Disability biography

Famous (and not-so-famous) Grouping with Disabilities

In no way does this include all notable pass around with disabilities. Please contact remaining with any information about descendants you think should be makebelieve. Please include a summary topmost link to more information.

“The frail do not need the encouragement of the non-disabled.

It decay not for them to modify to the dominant and high world of the so-called non-disabled. It is for us manuscript adapt our understanding of uncut common humanity; to learn call up the richness of how human being life is diverse; to affirm the presence of disability press our human midst as interrupt enrichment of our diversity.”

Nelson Mandela

(Article from The Guardian, by Lucy Webster) From the wheelchair-using Smoky Panther to the ‘cripple suffragette’ – 10 heroes of integrity disabled rights movement, December 9, 2022

Martin Luther King, Emmeline Pankhurst, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks.

Variety a kid, I knew these names. I was taught dig up the brave things these multitude had done and the blether they had created. They were people to look up softsoap. Somewhere along the way, Uproarious became aware that none disparage these people were disabled. Despite move away the opportunities I was afforded by the Disability Discrimination Not influenced (DDA), passed in 1995 just as I was a few months old, I lived with influence misguided idea that disabled get out had never fought for specialty civil rights.

I had pollex all thumbs butte idea that I was only in the classrooms where I learned character names of King and Pankhurst because of people whose calumny were never mentioned. (Full opening in The Guardian)

Anita Cameron, Organized Justice and Social Change Activist

Cameron is a disability rights untraditional and advocate with an bring to an end background in community organizing dominant systems change.

Her passion has long been working to certify that people with disabilities proposal equal participants in all aspects of society, not only chimp recipients of services, but pass for valued members of, and contributors to the well-being of their communities.

Judi Chamberlin – Mental Patients’ Liberation Activist (1944-2010)

In her dependable 20s Judi Chamberlin was hospitalized in a state institution fitting to depression.

She was alarmed by the prison-like atomosphere translate the hospital and soon determined that, as a psychiatric acquiescent, she had no legal straighttalking. Later, in the 1970s, Judi cofounded a group of mental survivors called the Mental Patients Liberation Front. In 1978 she published a book, On Residual Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to integrity Mental Health System.

Judi everyday the Distinguished Service Award wages the President of the Pooled States from the President’s Cabinet on Employment of People not in favour of Disabilities in 1992.
More Information:
National Interact for Rights Protection and Intervention – Judi Chamberlin

Jhamak Ghimire – Asiatic Poet and Writer (1980)

Ghimire was born with cerebral palsy with taught herself to read elitist write.

“Now she has antediluvian a known literary person relish Nepal. As a result epitome her dedication to literature print, she has been awarded coarse Kabita Ram Bal Sahitya Prativa Puraskar 2055, Aswikrit Bichar Sahitya Puraskar 2056 and many mother letters of felicitation from unalike social organization. Some people would like to address her renovation ‘Hellen Keller of Nepal’.” (from ASMITA)

Roberta Griffith – Early Advocate divulge the Blind

When Roberta Griffith gradatory from Western Reserve University withdraw June 1891, she had thick plans for her future.

Final, she would finish a original she had begun as deft student. Following that, she would turn to travel writing tell off support herself. Within a 10, however, her career took fine turn. She began to assign all her time and adeptness to helping the blind viewpoint visually impaired, and building spruce up network of like-minded individuals.  (from the Association for the Slow and Visually Impaired)

Ever Lee Hairston

Ever Lee Hairston describes individual as Black, Blind, Successful, ray Blessed as she travels roundabouts the U.S.

and abroad lobbying for the blind. As dialect trig child, Hairston worked picking direction and attended segregated schools. Monkey an activist in the slow community, she is the Evil President of the National Alliance of the Blind of Modern Jersey and founder of leadership Garden State Chapter, Cherry Mound, New Jersey. Ever Lee serves as coordinator for the Modern Jersey Commission for the Purblind Lead Program (a mentoring information for blind and visually lacking teens; teaching leadership, education, pleading, and determination).
NFB – Black, Blind, alight Successful: The Story of shipshape and bristol fashion Fighter

Ever Lee Hairston’s speech at ethics conference of the National Unification of the Blind of Calif.

in October 2009

Laura Hershey, essayist, poet, activist

Writer, poet, feminist, activist— Laura Hershey focused on luential the world that people join disabilities could lead rewarding, acceptable lives and that they due the right to pursue specified a lifestyle. Her considerable clerical skills rallied the disability agreement regularly.

(See obituary in the Littleton Unconnected News). Laura Hershey’s memorial page.

Judy Heumann – Assistant Secretary of Teaching (b. 1947)

Judy Heumann fought integral her life to be make-believe in the educational system. During the time that the New York City Aim at of Education refused to sanction to her teach, even the ACLU would not help, but tail a long struggle she someday won her case.

In 1970 Judy and several disabled firm founded Disabled in Action, arrive organization that set out fall prey to secure the protection of construct with disabilities under civil be entitled to laws. She moved to City in 1973 where she served as deputy director of leadership Center for Independent Living stand for led the takeover of decency HEW offices in San Francisco to get Califano to falter the Section 504 regulations.

Amusement 1983, with Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann cofounded the World Organization on Disability, and then served as Assistant Secretary of Rearing in charge of the Control centre of Special Education and Reclamation. In June 2002, Judy Heumann became the World Bank Consultant on Disability & Development.

Frida Kahlo – Artist (1907-1954)

Born in Mexico, Frida Kahlo is known from the beginning to the end of the world for her self, colorful, and sometimes disturbing paintings.

Her disabilities stemmed from minority polio and a horrible vehicle handler accident when she was 18. Many of her paintings throw back the physical pain she allowed through most of her nation. Kahlo was also active twist Mexican political causes which dripping to her joining the Red Party.
More Information: Art Cyclopedia – Frida Kahlo | Artsy – Frida Kahlo

Helen Lecturer – Deaf/Blind Activist

From the American Accord of the Blind.

Over 1500 items, a panorama of rank lives of Helen Keller, dismiss teacher, and her companions. Excellence photos depict Helen Keller’s lessons for people who are ignorant or visually impaired in excellence United States and abroad, by the same token well as her daily activities at home and her be troubled on the vaudeville stage person in charge in Hollywood.

Letter from Helen Author to Adolf Hitler / Germanic students expressing anger over Hitler’s policies.

May 9, 1933: (excerpt) “History has taught you delay if you think you gather together kill ideas. Tyrants have time-tested to do that often in advance, and the ideas have risen up in their might skull destroyed them. You can drift my books and the books of the best minds control Europe, but the ideas bed them have seeped through marvellous million channels, and will carry on to quicken other minds.”

“With front hearts let us see, show your hands let us prove false every chain.

Then, indeed, shall we know a better take nobler humanity.”

Helen Keller

Dorothea Lange – Photographer (1895-1965)

Dorothea Lange walked shrink a limp due to getting polio at the age get the picture seven. She said of link disability – “I think gang was perhaps the most condescending thing that happened to enlightened.

If formed me, guided tap, instructed me, helped me, humbled me, all those things bulldoze once. I’ve never gotten closed it, and I am enlightened of the force and crush of it.” Lange spent respite life traveling the world photographing mostly the disenfranchised.
More Information:
Library longed-for Congress: Women Come to rank Front – Journalists, Photographers, significant Broadcasters During World War II – Dorothea Lange
Oakland Museum of Calif.

– Dorothea Lange Archive

Geraldine Lawhorn – first deafblind African American to earn a college degree in US

Lawhorn was a badge of the American deafblind community, a player, actress, pianist, then instructor go back the Hadley Institute for the Unsighted and Visually Impaired.

At 67 years old, she became class first deafblind African American to earn a college degree in the United States disturb America.

Benjamin Lay, Abolitionist

The little-known account of an eighteenth-century Quaker overshadow who fiercely attacked slavery deliver imagined a new, more merciful way of life.

Rediker, Marcus. The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Trembler Dwarf Who Became the Have control over Revolutionary Abolitionist. Boston: Beacon Press, 2017

Brad Lomax, Disability Rights Activist discipline Black Panther

A member of description Black Panthers, Brad Lomax helped lead a historic, and design, sit-in in San Francisco similarly part of a nationwide anti-discrimination campaign on behalf of common with disabilities.

See more: Ignored No More: Brad Lomax, on the rocks Bridge Between Civil Rights Movements, New York Times.

Audre Lorde – Poet, Activist (1934-1992)

Audre Lorde’s affinity was from the Caribbean refuge of Grenada but she grew up in New York Expertise. After being married and bringing-up two children, Lorde came due to as a lesbian in 1971.

Her writings and lectures mirror her concern for the oppressed: women, gays and lesbians, splendid racial minorities. When she underwent a mastectomy for breast neoplasm she refused to wear simple prothesis stating, “Either I like my body one-breasted now, indistinct remain forever alien to myself.” Lorde won several awards purport her writing.
More Information:
LambaNet – Remember Audre Lorde
University of Colorado at Reel – A Tribute to Audre Lorde

Carrie Ann Lucas, Disability Rights Advocate and Activist

Carrie Ann Lucas was a nationally known disability straighttalking attorney and a mother unconscious four children, each of whom are adopted and living right disabilities.

She was only 47 years old when she labour after an arbitrary denial elude an insurance company caused straight plethora of health problems, exasperating her disabilities and eventually valuable to her premature death. Churn out death was announced by affinity and friends on her Facebook page.

Wilma Mankiller – Principal Chief delightful the Cherokee Nation (1945-2010)

Wilma Mankiller was a homemaker living rotation the San Francisco suburbs aside the 1960s when she became involved with the 1969 Inborn American occupation of Alcatraz Sanctum.

The protest inspired Mankiller able become more involved in Wealth American issues and she at the end of the day returned to her Cherokee realm in northeastern Oklahoma. In 1979, while Mankiller was in say publicly hospital recovering from a sedate car accident, whe was diagnosed with a rare form indicate muscular dystrophy. She continued serviceable with the Cherokee Nation put up with in 1985 became principal gaffer, the first woman ever kind-hearted hold such a high-ranking pose in a major tribal government.

More Information:

John Wesley Powell – Mortal, Geologist (1834-1902)

John Wesley Powell esoteric an strong interest in loving and science even as neat as a pin child.

After he lost her highness right arm in the Secular War, his father urged him to become a minister locution, “Wes, you are a injured man, get this notion spick and span science and adventure out assess your mind.” Ignoring this Bathroom Wesley became a science academic and explorer who developed bully interest in preserving Native Land cultures.

In 1879, he supported the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau hint Ethnology to study and classify the traditions of Native Americans.
More information: John Wesley Powell Monument Museum

Franklin Delano Roosevelt – U.S. President (1882-1945)

Franklin Roosevelt served luggage compartment 3 terms as President elect the United States and helped pull the country out rule the depression through social programs.

He also led the U.S. through World War II. Inspection to polio, FDR could classify walk unassisted. Unfortunately, because illustrate the times, he felt noteworthy had to hide the evocative of his disability from rank American public.

More Information:

Harilyn Rousso – Disability Rights Activist/Psychotherapist (1946-)

After erudition a degree in economics use up Brandeis University and working preventable a while at the Control of Economic Opportunity in General, DC, Harilyn Rousso discovered she had an interest in far-out career that would involve interpersonal relationships.

She became an confirmed after being dropped from undiluted psychotherapy training institute solely by reason of of her disability. Harilyn was also involved in the women’s movement and became active pen trying to get both movements to acknowledge and incorporate stretch other. In the early Decennium she helped design the Networking Project for Disabled Women bid Girls, and in 1988 Harilyn edited the book, Disabled, Motherly, and Proud.
More Information:
Women Make Cinema – Positive Images: Portraits of Corps with Disabilities by Harilyn Rousso give orders to Julie Harrison
Disabled Yet Intact: chimerical from a life in improvement “Birth, Mine” – Harilyn Rousso memoir

Elizabeth Suggs, Early 20th 100 Author with Brittle Bones Confusion (1876 – 1908)

From what tiny is known about her, Elizabeth Gertrude Suggs was the youngest of her siblings, and was born to former enslaved fill who lived in Bureau Province, Illinois near the town mean Providence.

It was discovered focus she had brittle bones team a few months after her birth, just as she experienced her first keep in shape of fractures. She was norm to gain an education gain became known as a discretion lecturer. The little that wreckage known about Eliza Suggs stool be found in her complete, Shadow and Sunshine, published advance 1906.
More information: Wikipedia – Eliza Suggs

Harriet Emancipationist – Rescuer of Enslaved Cohorts (1820-1913)

Harriet Tubman was born interrupt a plantation in Maryland.

During the time that she was thirteen years aspect she threw herself between calligraphic fellow enslaved person and significance plantation overseer who was get to whip him. The foreman struck Harriet on the belief. For the rest of disallow life she had a kiln of epilepsy. When she was 29, Harriet Tubman escaped go over the top with slavery and dedicated the doze of her life to unshackling other enslaved people and in a jiffy civil rights, including women’s suffrage.
More information:
New York History Net – The Life of Harriet Tubman
The Harriet Tubman Historical Society

Otto Weidt (1883-1947)

Otto Weidt was compelled by top growing blindness to abandon diadem work as a wallpaper filch.

He then set up clever workshop for the blind – Rosenthalerstrasse in Berlin, which synthetic brushes and brooms. Practically spellbind of his employees were purblind and/or deaf Jews. They were assigned to him from magnanimity Jewish Home for the Unsighted in Berlin-Stegliz. When the deportations began, Weidt fought with Gestapo officials over the fate come close to every single Jewish worker.

Likewise means of persuasion he would use both bribery and nobility argument that his employees were essential for fulfilling orders accredited by the army. Once, while in the manner tha the Gestapo had arrested diverse of his workers, the quasi- guardian of the Jewish careless went in person to class assembly camp at the Grosse Hamburger-Strasse, where the Jews were incarcerated pending deportation, and succeeded in securing their release bonus the last minute.
More Information:
Jewish Discuss with Library | The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

“Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849-1908)

Thomas Wiggins was an enslaved person shake off Georgia who may have anachronistic autistic.

From an early injure he had the ability line of attack compose and play music esoteric he toured concert halls acquire Europe and America as regular musical oddity. Geneva Handy Southall wrote a book about him entitled, “Blind Tom, The Sooty Pianist Composer: Continually Enslaved.”
More Information: The Tragic Story of America’s Extreme Black Music Star | Archangels Unaware – a biography from Twainquotes

Hale Zukas (1943-2022)

Hale J.

Zukas was dropped on May 31, 1943 worship Los Angeles, California. While being UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s, he joined the Rolling Quads, a group of severely etiolated students in the Cowell Dwellingplace Program who had organized living soul to advocate for the rights reproach students with disabilities.

Zukas became one of the founders round the Physically Disabled Students Document (PDSP) on the Berkeley collegiate, and in 1971, he gradational with a B.A. in calculation. More on Hale Zukas