can't even get to the back of the bus," reads a poster
>attached to a wheelchair in one of the photos. In another, showing a neatly
>mowed suburban
>street, a sign mandates, "No wheelchairs beyond this point." Personal
>objects include a letter from a school nurse encouraging a parents' group
to
>help a disabled child, and a T-shirt that says, "Same struggle, different
>difference."
>
>Finding material for the exhibit was harder than usual, Ott noted, in part
>because little has been collected or written about the relatively young
>movement. She started her research by e-mailing a questionnaire to people
>and organizations involved in disability rights. "Getting people to trust
us
>was hard," Ott said, "because we're the Smithsonian, we're the government.
>The government is the adversary a lot of the time."
>
>The exhibit focuses on life for people with disabilities before the ADA.
The
>disability rights movement came after the 1960s, and often used methods
>developed during the struggle for civil rights. "In the 1940s and '50s
>parents organized to get their kids [with disabilities] educated, and once
>those kids grew up they got mouthy. That's when civil rights really began.
>They had an education and they knew they had a right," said Ott.
>
>One of her respondents, disability rights leader Justin Dart, contributed
>his trademark cowboy hat and boots, as well as the pen President Bush used
>to sign the ADA into law. Visitors "will receive the strong message that
>people with disabilities are full citizens of the United States . . .
>because they are in the world's greatest history museum with artifacts of
>some of the greatest history makers in the world," Dart said. He called the
>exhibit a "landmark in the fulfillment of the American dream."
>
>Although Dart is one of the movement's most prominent leaders, he said in a
>phone interview that he wants visitors to understand the contributions of
>"nameless thousands." "The illusion that somebody like Abraham Lincoln all
>by himself freed the slaves, and Martin Luther King all by himself made us
>equal, that illusion is a very damaging illusion . . . because it
>discourages people who consider themselves to be ordinary from acting to
>further democracy,"
>he said. "People think . . . 'I don't have any powers so I may as well
just
>watch
>television.' That's not true." He said he was surprised when he first
heard
>about the exhibit. "This is astounding. We didn't go and picket the museum
>and say [why] isn't our
>stuff in there. This is democracy at its best."
>
>Democracy at its best also includes corporate funding; the Smithsonian
>partnered with NCR, a technology corporation, to develop Web kiosks
>containing all the information in the exhibit in a form accessible to
people
>with disabilities. Steve Jacobs of NCR said the system doesn't "demand that
>the person using it has any specific abilities; it adapts itself to that
>person." Blind people, for example, can touch the large buttons and the
>kiosk will give them verbal directions. According to Jacobs, this
>technology, which is not yet available in stores, will work toward closing
>the "digital divide" by making Web pages available to people who don't
speak
>English or are illiterate, or to people while they are carrying babies,
>driving or lacking their glasses. He said in 10 years, businesses won't be
>able to compete without accessible technology.
>
>The exhibit also strives to be accessible to young children and their
>parents, who may be uncomfortable around people with disabilities. A
>doorknob hanger reads, "Hey Kids, Open the Door! . . . Having a disability
>doesn't make you sick. It makes you creative! I'm not an alien. . . . I
just
>do things differently. . . You tap your foot when you're nervous, I rock
and
>wave my hands."
>
>Ott expects more donations after people see the show. She has already
>received e-mails from people with disabilities telling her about objects
>they own that are related to the movement and said she hopes to build a
>larger exhibit in the next few years.
>
>"There will be a lot more people pulling out their chests, looking under
>pillows and in sock drawers for history," said Mark Johnson, advocacy
>coordinator for the Shepherd Center, one of the groups that helped Ott put
>the collection together.
>
>The Disability Rights Movement, at the National Museum of American History,
>is open until July 6, 2001. For more information, and to see objects from
>the exhibit, visit
>http://americanhistory.si.edu/disabilityrights.
>
>2000 The Washington Post Company
>
>
>*********** END FORWARDED MESSAGE ***********
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