If you are 20 years old or younger you probably think that everything related to disability and to disability rights in the USA kicked off with the ADA. My, the uncluttered simplicity of youthful logic. There were actually many historical events both good and bad that were considered landmark in their day prior to ADA. Many of these helped shape public attitudes, rights, and care and treatment methods. Disability rights advocates and their opponents have been around for a very long time.

The following is a timeline of pre-ADA events that are on my love/hate list. The timeline ends in the 1970’s for no other reason than I felt like ending then. There are scores of other disability and advocacy landmarks just as important or just as heinous that are not included. I’m certainly not a historian, just someone who appreciates historical impact. Some of the language and wording may no longer be politically correct and some of the concepts may be worse, but that’s what history is all about anyway.

For advocates who are students of history, we are thankful that we no longer are faced with heinous issues such as Eugenics. My hat is off to all of the advocates of the past who had the grit and dedication to stay the course for the hundred plus years it took to dispose of applied eugenics and institutionalization.

1817- The American School for the Deaf is founded in Hartford, Connecticut.
Said to be the first school for children with disabilities in the western hemisphere.

1848- Samuel Gridley Howe establishes the first residential institution for people with mental retardation at the Perkins Institution in Boston.
This practice becomes widespread and continues for over 100 years.

1860- The Gaffaudet Guide and Deaf Mutes’ Companion
The first publication in the USA aimed at readers with a disability.

1864- Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind authorized to confer college degrees.
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Enabling Act giving the Columbia Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind- now Gallaudet University—the authority to confer college degrees. They become the first college in the world empowered to do so.

1869 – The first wheelchair patent is registered with the U.S. Patent Office.

1878 – Joel W. Smith presents his Modified Braille to the American Association of Instructors of the Blind.
This is not well received and eventually sparks the “War of the Dots” between blind advocates of Modified Braille and the sighted educators who preferred New York Point.

1880- The National Convention of Deaf Mutes meets in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The top issue on their agenda was the issue of Oralism and the suppression of American Sign Language. In this same year The International Congress of Educators of the Deaf had recommended that schools for the deaf fire their deaf teachers and suppress the teaching of Signing in favor of a system that promoted oralism. This sparked tremendous controversy and was viewed by many deaf people as an attack upon their culture.

1883- Sir Francis Galton in England coins the term eugenics to describe his pseudo-science of “improving the stock” of humanity.
Taken up by Americans, this leads to passage in the United States of laws to prevent people with disabilities from moving to this country, marrying, or having children. It also leads to the institutionalization and forced sterilization of disabled adults and children.

1908- Clifford Beers publishes A Mind That Found Itself.
An expose of conditions inside state and private mental institutions. Beers later founds the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, an advocacy organization and the first association of its kind and the beginning of the organized mental health movement in America.

1912- Henry H. Goddard publishes The Kadikak Family.
This best seller aimed to link disability to immorality and tie both to genetics. This further bolstered the concept of Eugenics and helped to foster horrible human rights abuses of people with disabilities.

1927- U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell.
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that the forced sterilization of people with disabilities is not a violation of their constitutional rights. This opens the door to proponents of Eugenics, and by the 1970’s some 60,000 people with disabilities are sterilized without permission.

1937- Herbert A. Everest and Harry C. Jennings patent a folding wheelchair.
This wheelchair become the predominant wheelchair of choice and is considered to be the grandfather of modern manual wheelchairs.

1940- The American Federation of the Physically Handicapped is founded.
This cross-disability organization is the first of its kind and politically takes on issues such as job discrimination.

1944- Howard Rusk is assigned to the U.S. Army Air Force Convalescent Center in Pawling, New York.
There Dr. Rusk begins a program for disabled airmen. Many in the medical community deem this to be “Rusks Folly”. Ultimately, the success of this program leads to establishing rehabilitation medicine as a clinical specialty.

1949- The first Annual Wheelchair Basketball Tournament is held in Galesburg, Illinois.
This spreads to other sports and helps mainstream wheelchair and adaptive sports as a lifestyle, cultural, and health activity for people with disabilities.

1961- American National Standard Institute, Inc. (ANSI) publishes American Standard Specifications for Making Buildings Accessible.
This document ultimately becomes the basis of all future architectural access codes.

1963- President Kennedy calls for return to the community of the mentally ill and mentally retarded.
This greatly helps to spur efforts in developing community programs and services and begins an age of deinstitutionalization.

1968- The Architectural Barriers Act.
This act mandates that federally constructed buildings be accessible to people with physical disabilities. The act is considered by many to be the first disability rights legislation.

1970- Physically Disabled Students Program (PDSP) founded at the University of California at Berkeley.
The programs agenda included community living, political advocacy, and personal assistance services. In 1972 it served as the model for the first Center for Independent Living.

1971- Wyatt v. Stickney ruling.
Handed down by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, it states that people confined to residential institutions have the right “”to receive such individual treatment as (would) give them a realistic opportunity to be cured or to improve his or her mental condition.”

1973- Handicapped parking stickers.
First introduced in Washington, DC.

Well, I made it into the 1970’s but there is so much more between there and here, and there is still enough to do down the road. You probably noticed that there wasn’t a great deal of legislation sited. I certainly appreciate the legislation and to some extent the legislators. I appreciate even more the effort of those who struck the fires of reason and justice under the butts of legislators.