           Growth, Harmony, and the Fight to Organize

     The decade of the 1950s was, for the organized blind movement
in the United States, almost to the end a period of sustained
development, of internal harmony and cooperation, and of broad new
visions expressed in campaigns of unprecedented daring. Measured in
terms of growth alone, the principle of self-organization by the
blind was thoroughly vindicated in this decade and the National
Federation of the Blind proven to be successful beyond question
even by its foes. The 1949 convention had been held in Denver, the
1950 convention in Chicago, and the 1951 convention in Oklahoma
City. During these years the Federation continued to expand and
mature.

     By 1952 some 150 delegates from 31 states were in attendance
at the Nashville convention which was organized, as it happened, by
a young Tennessee state president named Kenneth Jernigan, attending
his first National Convention. At the San Francisco convention four
years later, the total climbed to 42 state affiliates with more
than 700 delegates. When the National Federation of the Blind
convened in Miami for its twentieth anniversary convention in 1960,
no fewer than 47 states sent a total of 900 delegates to the scene.

     The fifties were also a decade of successive precedents and
breakthroughs on a variety of fronts. The 1952 convention featured
the first address by a state governor as well as the National
Federation of the Blind's first nationwide broadcast (a
fifteen-minute address by President tenBroek carried live on NBC).
The year 1953, when the convention met in Milwaukee, witnessed the
inauguration of the Federation's first substantial fund-raising
campaign (which would bear mixed fruit in subsequent years with
results both economically productive and internally disruptive). In
1954 at Louisville the first copies appeared of Who Are the Blind
Who Lead the Blind and What is the National Federation of the
Blindboth of them written by Kenneth Jernigan (the first is
reprinted in updated form in Appendix B to this volume). The next
year saw the first of many National Federation of the Blind surveys
of state programs for the blind carried out at gubernatorial
request those of Colorado and Arkansas,  authored jointly by
Jernigan and First Vice President George Card. In 1953 as well, the
Newel Perry Award for distinguished service to the blind was
presented for the first time; it went to Governor Ed Johnson of
Colorado for his courage in inviting the blind into his state to
perform the unheard-of function of judging the agency for the
blind. Another precedent of much greater significance which was
achieved in the course of the decade was the breakthrough in Civil
Service employment a slow and arduous process of persistent
challenges to the entrance tests in all categories of the Civil
Service. The first limited victory came in 1953 when the Civil
Service Commission capitulated to mounting pressure and opened just
one of its examinations, at that time known as the Junior
Management Assistant Examination (reputedly the toughest of the
lot), to blind candidates. The result was one of triumph and
vindication; across the country, spurred by the National Federation
of the Blind, twice as many blind applicants proportionally passed
the examination as those possessing sight. (Some six percent of the
blind, as opposed to three percent of the sighted, passed the
examination.) By the early sixties, as a chastened Commission began
to work cooperatively with the Federation, most of the civil
service barriers came tumbling down, with the result that today
blind men and women are at work for the federal government in
ever-increasing numbers as attorneys, chemists, switchboard
operators, transcribers, skilled workers, and much more.

     Of all the campaigns of reform launched by the National
Federation of the Blind during the dynamic decade of the fifties,
none was more sweeping in ambition or momentous in significance
than the struggle for the right to organize, which centered around
embattled legislation known then and ever since as the Kennedy Bill
after its co-sponsor, Senator (and future President) John F.
Kennedy. The need for such legislation, protecting the right of
blind organizations to exist without harassment from hostile
agencies, became urgent early in the decade as the remarkable
success of the Federation in recruiting blind persons to its cause
and carrying out independent surveys of state programs began to
draw alarmed resistance and opposition from major elements of what
was to become known as the Blindness System. As the word of
Federationism was carried to the cities and towns of America, new
and independent associations of blind people sprang up while old
organizations that had grown dormant were given a new lease on
life. In state after state these local groups formed themselves
into statewide bodies, which in turn sought affiliation with the
National Federation of the Blind. Each level of organization gained
strength and confidence from the other and together they exerted
mounting pressure upon the public agencies.

     The response of the agencies to this independent activity and
spirit was not wholly negative, to be sure. In some states the
organized blind were regarded not as a threat to existing policies
but as an invaluable source of information and advice in the mutual
effort to improve state programs and services. In these cooperative
relationships the National Federation of the Blind typically lent
a hand in such areas as public relations, funding, and the pursuit
of progressive legislation. But if many public and voluntary
agencies greeted the rise of the organized blind movement in a
spirit of cooperation, there were as many others both within the
states and nationally which reacted with bitter hostility. Their
opposition had various causes, of course, among them the simple
disbelief that blind persons might be capable of managing their own
lives and exercising the normal rights of other citizens.

     But there was a more immediate and practical not to say
vengeful motive behind the opposition of numerous elements in the
blindness system; it was the perceived threat to various of their
programs and institutions, notably the sheltered workshops and the
blind-oriented federal vending stand program, which represented a
formidable stake in the continued dependency of the blind.
Managerial groups tended not unnaturally to look upon independent
organizations of their blind workers as trade unions seeking to
improve their rights and working conditions; and indeed the two
were related, as the National Federation of the Blind state
affiliates pressed for a variety of reforms in the agency programs
and supported the affiliation of shop workers with actual labor
unions.

     By the time of the NFB's 1956 convention in San Francisco, the
agency attacks upon the organized blind movement were no longer
merely scattered but concerted and orchestrated; and not merely
critical but bitterly hostile and frequently vicious. In a classic
convention address, Within the Grace of God, which combined
satirical humor with moral urgency, President Jacobus tenBroek
undertook to counter these attacks and to answer the questions they
were raising: Whence come these attacks? What is the motivation
behind them? Is such conflict unavoidable? To what degree is
reconciliation possible? The full text of his memorable speech
follows:

     WITHIN THE GRACE OF GOD

     by Jacobus tenBroek

     It is a privilege of a very special order, and one to which I
have long looked forward, to address you here tonight in the unique
and wonderful city of San Francisco. For all of us who are native
Californians (which means as you know that we have moved at least
six months ago from Iowa or Oklahoma) this occasion marks the
fulfillment of a cherished ambition; and we feel something of the
pardonable pride of hosts who know that their hospitality has been
as graciously accepted as it has been warmly given.

     But there is something else that is special about the present
occasion. Our city and our state are blessed in this year of grace
with not one but two history-making conventions, each of which is
appearing on the local stage for the first time: our own and that
of the Republican Party. There can be no question, of course, which
is the more important and far-reaching in its consequences but let
us admit that the Republicans too have an objective of some scope.

     During our regular convention sessions today we have had a
fairly full review of the work of the National Federation of the
Blind. We have seen the accelerated growth of the organization
marked by the accession of nine state affiliates in the year since
our last National Convention, lifting us from a beginning of seven
states in 1940 to a grand total of forty-two states today and with
a clear view of affiliates in forty-eight states in the foreseeable
future. We have seen an organization with purposes as irrepressible
as the aspiration of men to be free, with far-flung activities and
accomplishments, with the solid adherence and participation of rank
and file members, and with the selfless devotion of an
ever-increasing array of able and distinguished leaders. We have
seen the action and the forces of action. We have also seen the
reaction and the forces of reaction. There is perhaps no stronger
testimony to our developing prestige and influence as the
nationwide movement and organization of the blind than the scope
and intensity of the attacks upon us. These attacks are not new.
They have persisted from the very beginning. They have ranged from
unspeakable, whispering campaigns against the character and
integrity of the leaders of the Federation to public disparagement
of its goals and structure. Now, however, the attacks have taken on
a new bitterness and violence. They include open avowals of a
determination to wipe several of our affiliates out of existence
and every step possible has been taken to bring about this result.

     Whence come these attacks? What is the motivation behind them?
Are they personal? Are they institutional? Are they based on policy
differences as to ends as well as to means? What is the pattern of
action and reaction for the future? Is such conflict unavoidable?
To what degree is reconciliation possible?

     It is to an analysis of these problems and to an answer to
these questions that I should like to direct your attention
tonight.

     Let me begin by giving you a purely hypothetical and very
fanciful situation. Imagine that somewhere in the world there
exists a civilization in which the people without hair that is the
bald are looked down upon and rigidly set apart from everyone else
by virtue of their distinguishing physical characteristic. If you
can accept this fantasy for a moment, it is clear that at least two
kinds of organization would come into being dedicated to serve the
interests of these unfortunate folk. First, I suggest, there would
appear a group of non-bald persons drawn together out of sympathy
for the sorry condition of this rejected minority: in short, a
benevolent society with a charitable purpose and a protective role.
At first, all of the members of this society would be volunteers,
doing the work on their free time and out of the goodness of their
hearts. Later, paid employees would be added who would earn their
livelihood out of the work and who would gradually assume a
position of dominance. This society would, I believe, have the
field pretty much to itself for a rather long time. In the course
of years, it would virtually eliminate cruel and unusual punishment
of the bald, furnish them many services, and finally create
enclaves and retreats within which the hairless might escape
embarrassing contact with normal society and even find a measure of
satisfaction and spiritual reward in the performance of simple
tasks not seriously competitive with the ordinary pursuits of the
larger community.

     The consequence of this good work would, I venture to say, be
a regular flow of contributions by the community, an acceptance by
the community of the charitable foundation as the authentic
interpreter of the needs of those unfortunate and inarticulate
souls afflicted with baldness, an increasing veneration for the
charitable foundation, and a general endorsement of its principles,
and gradually but irresistibly the growth of a humanitarian
awareness that the bald suffer their condition through no fault of
their own and accordingly that they should be sponsored, protected,
tolerated, and permitted to practice, under suitable supervision
and control, what few uncomplicated trades patient training may
reveal them able to perform.

     Eventually, a great number of charitable organizations would
be established in the field of work for the bald. They or some of
them would join together in a common association which might well
be entitled the American Association of Workers for the Bald. Step
by step, upon the published Proceedings of their annual meetings,
carefully edited to eliminate the views of the outspoken bald, they
would aspire to climb to professional status. As a part of their
self-assigned roles as interpreters and protectors of the bald,
they or some of them, would sooner or later undertake to lay down
criteria and standards for all service programs for the bald to be
a manual of guidance for those responsible for operating the
programs.

     These, then, would be the assumptions and the ends to which
the charitable organizations for the bald would tirelessly and
successfully exert themselves. They would petition the community
through both public and private enterprise to support these
purposes, and their appeals would dramatize them through a subtle
invocation of the sympathetic and compassionate traits of human
nature. Sooner or later, some of them in order to drive competitors
out of business, garner favor with the public, and  give color of
legitimacy to their own methods would issue what they would
unabashedly call a code of fund-raising ethics.

     All this presumably would take much time; but before too many
generations had passed I expect that most if not all of these
objectives would have come to fruition, and there would appear to
be an end to the problem of the bald.

     Unfortunately, however, there seem always to be those who
persist in questioning established institutions and revered
traditions; and in my improbable fable, at some point well along in
the story, there would appear a small band of irascible individuals
a little group of willful men bent on exposing and tearing down the
whole laborious and impressive structure of humanitarianism and
progress. Incredibly and ironically, these malcontents would emerge
from the very ranks of the bald themselves. At first I suspect that
they would pass unheard and almost unnoticed; but eventually their
numbers would increase and their dissent become too insistent to be
easily ignored. What they would be saying, as I make it out, is
something like this:

     You have said that we are different because we are bald, and
that this difference marks us as inferior. But we do not agree with
certain Biblical parables that possession of hair is an index of
strength, certainly not that it is a measure either of virtue or of
ability. Owing to your prejudice and perhaps your guilt because you
do not like to look upon us you have barred us from the normal
affairs of the community and shunted us aside as if we were
pariahs. But we carry no contagion and present no danger, except as
you define our condition as unclean and make of our physical defect
a stigma. In your misguided benevolence you have taken us off the
streets and provided shelters where we might avoid the pitiless
gaze of the non-bald and the embarrassment of their contact. But
what we wish chiefly is to be back on the streets, with access to
all the avenues of ordinary commerce and activity. We do not want
your pity, since there need be no occasion for it; and it is not we
who suffer embarrassment in company with those whom we deem our
fellows and our equals. You have been kind to us, and if we were
animals we should perhaps be content with that; but our road to
hell has been paved with your good intentions.

     One of the leaders of the bald doubtless would rise to say:

     We do not want compassion, we want understanding; we do not
want tolerance, we want acceptance; we do not want charity, we want
opportunity; we do not want dependency, we want independence. You
have given us much, but you have withheld more; you have withheld
those values which we prize above all else, exactly as you do:
personal liberty, dignity, privacy, opportunity, and most of all
equality. But if it is not in your power, or consistent with your
premises, to see these things as our goals, be assured that it is
within our power and consistent with our self-knowledge to demand
them and to press for their attainment. For we know by hard
experience what you do not know, or have not wished to recognize:
that given the opportunity we are your equals; that as a group we
are no better and no worse than you being in fact a random sample
of yourselves. We are your doubles, whether the yardstick be
intellectual or physical or psychological or occupational. Our
goals, in short, are these: we wish to be liberated, not out of
society but into it; we covet independence, not in order to be
distinct but in order to be equal. We are aware that these goals,
like the humane objectives you have labored so long to accomplish,
will require much time and effort and wisdom to bring into being.
But the painful truth must be proclaimed that your purposes are not
our purposes; we do not share your cherished assumptions of the
nature of baldness, and will not endure the handicap you have
placed upon it.

     And so we have formed our own organization, in order to speak
for ourselves from the experience which we alone have known and can
interpret. We bear no malice and seek no special favors, beyond the
right and opportunity to join society as equal partners and members
in good standing of the great enterprise that is our nation and our
common cause.

     End of quotation end of fable. Is this fable simply a fanciful
story or is it a parable? Some will say, I have no doubt, that I
have not presented the case of the blind that there is no parallel
and therefore no parable. For one thing, is it not surely
ridiculous to imagine that any civilized society could so baldly
misinterpret the character of those who are not blessed with hair
on their heads? It may be! But civilized society has always so
misinterpreted the character of those who lack sight in their eyes;
and on a basis of that misinterpretation has created the handicap
of blindness. You and I know that blind people are simply people
who cannot see; society believes that they are people shorn of the
capacity to live normal, useful, productive lives, and that belief
has largely tended to make them so.

     For another thing, did the fable accurately portray the
attitudes of at least some of the agencies for the blind? Are their
goals really so different from the goals of the blind themselves?
Do they actually arrogate to themselves the roles of interpreter
and protector, ascribing to their clients characteristics of
abnormality and dependency? To answer these questions and to
demonstrate the bona fides of the parable, I shall let some agency
leaders speak for themselves in the form of seven recent
quotations:

     Quotation number one uttered by an agency psychiatrist: All
visible deformities require special study. Blindness is a visible
deformity and all blind persons follow a pattern of dependency.
That one hardly requires any elucidation to make its meaning plain.

     Quotation number two uttered by the author of a well-known
volume upon the blind for which the American Association of Workers
for the Blind conferred upon him a well-known award: With many
persons, there was an expectation in the establishment of the early
schools that the blind in general would thereby be rendered capable
of earning their own support a view that even at the present is
shared in some quarters. It would have been much better if such a
hope had never been entertained, or if it had existed in a greatly
modified form. A limited acquaintance of a practical nature with
the blind as a whole and their capabilities has usually been
sufficient to demonstrate the weakness of this conception. That one
also speaks adequately for itself.

     Quotation number three uttered by a well-known blind agency
head: After he is once trained and placed, the average disabled
person can fend for himself. In the case of the blind, it has been
found necessary to set up a special state service agency which will
supply them not only rehabilitation training but other services for
the rest of their lives. The agencies keep in constant contact with
them as long as they live. So the blind are unique among the
handicapped in that, no matter how well-adjusted, trained, and
placed, they require lifelong supervision by the agencies.

     Quotation number four uttered by another well-known blind
agency head: The operation of the vending stand program, we feel,
necessitates maintaining a close control by the Federal Government
through the licensing agency with respect to both equipment and
stock, as well as the actual supervision of the operation of each
individual stand. It is therefore our belief that the program would
fail if the blind stand managers were permitted to operate without
control. This is, of course, just the specific application of the
general doctrine of the incompetence of the blind expressed in the
previous quotation. Blind businessmen are incapable of operating an
independent business. The agencies must supervise and control the
stock, equipment, and the business operation.

     Quotation number five, first sentence of the Code of Ethics
(so-called) of the American Association of Workers for the Blind:
The operations of all agencies for the blind entail a high degree
of responsibility because of the element of public trusteeship and
protection of the blind involved in services to the blind. The use
of the word protection makes it plain that the trusteeship here
referred to is of the same kind as that existing under the United
Nations Trusteeship Council that is, custody and control of
underprivileged, backward, and dependent peoples.

     Quotation number six uttered by still another well-known blind
agency head: To dance and sing, to play and act, to swim, bowl, and
roller skate, to work creatively in clay, wood, aluminum, or tin,
to make dresses, to join in group readings or discussions, to have
entertainments and parties, to engage in many other activities of
one's choosing this is to fill the life of anyone with the things
that make life worth living. Are these the things that make life
worth living for you? Only the benevolent keeper of an asylum could
make this remark only a person who views blindness as a tragedy
which can be somewhat mitigated by little touches of kindness and
service to help pass the idle hours but which cannot be overcome.
Some of these things may be accessories to a life well filled with
other things a home, a job, and the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship, for example.

     Quotation number seven uttered by still another head of a
blind agency: A job, a home, and the right to be a citizen, will
come to the blind in that generation when each and every blind
person is a living advertisement of his ability and capacity to
accept the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. Then we
professionals will have no problem of interpretation because the
blind will no longer need us to speak for them, and we, like
primitive segregation, will die away as an instrument which society
will include only in its historical records. A job, a home, and the
right to be a citizen, are not now either the possessions or the
rights of the blind they will only come to the blind in a future
generation! A generation, moreover, which will never come to the
sighted since it is one in which each and every blind person will
live up to some golden rule far beyond the human potential. In that
never-to-be-expected age, the leaders of the agencies for the blind
will no longer discharge their present function of interpretation,
because the blind will then be able to speak for themselves.

     Whatever else can be said about these quotations, no one can
say that these agency leaders lack candor. They have stated their
views with the utmost explicitness. Moreover, these are not
isolated instances of a disappearing attitude, a vestigial
remainder of a forgotten era. Such expressions are not confined to
those here quoted. Many other statements of the same force and
character could be produced; and the evidence that the deed has
been suited to the word is abundant. At long last, we now know that
we must finally lay at rest the pious platitude and the hopeful
conjecture that the blind themselves and the agencies for the blind
are really all working towards the same objectives and differ only
as to means for achieving them. I would that it were so. We are not
in agreement as to objectives although we frequently disagree as to
means as well.

     The frankly avowed purposes and the practices of the agencies
tend in the direction of continued segregation along vocational and
other lines. The blind would move vigorously in the direction of
increasing integration, of orienting, counseling, and training the
blind towards competitive occupations and placing them therein,
towards a job, a home, and normal community activities and
relations. The agencies, by their words and their acts, tend to
sanctify and reinforce those semi-conscious stereotypes and
prejudicial attitudes which have always plagued the condition of
the physically disabled and the socially deprived. We, by our words
and acts, would weaken them and gradually blot them out altogether.
Their statements assert and their operations presuppose a need for
continuous, hovering surveillance of the sightless in recreation,
occupation, and congregation virtually from cradle to grave. We
deny that any such need exists and refute the premise of necessary
dependency and incompetence on which it is based. Their philosophy
derives from and still reflects the philanthropic outlook and
ethical uplift of those Friendly Visitors of a previous century
whose self-appointed mission was to guide their less fortunate
neighbors to personal salvation through a combination of material
charity and moral edification. We believe that the problems of the
blind are at least as much social as personal and that a broad
frontal attack on public misconceptions and existing program
arrangements for the blind is best calculated to achieve desirable
results. We believe, moreover, that it is worthwhile inquiring into
the rationale of any activity which takes as its psychological
premise the double-barreled dogma that those deprived of sight are
deprived also of judgment and common sense, and that therefore what
they need above all else is to be adjusted to their inferior
station through the wise ministrations of an elite corps of
neurosis-free custodians.

     The agency leaders say, and apparently believe, that the blind
are not entitled to the privileges and responsibilities of
citizenship or to full membership in society betokened by such
attributes of normal life as a home and a job. This can only be
predicated on the proposition that the blind are not only abnormal
and inferior but they are so abnormal and inferior that they are
not even persons. We believe that blind people are precisely as
normal as other people are, being in fact a cross section of the
rest of the community in every respect except that they cannot see.
But were this not so, their abnormality would not strip them of
their personality. The Constitution of the United States declares
that all persons born in the United States or naturalized are
citizens. There is nothing in the Constitution or in the gloss upon
it which says that this section shall not apply to persons who are
blind. If born in the United States or naturalized, whether before
or after blindness, blind persons are citizens of the United States
now and are now, not merely in some future generation, possessed of
the right to be citizens and share the privileges, immunities, and
responsibilities of that status. Moreover, the bounty of the
Constitution extends to all persons, whether citizens or not,
rights to freedom, equality, and individuality. As citizens, then,
or as persons, who happen to be deprived of one of their physical
senses, we claim, under the broad protection of the Constitution,
the right to life, personal freedom, personal security; the right
to marry, to have and rear children, and to maintain a home; and
the right, so far as government can assure it, to that fair
opportunity to earn a livelihood which will make these other rights
possible and significant. We have the right freely to choose our
fields of endeavor, unhindered by arbitrary, artificial, or manmade
impediments. All limitations on our opportunity, all restrictions
on us based on irrelevant considerations of physical disability,
are in conflict with our Constitutional right of equality and must
be removed. Our access to the mainstreams of community life, the
aspirations and achievements of each of us, are to be limited only
by the skills, energy, talents, and abilities we individually bring
to the opportunities equally open to all Americans.

     Finally, we claim as our birthright, as our Constitutional
guarantee, and as an indivestible aspect of our nature the
fundamental human right of self-expression, the right to speak for
ourselves individually and collectively. Inseparably connected with
this right is the right of common association. The principle of
self-organization means self-guidance and self-control. To say that
the blind can, should, and do lead the blind is only to say that
they are their own counselors, that they stand on their own feet.
In the control of their own lives, in the responsibility for their
own programs, in the organized and consistent pursuit of objectives
of their own choosing in these alone lies the hope of the blind for
economic independence, social integration, and emotional security.

     You may think that what I have said exaggerates the error and
the danger to be expected from those whose only interest is to
serve the welfare of the blind. I think it does not. No one could
ask, it is true, for any more conscientious and devoted public
servants than those who serve in the rank and file of the agencies
for the blind, public and private. The leaders of many agencies,
too, must be given commendation for enlightened policies and
worthwhile programs. We have heard from some of these agency
leaders yesterday at our convention and we will hear from more
before our convention is over. No one can doubt either that the
agencies when so manned and so led may be of immense and
constructive assistance in a multitude of ways, during the onward
movement of the blind into full membership in society. As to some
of the agencies not headed by leaders of the character just
described, credit must be given for sincerity and good intentions.
This, however, but serves to raise the question whether, in social
terms, sincere and upright folly is better or worse than knavery.
This discussion I forbear to enter.

     What should the posture of the National Federation of the
Blind be in the midst of these attacks and struggles? As the
possessors of power, we must exercise it responsibly, impersonally,
and with self-restraint. As a people's movement, we cannot allow
others to deflect us from our course. We must apply our power and
influence to achieve our legitimate goals. To this end, we must all
exert ourselves to the utmost. Our opponents have history and
outmoded concepts on their side. We have democracy and the future
on ours. For the sake of those who are now blind and those who
hereafter will be blind and for the sake of society at large we
cannot fail. If the National Federation of the Blind continues to
be representative in its character, democratic in its procedures,
open in its purposes, and loyal in its commitments so long, that
is, as the faith of the blind does not become blind faith we have
nothing to fear, no cause for apology, and only achievement to look
forward to. We may carry our program to the public with confidence
and conviction choosing the means of our expression with proper
care but without calculation, and appearing before the jury of all
our peers not as salesmen but as spokesmen, not as hucksters but as
petitioners for simple justice and the redress of unmerited
grievances. We will have no need to substitute the advertisement
for the article itself nor to prefer a dramatic act to an
undramatic fact. If this is group pressure, it is group pressure in
the right direction. If this involves playing politics, it is a
game as old as democracy, with the stakes as high as human
aspiration.

     In the sixteenth century, John Bradford made a famous remark
which has ever since been held up to us as a model of Christian
humility and correct charity and which you saw reflected in the
agency quotations I presented. Seeing a beggar in his rags creeping
along a wall through a flash of lightning in a stormy night
Bradford said: But for the Grace of God, there go I. Compassion was
shown; pity was shown; charity was shown; humility was shown; there
was even an acknowledgement that the relative positions of the two
could and might have been switched. Yet despite the compassion,
despite the pity, despite the charity, despite the humility, how
insufferably arrogant! There was still an unbridgeable gulf between
Bradford and the beggar. They were not one but two. Whatever might
have been, Bradford thought himself Bradford and the beggar a
beggar one high, the other low; one wise, the other misguided; one
strong, the other weak; one virtuous, the other depraved.

     We do not and cannot take the Bradford approach. It is not
just that beggary is the badge of our past and is still all too
often the present symbol of social attitudes towards us; although
that is at least part of it. But in the broader sense, we are that
beggar and he is each of us. We are made in the same image and out
of the same ingredients. We have the same weaknesses and strengths,
the same feelings, emotions, and drives; and we are the product of
the same social, economic, and other environmental forces. How much
more consonant with the facts of individual and social life, how
much more a part of a true humanity, to say instead: There, within
the Grace of God, do go I. Thank you.

     That convention address of 1956 by President tenBroek did not,
of course, for all its reasoned argument and good humor, bring an
end to the strife brought on by the coalition of hostile agencies
in the blindness system. On the contrary, in the next few years the
agency forces retaliated in more areas and in new ways. Blind
workers in the sheltered shops, and blind operators of vending
stands in state-controlled programs, were fired out of hand or
threatened with dismissal if they dared to join or support the
National Federation of the Blind. Blind employees of state agencies
and commissions were subjected to a wide variety of pressures.
Confidential case records of blind persons active in the National
Federation of the Blind, who were receiving public aid or services,
were opened and their contents exploited in an effort to discredit
them and their group affiliations. At one desperate point, a
combination of state agencies created a special committee, a kind
of strike force, to seek ways of counteracting and undermining the
Federation. President Jacobus tenBroek put the case squarely and
simply when he declared at the 1957 convention in New Orleans: The
National Federation of the Blind stands today an embattled
organization. Our motives have been impugned; our purposes reviled;
our integrity aspersed; our representative character denied. Plans
have been laid, activities undertaken, and concerted actions set in
motion for the clear and unmistakable purpose of bringing about our
destruction. Nothing less is sought than our extinction as an
organization.

     The response of the Federation to these attacks constitutes
one of the most dramatic chapters of its history: namely, the
campaign to gain protection for the right of the blind to organize,
to speak for themselves, and to be heard. In effect there were
three distinctive rights involved in this struggle: the right to
organize invoked the constitutional guarantee of free association
and assembly; the right of the blind to speak for themselves
involved not only free-speech guarantees but the very principles of
representative democracy; and the right to be heard, perhaps the
most controversial of all, implied the development of regular
channels of consultation and participation of the blind in the
broad range of public programs affecting their lives. On the face
of it these were far-reaching demands; in the context of blind
affairs, hitherto a history of the inarticulate, the demands were
nothing short of revolutionary.

     In a compelling speech delivered at the 1957 convention in New
Orleans, President tenBroek definitively portrayed the three rights
of the blind revolution and the 300,000 wronged by their denial. He
made clear the interconnections between the right to organize, the
right to speak, and the right to be heard; and he laid down a
challenge to the hostile agencies of the blindness system to cease
their destructive attacks and join the cause in which, officially
and ostensibly, they served the cause of security, opportunity, and
equality for blind Americans. Here is what he said to the
convention:

     THREE RIGHTS AND THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND WRONGED

     by Jacobus tenBroek

     When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will
fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

     So said the Great Commoner, Edmund Burke, nearly 300 years
ago. And speaking of those who had organized the political
associations of Great Britain, he declared: They believed that no
men could act with effect who did not act in concert; that no men
could act in concert who did not act with confidence; that no men
could act with confidence who were not bound together by common
opinions, common affections, and common interests.

     No luster has been lost from these words over the intervening
centuries. Their meaning, if anything, is magnified today, in our
modern age of mass organization and mass communication, of vast
diversity of interests and differences of opinion. But if the
argument for association still holds good for the generality of
men, it has a special urgency for the blind men and women of
America.

     For if we cannot say that bad men have combined against us, we
can and do say that men of bad philosophy and little faith have
done so sighted and sightless men whose vision is short, whose ears
are stopped, and whose minds are closed by institutional and
occupational self-interest, whose banner is the wretched patchwork
of medieval charity and poor relief.

     When such as these combine, the blind indeed must associate:
else we shall fall, as we have fallen in the past, one by one, a
merely pitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

     And if it is also true, as Burke believed, that no men can act
with effect who do not act in concert, how much more profoundly
true is this of men who cannot act at all as individuals because
they are deprived of every normal avenue of opportunity and
expression. The rejected, the declassified, the disfranchised, the
custodialized, are compelled in sheer self-defense to organize to
act in concert in order to act with effect to act with confidence
in order to act in concert and to bind themselves together on the
basis of their common opinions, common affections, and common
interests.

     The blind of America have bound themselves together primarily
in order to unbind themselves of the arbitrary shackles which
throughout all history have confined their movement and smothered
their self-expression. Their emancipation from this social
straitjacket requires the achievement of three essential and
inseparable rights: three rights which constitute the fountainhead
of American democracy and the recognized birthright of ordinary
citizens: three rights withheld from our 300,000 blind.

     They are the right to organize, the right to speak, and the
right to be heard.

     These rights comprise a trinity related as closely to one
another as the points of a triangle. Each gains its meaning in the
presence of the others; each loses its significance in the absence
of the others. To paraphrase the language of Burke, no men can act
effectively who do not have the right to organize; no men can
organize at all who do not have the right to self-expression; and
no men can achieve self-expression who do not have the right to be
heard.

     That these three rights are indeed inseparable that each is
the touchstone of the others was fully recognized by those who
framed our Constitution, and who placed them side by side in the
First Amendment, identified as the rights of free speech, assembly,
and petition essential liberties beyond the control of Congress but
not beyond its protection.

     In modern terms, the right of free speech is the right of
self-expression; the right of assembly is the right to organize;
and the right of petition is the right to be heard.

     The blind of America are today in the throes of an historic
struggle to secure for themselves these rights which the
Constitution guarantees to all Americans. In two bills now before
Congress S. 2411, sponsored by Senator Kennedy, and H.R. 8609,
sponsored by Congressman Baring are incorporated the safeguards
which for the first time in history would gain for the blind the
rights to self-organization, to self-expression, and to
consultation in the public conduct of their affairs.

     Before turning to that legislation, let us take a closer look
at this trinity of rights the struggle for which has plunged us
into the most bitterly contested battle of our organized existence.

     First of all, what is the right to organize? At bottom, it is
only the recognition, in law and common sense, that man is a social
animal and that, in particular, men of common interests and a
common purpose gain satisfaction and support from each other's
company. But there is more to it than that. In a self-governing
democracy the right to organize is virtually synonymous with the
right of self-expression that freedom of speech which is the
foundation of all our liberties. Our theory of government is an
attempt to capture the values of a diverse society; to seek the
truth through open competition in the marketplace of ideas. It is
essential to this principle that all legitimate demands be heard,
that no body of citizens be silenced or suppressed. The great value
of voluntary groups and associations to democracy is that they give
a voice to citizens who, in Burke's words, are bound together by
common opinions, common affections, and common interests. Without
the right to organize, the right to speak would remain for millions
a cruel mockery of their mute condition. For these groups it is
organization alone which makes the right to speak articulate.

     If the blind are to speak for themselves, if they are to be
heard in public forum and the councils of government, let us be
certain that they will speak forcefully, and with a single voice.
Let us guard our organized structure from collapse into a Tower of
Babela confusion of tongues. Let us remember that to act in concert
means to take concerted action; that the hallmark of a functioning
democracy is not anarchy but unity; and that when all of us are
faithful to our responsibilities as members, we may be sure that we
shall act in concert and with confidence that the voice of the
blind will be heard in the land and that it will carry the ring of
truth.

     But what is this right to be heard, and why is it so closely
linked to the right to speak and the right to organize? The answer
is of course that no degree of organization, and no amount of
speech, is of any value if no one is listening. The right to be
heard is the right to be consulted in matters of direct and vital
concern. It is the right to have access to the agencies of
government, the right to an audience at the seats of the mighty,
the right of petition, the right of fair hearing. The right to be
heard, for the organized blind, means in particular the right of
consultation with the administrators of federal-state programs of
public assistance, of vocational rehabilitation, of vending stands,
and of other aids and services. But the right to be heard extends
equally to consultation with those so-called private agencies which
in effect are quasi-public in their structure, in the character of
their programs, and in the source of their funds. These large
foundations and charitable institutions, often the recipients of
public aid and always the advisor of public programs, bear an
obligation equal to that of government to consult with the clients
of their serviceswho must otherwise become the victims of their
arbitrary authority.

     Until such agencies as these, both public and quasi-public,
recognize the right of the blind to be heard, our cause may endure
but it can never prevail. For no constitution, no law, no formal
regulation, can compel anyone to listen. There are none so deaf as
those who will not hear no minds so closed as those resistant to
new ideas and to the appeals of newly vocal groups. But it is the
right to be heard, through the means of consultation, which we are
seeking to establish in the two bills now before Congress. I might
add that our immediate task is to establish the right of these
bills to be heard: to get them before the proper committees and to
give them a public hearing. Once this right has been recognized and
implemented by Congress, our voice will no longer cry in a
wilderness. Our words will then fall upon the ears of government,
not always perhaps like music, but like the serious speech of
reasonable men acting in concert and with confidence, and bound
together by common opinions, common affections, and common
interests.

     But is there really a need for protection of the right to be
heard? Do not the blind already possess the full sympathy and good
wishes of society? Are not their problems clearly recognized and
their demands understood and carried out by a benevolent government
and a kindly community?

     The answer, to put it bluntly, is that the blind have indeed
gained sympathy, but they have not gained understanding. They have
won compassion without comprehension. Over the centuries they have
progressed from the status of outcasts to that of social wards but
not yet to that of free citizens. The goals of protection of
adequate shelter, of minimum security, are presently within their
grasp; but the goals of dignity, of opportunity, of independence,
of total integration into normal society, are still placed beyond
their reach. In short, the blind have been given the right to life;
it remains for them to secure the right to liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.

     The present halfway house in which the blind live results from
the fact that, until a very short time ago, the blind remained
silent while others spoke for them sighted benefactors who wished
them well but neither knew nor understood the reality of loss of
sight. These good neighbors and well-meaning friends contributed
unwittingly to the development of a crippling stereotype, a
two-sided image of the nature of blindness which is equally in
error on both sides: it has been too pessimistic on the one hand
and too optimistic on the other.

     The apparent paradox of this popular stereotype is the product
of society's failure to distinguish clearly between the two
different kinds of limitation which accompany blindness: the
physical limitation and the social limitation. On the one hand, the
physical effects of loss of sight have been drastically exaggerated
in all societies. The blind man, intoned an ancient saying, is as
one dead!

     If that view is no longer current, it is still commonly
believed that the blind man is as one immobilized. This conviction
of the total immobilization of the blind person has persisted
stubbornly in the face of massive scientific and factual evidence
to the contrary. Nor is it a view usually held toward others of the
physically handicapped. Surely there are few who imagine that loss
of hearing, for example, carries with it the loss of all mental
faculties; or that the lack of taste, or of the sense of smell,
must render a man incapable of normal activity and enterprise.
Nevertheless, it is widely felt that loss of sight involves a total
personality transformation which leaves its victims mentally
incompetent, psychologically abnormal, socially inept, and
physically helpless.

     That is one side of the stereotype: a thoroughly pessimistic
and defeatist picture of the physical effects of loss of sight. On
the other side, no less significant and no less wrong, is an
attitude of casual optimism if not unconcern toward the social
limitations imposed by the sighted community upon the blind. These
social limitations include discrimination in employment;
segregation in and from ordinary social relations; exclusion from
living accommodations, public and private; rejection from many of
the normal activities of the community; and relations with
government in which they are viewed as wards rather than citizens,
or as patients rather than clients. They have not yet been fully
emancipated and are very far from being accepted on a basis of
social equality and individual capacity. Their inferior and
deprived status is thought to be their normal, natural, and
inevitable lot.

     Fortunately today there are increasing signs of a basic change
in this traditional perspective. The blind themselves are organized
and steadily winning the right to self-expression and to
consultation in the public conduct of their affairs. No less
important, growing numbers of welfare and service groups are coming
to recognize and support the competence of the blind in the
management of their own affairs.

     Among the most striking and heartening examples of this new
spirit of cooperation and understanding as opposed to condescension
and pity is that developing in the Lions Clubs of America. I could
take a good deal of your time this evening illustrating the ways in
which Lions in many parts of the country are participating with us
today in our movement toward equality and self-expression. But I
know of no better statement of this new spirit of Lionism, than
that which was made before our National Convention this summer by
Tim Seward, himself a prominent Lion and administrative assistant
to Congressman Walter S. Baring of Nevada. In the past, said Mr.
Seward, the Lions who have always felt a particular closeness to
their blind neighbors have done things for them rather than with
them.

     I believe we are on the threshold of a new era.I know that
there are some of us in Lionism [he goes on to say] who feel that
the blind are infringing on our right by conducting their own white
cane drives, because the Lions for the past 25 years have honored
White Cane Day. But the white cane is a symbol of blindness, and
what more understanding and true spirit of Lionism could there be
than to return the symbol of blindness to the blind and thank God
they are able to carry their own banner.

     I believe [he continued] that it is time we better understand
our relationship with the blind, and to do that we must better
understand the blind. We should understand that you not only seek
but are entitled to both social and economic equality; that you are
normal people and as such you have the right of self-expression as
individuals and through your organizations; that both federal and
state agencies should consult with your representatives in
formulating programs that concern your welfare, or further your
opportunities.To this end I believe we can work together as a team,
and lend a hand when it is needed. I believe that it is far better
that we learn the purposes and objectives of your organization and
help you accomplish them rather than try to steer you on a
different course. In short, I believe we should work with you
rather than for you, and this I believe is true Lionism.

     This clear affirmation is representative of a spirit rapidly
spreading today among welfare and service organizations. This new
spirit has been translated into practical administration by many
public officials including some who administer programs for the
blind. We have received from blind agency personnel in a
substantial number of states correspondence testifying to the value
of close consultation with organizations of the blind. Listen to
these quotations:

     1. From the organized blind of the state, the state has
received sound advice concerning the problems and needs of the
blind, thus enabling us to draft policies and procedures which are
not only realistic but are also geared to helping blind persons in
their efforts to decrease dependency.

     2. The organizations of the blind have undertaken an
interpretative program among their members with respect to the
responsibilities, as well as the rights, of recipients of aid to
the blind. This in turn has contributed greatly to the smooth
functioning administration of the program.

     3. As an administrator, I have found the State Federation of
the Blind a valued source of assistance in administering services
for the blind. Its activities have been a key factor in the growth
and improvement of our programs during the past few years.

     4. From the first, the Federation has provided helpful counsel
and advice to the department. One means has been through its
representation on the State Aid to the Blind Advisory Committee.

     5. I feel that it is of the utmost importance to know how the
persons served feel about the services provided, how such services
can be improved. The Federation of the Blind has been an excellent
vehicle for this purpose.

     6. Please be assured of this agency's willingness and
intention of always and in every way possible carrying out the
thesis that we can progress in the interest of the blind only by
close cooperation, and we certainly believe that when blind people
organize together to help themselves it certainly is helpful to any
group or agency interested in the same ultimate goals.

     7. The values derived from close consultation with the blind
cannot be obtained from any other source.

     Who are the state administrators who have made these and
similar statements? Are they unknowns in the field? Are they minor
officials without position, influence, or opportunity to observe
the overall picture? Quite the contrary! They are the top
administrators of their programs, thoroughly in possession of the
facts and responsible not only for what they say but for the
conduct of their agencies. They are: Harry L. Hines, Director,
Services for the Blind, Nebraska; Clifford A. Stocker,
Administrator, Commission for the Blind, Oregon; Malcolm Jasper,
Director, Iowa Commission for the Blind; Perry Sundquist, Chief,
Division for the Blind, California; Merle Kidder, State Director,
Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, North Dakota; Harry E.
Hayes, Director, Services for the Blind, Kansas; T. V. Cranmer,
Supervisor, Services for the Blind, Kentucky; Thomas J. Lucas,
Director, Division of Public Assistance, Wisconsin; Howard H.
Hanson, Director, Services to the Blind, South Dakota; Barbara
Coughlan, Director, State Department of Public Welfare, Nevada;
John F. Mungovan, Director, State Division of the Blind,
Massachusetts.

     To confer the benefits which these administrators have listed
on all administrators of programs for the blind through
Congressional implementation of the rights of organization, speech,
and consultation is the very purpose of the Kennedy and Baring
bills. That purpose has seemed so obvious to many people that they
have wondered why such legislation should be needed at all or, at
least, have felt confident that no one could wish to stand in the
way of so reasonable an object.

     In case there are any among you who still feel such
confidence, allow me to remind you of the resolution condemning the
Kennedy bill which was railroaded through their convention this
summer by a controlling faction of the American Association of
Workers for the Blind. In this official diatribe the little group
of willful men placed squarely on the record its considered
judgment of the competence of blind people generally, the
irresponsible character of their organizations, and the dictatorial
function of such groups as the AAWB. In their sweeping denunciation
of the bill and all it stands for, these agency spokesmen made four
distinct and definite points:

     First, the blind are second-class citizens, undeserving of the
normal responsibilities and privileges accorded as a birthright to
other Americans. Do I exaggerate? Here are their exact words: the
bill embodies a completely unsound and retrogressive concept of the
responsibilities and privileges of blind persons as citizens. What
clearer statement could there be of the view that loss of sight is
tantamount to loss of citizenship in particular, of the right to
speak and the right to be heard?

     Second, the organized blind lack even the maturity and simple
competence to participate on normal terms in the conduct of
programs affecting them. Do I distort their meaning? Now hear this:
the proposed legislation, if enacted, would create an arbitrary and
unwieldy system of review and supervision of all federally-financed
benefits or services on behalf of blind persons by professionally
unqualified groups; and such reviews would in effect make these
blind persons supervisors of the federal agencies and programs and
such administrative procedure would impair the efficiency of
federal programs. These statements leave no room for doubt as to
the utter contempt with which the dominant elements in the AAWB
regard the abilities of their blind clients; in a word, they regard
these abilities as nonexistent.

     Third, only the AAWB and its fellow custodians possess the
rights and competence to consult on programs for the blind in fact,
to dictate what these programs are to be and this vested interest
must be protected at all costs against the unwarranted intrusion of
the blind themselves. Am I unfair to them? Look at the resolution:
in contrast to its rejection of the organized blind from
consultation, it declares that one of the principal functions of
the AAWB is to provide the benefits of its extensive knowledge
about the problems of blindness to those leaders in our American
society who are responsible for the reflection in legislation of
sound social thinking in other words, to advise and supervise the
programs for the blind. The resolution is replete with such odious
contrasts: where the blind are professionally unqualified, the
agencies are professionally responsible and moreover possess the
professional processes and authentic information to counteract the
errors and evils perpetrated by the unprofessional blind.

     Fourth, although the Kennedy bill is here condemned as
completely unsound and retrogressive, all of its provisions are
said to be contained in the Constitution and in the laws! Does this
spurning of the Constitution seem unlikely? Listen: All of the
provisions of this bill are already guaranteed in the Constitution
of the U.S. and furthermore, most federally authorized programs of
benefits already provide through statutes or regulations
opportunities for fair hearings. If this is true, then all the
preceding statements damning the bill are flagrant attacks upon the
Constitution! But what is even more amazing is the incredible
constitutional doctrine here set forth that it is unnecessary and
improper to give legislative enforcement to any right. This lack of
understanding of American government and institutions on the part
of a group most of whom are in the employ of government is
appalling. Might we observe that the leaders of the AAWB are
professionally unqualified when it comes to questions of
constitutional law.

     By this reasoning we should do away with all our laws against
murder because the Constitution guarantees the right to life. By
this reasoning we should throw out all our laws protecting property
because the Constitution guarantees the right to property. By this
reasoning we should discard all our laws protecting persons against
unlawful imprisonment because the Constitution guarantees the right
to liberty. By this reasoning we should eliminate all our laws
protecting individuals against violence to their persons or
invasion of their rights of privacy because the Constitution
guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects. By this reasoning we should repeal all
those legislative enactments maintaining the rights of citizens
because the Constitution forbids abridgment of the privileges and
immunities of citizens. By this reasoning we should destroy all
those legislative provisions requiring that persons similarly
situated be treated alike because the Constitution guarantees to
all persons the equal protection of the laws. By this reasoning we
should strike down one by one, section by section, clause by
clause, those statutes which prohibit the peonage and chattelage of
man because the Constitution abolishes slavery and involuntary
servitude.

     In most of its provisions the Constitution is not a
self-executing document. Virtually all of its provisions require
the support of special laws in order to gain enforcement. Even the
13th Amendment sometimes cited as one of the few examples of a
self-executing provision has been implemented by particular
legislation, and indeed the Amendment itself calls for just such -
implementation.

     To these four planks in the anti-blind platform of the AAWB,
some others have recently been added by their once-silent partner,
the American Foundation for the Blind. In a July bulletin of the
Foundation, the Kennedy bill was also condemned as administratively
unsound because it would, in some unspecified way, injure the
spread of services for the blind. More important, however, said the
Foundation, passage of the measure would tend to further the
segregation of blind persons, and coerce them into added
identification with selected organized groups if they wished to
have any voice in affairs affecting their welfare.

     Note the logic of that assertion. The bill would strengthen
and assist organizations of the blind therefore it would further
the segregation of the blind. In other words there must be no
legislation to support the farmers, because it could only serve to
further their segregation. There must be no legislation to advance
the cause of private enterprise, because it could only serve to
further the segregation of businessmen. There must be no
legislation on behalf of organized labor, because to strengthen the
unions is only to further their segregation. There must be no aid
to needy children or the totally and permanently disabled because
such aid will further the segregation of these groups. By this
logic, there must be no legislation of any kind for any group of
citizens except, presumably, that legislation aiding the AFB and
the AAWB. That alone may be encouraged without the danger of
segregation.

     But we may also agree that successful self-organization by the
blind would tend to further their segregation from the grip of
custodial agencies. As for the charge of coercion, it need only be
said that the primary purpose of the Kennedy and Baring bills is to
afford the blind protection from the degree of coercion which now
exists by virtue of the denial of their rights to organize, to
speak for themselves, and to be heard in the councils of -
government.

     One more declaration of the American Foundation against the
Kennedy bill deserves our attention. In a separate release the
executive director, Mr. M. Robert Barnett, characterized the
introduction of the bill as a regrettable incident because it is
likely to cause one of the most serious philosophical debates yet
experienced in our field. We may all agree that the bill is likely
to produce such a result: but why should such a serious
philosophical debate be regrettable? Why, on the contrary, is it
not welcomed as a golden opportunity to be eagerly embraced by all
who are sincerely interested in the welfare of the blind and
therefore in the solution of their problems? One might suppose that
no greater contribution could be made in our field than the
production of serious philosophical debate. But Mr. Barnett
considers it regrettable. Are there now those who would deny to the
blind not only the rights of free speech and organization but even
the right of free thought and philosophical reflection? Such
serious discussion should, it would seem, prove regrettable only to
those whose philosophy cannot stand the rigors of the contest.

     On the basis of the assertions in the AAWB resolution and the
Foundation release it is hard to imagine any wider and more
unbridgeable gulf of thought and principle than exist between our
philosophy and theirs. We believe the blind to be normal
individuals lacking only the sense of sight. They believe the blind
to be abnormal individuals lacking maturity, responsibility, and
mentality. We believe the organized blind to be the best
interpreters of their own needs and aspirations. They believe the
organized blind to be entirely indeed, dangerously unqualified and
instead assert their own claim to act in the name of the blind
without the approval of the blind. We believe the role of the
agencies, whether public or quasi-public, to be that of servants of
their blind clients, responsible to their interests, and responsive
to their needs. They believe the role of the agencies to be that
not of public servants but of private dictators, members of an
elite corps of self-designated experts beyond the reach or
consultation of the people. Finally, we believe these bulletins and
resolutions to be a shocking revelation of backwardness and
prejudice among the dominant agency. They believe but wait! Do they
really believe? Is it possible that these specious arguments are
not really their beliefs but only the outpouring of propaganda in
a ruthless campaign to stamp out the competition of the organized
blind and to perpetuate their own unchallenged dominance? With the
publication of these revealing resolutions whatever trust and
confidence the blind may once have had in the integrity and wisdom
of those who dominate the AAWB has been forever swept away. They
are shown to be among those who have been dragged protesting into
the 20th century but still have one foot in the grave of medieval
charity and custodialism and the other foot in the pit of their own
institutional and occupational vested interests.

     Their belief is that the blind should be overseen and not
heard; that the blind have no right of self-expression because the
blind are not full-fledged citizens and, besides, are not capable
of sound social thinking; and that the organized blind, if they
cannot be dismissed as a handful of eccentrics, must be dispersed
as a mob of delinquents.

     Once upon another time a somewhat different group of deprived
people only slightly more numerous than we are today rose up
against their own protectors on this very issue of the right of men
and citizens particularly to the rights of self-expression and
representation. In terms of material strength they were no match
for their adversary at that time the world's greatest power. But
the rebels were united in their dedication to certain unalienable
rights among these were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
in their own way and they were determined to make good their
declaration of independence. Their power was not so much physical
as spiritual. It lay in their collective will, their unity of
purpose, and their faith in themselves. Armed with these weapons,
their cause proved invincible 180 years ago.

     God helping us, that cause will prevail today. The good have
associated and will not fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in
a contemptible struggle.

     In the summer of 1957 two identical bills were introduced into
Congress one by Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts and the other
by Congressman Walter S. Baring of Nevada expressly to protect the
right of the blind to self-expression through organizations of the
blind. When he rose in the Senate to introduce and speak for his
bill, the future President went directly to the heart of the matter
in forceful words which clearly reflected his commitment to the
political and civil rights of disadvantaged Americans. This is what
he had to say:

     Organizations of blind persons exist today in many cities and
communities throughout the country.In most of our states today,
organizations of the blind have formed one or more statewide
organizations. Forty-three of these statewide organizations of the
blind are now federated into a single nationwide organization, the
National Federation of the Blind.

     Organizations of this kind [Senator Kennedy continued] have
been formed by the blind to advance their own welfare and common
interests. These organizations provide to our blind citizens the
opportunity for collective self-expression. Through these
organizations, these citizens are able to formulate democratically
and voice effectively their views on the programs that our national
government and our state governments are financing for their aid
and rehabilitation. It is important that these views be expressed
freely and without interference. It is important that these views
be heard and considered by persons charged with responsibility for
determining and carrying out our programs for the blind.

     In some communities [he said] this freedom that each of our
blind citizens should have to join, or not to join, organizations
of the blind has been prejudiced by a few professional workers in
programs for the blind who have allowed their personal views to be
expressed in official action for or against particular
organizations of the blind. Administrators and workers in welfare
programs for the blind possess unusual power to control the lives
and influence the conduct of their clients. It is important that
our blind citizens be protected against any exercise of this kind
of influence or authority to interfere with their freedom of
self-expression through organizations of the blind.

     The Kennedy bill was designed to do two complementary things:
to insure to the blind the right to organize without intimidation
or interference and to guarantee their right to speak for
them-selves and to be heard through meaningful consultation with
the agencies responsible for services affecting their welfare.
Literally as well as symbolically it was a blow for participatory
democracy, establishing the principle of representation by the
clients of the services the consumers in the decision-making
councils of government.

     For a three-week period at Christmas of 1957, Kenneth Jernigan
made an extensive swing through much of the country writing
testimony for Federationists to give during anticipated upcoming
hearings on the bill. One such undertaking resulted in an eloquent
analysis of the need for the bill and for checks and balances to
curb the power of the agencies. This testimony, which was given by
Walter McDonald of Georgia, was printed in the March, 1958, Braille
Monitor.

     CHECKS AND BALANCES

     We are asking Congress to enact legislation requiring that the
blind be consulted about programs affecting them and protecting the
right of the blind to organize. Why are we doing this? Is it really
conceivable that there are times when the best interests of the
blind and of the agencies established to serve the blind are
different, even antagonistic? If there are such times, then the
need for the legislation we are proposing is obvious.

     Let me create for you a rather fanciful and purely
hypothetical situation. Suppose the year is not 1958, but 1940
instead. Suppose further that you are not in your present
circumstances but are in work for the blind. You may be a social
caseworker, a home teacher, or the manager of a sheltered workshop.
You may be sighted or blind. It makes no difference for the
purposes of our story.

     In 1940 the Depression was just beginning to ease and the
lifeblood of commerce to flow through the nation again. It was a
year of hope a time to dream dreams and have ambition. Like the
rest, you have your dream and your ambition, but it is not a
selfish dream, not an unworthy ambition. You have in mind the
launching of a project which will benefit blind people, not only
those with whom you have been working but others throughout your
state and region.

     You have observed that one of the greatest problems
confronting the blind is their difficulty in traveling
independently. In the past, when you have tried to help a blind
person get a job, almost the first question you have always been
asked by the prospective employer has been, But how can he get to
and from work? You have given a great deal of thought to the matter
and have concluded that the best answer to the problem is the guide
dog. Guide dogs cannot be procured in your part of the country, and
the local blind person who wants one must travel many hundreds of
miles at great trouble and expense. Besides, there is usually a
long waiting list. You decide to do something about the situation.
In short, you decide to establish a guide dog school.

     You quit your job and put your whole time and energy into the
project. You talk to local business people and begin to raise
money. Soon you have a building, and you are collecting a staff of
guide dog trainers and beginning to bring in dogs and students. You
work day and night, and you pay yourself a salary of, let us say,
ten thousand dollars a year which is not unreasonable and certainly
not too high for the amount of time and effort you are putting in.

     Your school prospers. Blind people who have learned to travel
by using your dogs are working in competitive industry and the
professions throughout the country, and you have letters of
gratitude and appreciation from them as well as many newspaper
clippings and magazine articles telling of their success.

     Your happiness is complete. You are doing a worthwhile job,
and you are respected and honored throughout your entire state. In
your own community you have become quite a figure and have more
prestige than anyone else doing work for the blind. Yearly fund
drives, complete with picture displays of guide dogs leading their
masters, touch the hearts of thousands of donors and insure plenty
of money for the growth and expansion of the school.

     Time rushes by, and the year is now 1960. One day I come into
your office, and I tell you of the perfection of a new travel aid
for the blind. Perhaps I say something to this effect:

     Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have,
as you probably know, been working for several years to perfect an
electronic travel aid for the blind. They have now achieved
success. The instrument is perfect. It is light, compact,
inexpensive, and able to scan for at least thirty feet in all
directions and to give the blind person all of the information his
eyes would give him if he were sighted. I have one of the
instruments here with me, and since I know that you have devoted
the greater part of your life to the improvement of the lot of the
blind and that you are sincerely interested in their welfare, I am
certain you will (after looking at the instrument and verifying my
statement about it) rejoice with me that the blind no longer need
canes or dogs. I am sure that you will close up your school,
discharge your staff, cease your fundraising, stop paying yourself
your salary of ten thousand dollars a year, and tell the public
that the guide dog is no longer needed.

     If this were a true instead of a hypothetical situation, what
would you do? I submit that you would rationalize and say to
yourself and to others, These people are doing real harm to the
blind. It may be a good instrument, but nothing will ever replace
the guide dog, at least not in our lifetime. You would not admit to
yourself that you were merely protecting your own vested interests.
You would rationalize. The alternative would be to give up your
position, your prestige, your feeling of importance, your
established program, and last but not least your ten thousand
dollars a year.

     As I have said, this is purely a hypothetical situation.
Nineteen-sixty has not yet arrived, and the people at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology have not, so far, perfected
their travel aid. Besides, as any guide dog school official will
tell you, nothing will ever replace the guide dog, at least not in
our lifetime.

     The situation I have created for you is purely hypothetical,
but its real-life counterpart is occurring every day in literally
hundreds of agencies for the blind in this country. It occurs every
time the manager of a sheltered workshop for the blind has to
decide whether to encourage his best and most skilled workers to
leave the sheltered workshop and seek employment in competitive
industry or to discourage them from seeking such employment so that
they will stay in the shop. If they go, they will be finding normal
lives and better pay, but the efficiency of the shop will be
lowered, and more subsidies will have to be found. On the other
hand, if the best workers are kept in the sheltered workshop,
overall efficiency rises, and the workshop manager looks good as an
administrator. He is getting skilled labor at substandard wages to
help offset the inefficiency of his poorer workers. What is he to
do, consider the welfare of the blind worker who might be placed in
private industry or defend the interests of the overall workshop
program? The answer is that many workshop managers rationalize and
tell themselves that it is really to the best interests of all the
workers to be kept in sheltered employment.

     The same basic situation occurs every time the administrator
of a vending stand program for the blind has to decide what kind of
system he will have. If he advocates the philosophy of independence
for the blind and admits to himself and others that many blind are
capable of operating vending stands without constant care and
supervision on the part of the agency, he needs fewer vending stand
supervisors, and his agency will not expand as rapidly as it would
under what has come to be known as the controlled system. The
result is that most vending stand agencies have controlled rather
than independent programs.

     In reality the counterpart of my hypothetical situation occurs
every time the blind set up an independent organization of their
own in a community where a well-established agency doing work for
the blind exists. The agency has a monopoly on fundraising in the
name of the blind. Its officials have unchallenged prestige and are
considered to be the authorities in the field. If the blind
organize, the empire is challenged; the monopoly is threatened.

     The agency leaders not only rationalize to themselves; they
also propagandize the public in an attempt to perpetuate their
programs and defend their vested interests. The first sentence of
the Code of Ethics (so-called) of the American Association of
Workers for the Blind reads as follows: The operations of all
agencies for the blind entail a high degree of responsibility
because of the element of public trusteeship and protection of the
blind involved in services to the blind.

     As our national President, Dr. tenBroek, has so aptly put it,
The use of the word `protection' makes it plain that the
trusteeship here referred to is of the same kind as that existing
under the United Nations Trusteeship Council that is, custody and
control of underprivileged, backward, and dependent peoples.

     Mr. M. Robert Barnett, executive director of the American
Foundation for the Blind, says on page 12, of the Pinebrook Report,
an official publication of the Foundation: A job, a home, and the
right to be a citizen will come to the blind in that generation
when each and every blind person is a living advertisement of his
ability and capacity to accept the privileges and responsibilities
of citizenship. Then we professionals will have no problem of
interpretation because the blind will no longer need us to speak
for them, and we, like primitive segregation, will die away as an
instrument which society will include only in its historical
records.

     No statements could be clearer than these and none could be
more unsound or more harmful to the best interests of the blind and
to public understanding of our problems. The matter is as simple as
this. Most agency workers are basically good people, but they are
also human. They tend to defend their own vested interests, and
those interests are not always identical with the interests of the
blind they are supposedly serving. We need agencies for the blind,
and we need independent organizations of the blind. In the best
American tradition the two forces serve as checks and balances.
Both have duties; both have rights; both have responsibilities. The
existence of one need not, and should not, constitute a threat to
the proper activities of the other. No agency should claim to
represent the blind or set itself up as a spokesman for the blind.
No organization of the blind nor any individual member should
indulge in sweeping condemnation of all agencies and all agency
activities. When each recognizes that the other has a necessary and
appropriate role, mutual jealousy and antagonism should give way to
an attitude of mutual respect and to a spirit of cooperation.

     Against the right-to-organize bill during that epochal
struggle were the Federal Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare and various of its subdivisions such as the Office of
Vocational Rehabilitation, along with such powerful professional
organizations as the American Foundation for the Blind and the
American Association of Workers for the Blind. The major arguments
advanced by these agency interests were, first, that the
legislation was not needed because everyone has the right to free
association, and, second, that the bill would give the organized
blind a degree of authority and influence over public programs
sufficient to outweigh the combined power of the professional
agencies.

     In the end, that combined power was enough to defeat the
Kennedy bill in the Congress. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for the
agencies. In 1959, extensive public hearings were held on the issue
by a subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor;
the National Federation of the Blind's testimony alone took up
three full days and ran to several volumes of transcript. The
impact of the hearings was felt at various levels and by all groups
involved. Little Kennedy Bills, as they came to be called, were
introduced in a number of states and passed by several. More
important, the objectives of the bill to protect the rights of
assembly and petition, the right to organize, and the right to be
heard came to be at least partially achieved in practice where they
were not formally granted in law. Like the trade union movement a
generation before, the organized blind movement came to be granted
a kind of tacit legitimacy by the agencies of the blindness system;
the overt attacks upon National Federation of the Blind members and
leaders ceased (although not the covert hostility), and an era
bearing the semblance of peaceful coexistence was ushered in.

     As it turned out, however, the withdrawal of the agencies from
the battlefield was in reality a strategic retreat a temporary
cease-fire rather than a genuine peace-making effort. There was
little serious recognition yet of the rights of the blind to
self-expression and self-direction, whether individually or
collectively. At the end of the embattled decade of the fifties,
the prevailing attitude of the custodial agencies was still
essentially that proclaimed a few years before, with casual
confidence and ill-disguised contempt, by one of their
representative spokesmen: The fact, he wrote, that so few workers
or organizations are doing anything appreciable to [improve the
condition of the blind] cannot be explained entirely on the grounds
that they are not in the vanguard of social thinking. It is rather
because they are realistic enough to recognize that the rank and
file of blind people have neither the exceptional urge for
independence nor the personal qualifications necessary to
satisfactory adjustment in the sighted world.

     It was just such misguided notions as those plus the appalling
fact of their confession by the administrator of one of the
nation's largest private agencies for the blind that prompted
Jacobus tenBroek to address, at the 1957 convention of the National
Federation of the Blind in New Orleans, what he termed The Cross of
Blindness.  The symbolic cross he saw the blind to be bearing was
the burden of social stigmas, stereotypes, and superstitions the
dead weight of public prejudice and misunderstanding. In a
masterful speech which has since become one of his most famous,
tenBroek spelled out in equally vivid terms both the case for and
the case against self-organization by the blind. His address,
delivered before a banquet audience of 700, stands as a memorial to
the high ground the peak of unity and confidence which was attained
by the National Federation of the Blind in that watershed year.
That high ground was soon to be lost, in the turmoil of civil war,
and not to be reached again for years to come. But in 1957 the
national movement of the organized blind, not yet a score of years
old, appeared as firm in its solidarity as it was irresistible in
its force. And no one who heard the leader of the movement speak
that day could doubt that these newly independent and
self-assertive people would forever refuse to bear the stigmatizing
cross of blindness.

     Here is the full text of that speech:

     CROSS OF BLINDNESS

     by Jacobus tenBroek

     In the short seventeen years since our founding of the
National Federation of the Blind, we have grown from a handful of
men and women scattered over seven states to a Federation of
forty-three state affiliates. The first convention of the NFB in
1940 was attended by twelve or fifteen persons our convention last
year had a registration of seven hundred and five from every corner
of the Union.

     That is rapid organizational growth by any yardstick
considering the total blind population of the country and the
difficulties in organization. Who are these people of the National
Federation of the Blind? What is the purpose that has led them to
self-organization in such numbers and unites them now with such
apparent dedication and enthusiasm?

     It is not enough, I think, to answer that the members of the
NFB are drawn together by their common interest in the welfare of
the blind; for many of the sighted share that, too. Nor is it
sufficient to say that we are united only because we are blind;
many who are affiliated with agencies for the blind have that
characteristic also. It is fundamental to the uniqueness of our
group that we are the only nationwide organization for the blind
which is also of the blind. The composition of the NFB, indeed, is
living testimony to the fact unfortunately not yet accepted by
society as a whole that the blind are capable of self-organization:
which is to say, of leading themselves, of directing their own
destiny.

     Yet this is still only half the truth, only a part of the
characteristic which defines our Federation and provides its reason
for being. Our real distinction from other organizations in the
field of blind welfare lies in the social precept and personal
conviction which are the motive source of our activity and the
wellspring of our faith. The belief that we who are blind are
normal human beings sets us sharply apart from other groups
designed to aid the blind. We have all the typical and ordinary
range of talents and techniques, attitudes, and aspirations. Our
underlying assumption is not as it is with some other groups the
intrinsic helplessness and everlasting dependency of those who
happen to lack sight, but rather their innate capacity to nullify
and overrule this disability to find their place in the community
with the same degree of success and failure to be found among the
general population.

     Perhaps I can best document this thesis of the normality of
the blind with a random sample of the occupations represented at
our National Convention a year ago in San Francisco. Among the
blind delegates in attendance, there were three blind physicists
engaged in experimental work for the United States Government.
There was one blind chemist also doing experimental work for the
national government. There were two university instructors of the
rank of full professor, a number of other college instructors of
various ranks, and several blind teachers of sighted students in
primary and secondary grades in the public schools. There were
thirteen lawyers, most in private practice, two employed as
attorneys by the United States Government, one serving as the
chairman of a state public service commission, one serving as a
clerk to a state chief justice. There were three chiropractors, one
osteopath, ten secretaries, seventeen factory workers, one
shoemaker, one cab dispatcher, one book mender, one appliance
repairman, four telephone switchboard operators, numerous
businessmen in various businesses, five musicians, thirty students,
many directors and workers in programs for the blind, and sixty-one
housewives.

     At any other convention there would be nothing at all
remarkable about this broad cross section of achievement and
ability; it is exactly what you would expect to find at a gathering
of the American Legion or the Exalted Order of Elks, or at a town
meeting in your community. Anywhere else, that is, but at a
convention of the blind. It never ceases to surprise the public
that a blind man may be able to hold his own in business, operate
a farm successfully, argue a brief in a court of law, teach a class
of sighted students, or conduct experiments in a chemistry lab. It
comes as a shock to the average person to discover that the blind
not only can but do perform as well as the next man in all the
normal and varied callings of the community.

     But this shock of recognition, on the part of many people, too
easily gives way to a mood of satisfaction and an attitude of
complacency. After all, if the blind are so capable, so successful,
and so independent, what is all the fuss about? Where is the need
for all this organization and militant activity? Why can't the
blind let well enough alone?

     These are reasonable questions, surely, and deserve a reasoned
answer. I believe that the answer may best be given by reciting a
list of sixteen specific events which have taken place recently in
various parts of the country. The events are:

     1. A blind man (incidentally a distinguished educator and
citizen of his community) was denied a room in a well-known YMCA in
New York City not on the ground that his appearance betokened
inability to pay, which it did not; not on the ground that he had
an unsavory reputation, which he did not; not on the ground that
his behavior was or was likely to be disorderly, which it was not
but on the ground that he was blind.

     2. A blind man was rejected as a donor by the blood bank in
his city not on the ground that his blood was not red; not on the
ground that his blood was watery, defective in corpuscles, or
diseased; not on the ground that he would be physically harmed by
the loss of the blood but on the ground that he was blind.

     3. A blind man (in this case a successful lawyer with an
established reputation in his community) was denied the rental of
a safety-deposit box by his bank not on the ground that he was a
well-known bank robber; not on the ground that he had nothing to
put in it; not on the ground that he couldn't pay the rental price
but on the ground that he was blind.

     4. A blind man was rejected for jury duty in a California city
not on the ground of mental incompetence; not on the ground of
moral irresponsibility; not on the ground that he would not weigh
the evidence impartially and come to a just verdict but on the
ground that he was blind.

     5. A blind college student majoring in education was denied
permission to perform practice teaching by a state university not
on the ground that her academic record was poor; not on the ground
that she had not satisfied the prerequisites; not on the ground
that she lacked the educational or personal qualifications but on
the ground that she was blind.

     6. A blind applicant for public employment was denied
consideration by a state civil service commission not on the ground
that he lacked the education or experience specifications; not on
the ground that he was not of good moral character; not on the
ground that he lacked the residence or citizenship requirements but
on the ground that he was blind.

     7. A blind woman was refused a plane ticket by an airline not
on the ground that she couldn't pay for her ticket; not on the
ground that her heart was weak and couldn't stand the excitement;
not on the ground that she was a carrier of contagion but on the
ground that she was blind.

     8. A blind machinist was declared ineligible for a position he
had already held for five years. This declaration was the result of
a routine medical examination. It came on the heels of his complete
clearance and reinstatement on the job following a similar medical
finding the year before. These determinations were made not on the
ground of new medical evidence showing that he was blind, for that
was known all along; not on the ground that he could not do the job
which he had successfully performed for five years with high
ratings; not on the ground of any factor related to his employment
they were made on the ground that he was blind.

     9. A blind high school student who was a duly qualified
candidate for student body president was removed from the list of
candidates by authority of the principal and faculty of the school
not on the ground that he was an outside infiltrator from some
other school; not on the ground that he was on probation; not on
the ground that he was not loyal to the principles of the United
States Constitution but on the ground that he was blind.

     10. A well-known insurance company, in its standard policy
issued to cover trips on railroads, expressly exempts the blind
from coverage not on the ground that there is statistical or
actuarial evidence that blind travelers are more prone to accident
than sighted travelers are; not on the ground that suitcases or
fellow passengers fall on them more often; not on the ground that
trains carrying blind passengers are more likely to be wrecked
unless it is the engineer who is blind but solely on the ground of
blindness. Many, if not most, other insurance companies selling
other forms of insurance either increase the premium or will not
cover the blind.

     11. A blind man, who had been a successful justice court and
police court judge in his community for eleven years, ran for the
position of superior court judge in the general election of 1956.
During the campaign his opponents did not argue that he was
ignorant of the law and therefore incompetent; or that he had been
guilty of bilking widows and orphans; or that he lacked the quality
of mercy. Almost the only argument that they used against him was
that he was blind. The voters, however, elected him handily. At the
next session of the state legislature a bill was introduced
disqualifying blind persons as judges. The organized blind of the
state were able to modify this bill but not to defeat it.

     12. More than sixty blind men and women among them doctors,
teachers, businessmen and members of various professions were
recently ordered by the building and safety authority of a large
city to move out of their hotel-type living quarters. This was not
on the ground that they were pyromaniacs and likely to start fires;
not on the ground that they were delinquent in their rent; not on
the ground that they disturbed their neighbors with riotous living
but on the ground that as blind people they were subject to the
code provisions regarding the bed-ridden, ambulatory, and helpless,
that anyone who is legally blind must live in an institution-type
building with all the rooms on the ground floor, with no stairs at
the end of halls, with hard, fire-proof furniture, with chairs and
smoking-stands lined up along the wall so they won't fall over
them.

     13. The education code of one of our states provides that
deaf, dumb, and blind children may be sent at state expense to a
school for the deaf, dumb, or blind outside of the state, if they
possess the following qualifications: (1) they are free from
offensive or contagious diseases; (2) they have no parent,
relative, guardian, or nearest friend able to pay for their
education; (3) that by reason of deafness, dumbness, or blindness,
they are disqualified from being taught by the ordinary process of
instruction or education.

     14. In a recent opinion the supreme court of one of the states
held that a blind person who sought compensation for an injury due
to an accident which he claimed arose out of and in the course of
his employment by the state board of industries for the blind, was
a ward of the state and therefore not entitled to compensation. The
conception that blind shop workers are wards of the state was only
overcome in another state by a recent legislative enactment.

     15. A blind person, duly convicted of a felony and sentenced
to a state penitentiary, was denied parole when he became eligible
therefor not on the ground that he had not served the required
time; not on the ground that his prison behavior had been bad; not
on the ground that he had not been rehabilitated but on the ground
that he was blind.

     16. A blind man, incidentally a member of this organization,
who sat down at a gambling table in Reno, where such things are
legal, was denied an opportunity to play not on the ground that he
didn't know the rules of the game; not on the ground that he might
cheat the dealer or the other players; not on the ground that he
didn't have any money to lose, which they proved, incidentally but
on the ground that he was blind.

     These last two cases show that the blind are normal in every
respect.

     What emerges from this set of events, is the age-old
stereotype of blindness as witlessness and helplessness. By virtue
of this pervasive impression, a blind man is held to be incapable
of weighing the evidence presented at a trial or performing the
duties of a teacher. He cannot take care of himself in a room of
his own and is not to be trusted on a plane. A sightless person
would not know what he has put into or removed from a safety
deposit box; and he has no right to employment in the public
service. He must not even be permitted to continue on a job he has
performed successfully for years. Even his blood cannot be given
voluntarily for the common cause.

     Contrast these two lists the one of the occupations
represented at the NFB convention, the other of the discriminatory
activities. The first is a list of accomplishments of what the
blind have done and therefore can do; the second is a list of
prohibitions of what the blind are thought incompetent to do and
therefore are debarred from attempting. The first list refers to
the physical disability of blindness. It demonstrates in graphic
fashion how slight a disadvantage is the mere loss of sight to the
mental capacity and vocational talent of the individual. The second
list refers not to the disability but to the handicap which is
imposed upon the blind by others. The origin of the disability is
plainly inside the blind person. The origin and responsibility for
the handicap are just as plainly outside him in the attitudes and
preconceptions of the community.

     Let me be very clear about this. I have no wish to minimize
the character and extent of blindness as a disability. It is for
all of us a constant nuisance and a serious inconvenience. To
overcome it requires effort and patience and initiative and guts.
It is not compensated for, despite the fairy tales to the contrary,
by the spontaneous emergence of a miraculous sixth sense or any
other magical powers. It means nothing more or less than the loss
of one of the five senses and a corresponding greater reliance upon
the four that remain as well as upon the brain, the heart, and the
spirit.

     It may be said that the discriminatory acts which I have
cited, and others like them which are occurring all the time,
simply do not reflect informed thought. They are occasional
happenings, unpremeditated, irrational, or accidental. Surely no
one would justify them; no one would say that they represent an
accurate appraisal of the blind and of blindness.

     Well, let us see. Let us look at some pronouncements of
presumably thoughtful and informed persons writing about the blind
agency heads, educators, administrators, social workers,
historians, psychologists, and public officials. What do they have
to say about the potentialities of the blind in terms of
intellectual capacity, vocational talent, and psychological
condition? What do they report concerning the prospects for social
integration on the basis of normality and economic advancement on
the basis of talent?

     First, an educator. Here are the words of a prominent
authority on the education of the blind, himself for thirty years
a superintendent of a school for the blind. It is wrong to start
with the school, this authority writes, and to teach there a number
of occupations that the blind can do, but to teach them out of
relation to their practical and relative values. This is equivalent
to attempting to create trades for the blind and then more or less
angrily to demand that the world recognize the work and buy the
product, whether useful or useless. More than this, it is necessary
to recognize the unfitness of the blind as a class for any sort of
competition and therefore to afford them not only protection but
monopoly wherever possible. Declaring that it must be unqualifiedly
conceded that there is little in an industrial way that a blind
person can do at all that cannot be done better and more
expeditiously by people with sight, this expert considers that
there are only two ways out, one being the extension of concessions
and monopolies and the other the designation of certain preferred
occupations for the blind leaving the battle of wits only to those
select few that may be considered, and determined to be, specially
fit.

     The conclusion that employment possibilities for the blind are
confined, with only negligible exceptions, to the purview of
sheltered workshops is contained in this set of facts about the
blind which the same authority asserts are generally conceded by
those who have given the subject much thought: that the handcrafts
in which the blind can do first-class work are very limited in
number, with basketry, weaving, knitting, broom and brush making,
and chair caning as the most promising and most thoroughly tried
out that in these crafts the blind cannot enter into direct
competition with the seeing either in the quality of product or the
amount turned out in a given time that the crafts pursued by the
blind may best be carried on in special workshops under the charge
of government officials or trained officers of certain benevolent
associations that among the higher callings piano tuning and
massage are, under favoring conditions such as prevail for masseurs
in Japan, the fields offering the greatest chance of success, while
the learned professions, including teaching, are on the whole only
for those of very superior talent and, more particularly, very
superior courage and determination to win at all costs.

     Second, an historian. The basis for this assessment, and its
justification, have been presented in blunt and explicit language
by a well-known historian of blindness and the blind in the United
States. He says, [T]here exists in the community a body of men who,
by reason of a physical defect, namely, the loss of sight, are
disqualified from engaging in the regular pursuits of men and who
are thus largely rendered incapable of providing for themselves
independently. They are to be regarded as a disabled and infirm
fraction of the people or, more specifically, as sighted men in a
dark room. Rather than let them drift into absolute dependence and
become a distinct burden, society is to lend an appropriate helping
hand through the creation of sheltered, publicly subsidized
employment.

     Third, administrators. That this pessimistic appraisal of the
range of talent among the blind has not been limited to the school
men and historians may be shown by two succinct statements from
wartime pamphlets produced by the Civil Service Commission in an
effort to broaden employment opportunities for the physically
disabled. The blind, it was found, are especially proficient in
manual occupations requiring a delicate sense of touch. They are
well suited to jobs which are repetitious in nature. Again: The
placement of persons who are blind presents various special
problems. Small groups of positions in sheltered environment,
involving repetitive work, were surveyed in government
establishments and were found to have placement potentialities for
the blind. Such findings as these were doubtless at the base of a
remark of a certain public official who wrote that: Helping the
blind has its strong appeal to the sensibilities of everyone; on
the other hand, we should avoid making the public service an
eleemosynary institution.

     Fourth, a blind agency head. The executive director of one of
the largest private agencies for the blind justifies the failure of
the philanthropic groups in these blunt terms: The fact that so few
workers or organizations are doing anything appreciable to [improve
the condition of the blind] cannot be explained entirely on the
grounds that they are not in the vanguard of social thinking. It is
rather because they are realistic enough to recognize that the rank
and file of blind persons have neither the exceptional urge for
independence nor the personal qualifications necessary to
satisfactory adjustment in the sighted world.It is very difficult
and exceptional for a blind person to be as productive as a sighted
person.

     Fifth, a psychologist. Even plainer language as well as more
impressive jargon has been used by another authority who is widely
considered the pre-eminent expert in the field of blind psychology.
Until recently, he writes, the blind and those interested in them
have insisted that society revise and modify its attitude toward
this specific group. Obviously, for many reasons, this is an
impossibility, and effort spent on such a program is as futile as
spitting into the wind it is extremely doubtful whether the degree
of emotional maturity and social adaptability of the blind would
long support and sustain any social change of attitude, if it were
possible to achieve it. If this is not plain enough, the writer
continues: A further confusion of attitude is found in educators
and workers for the blind who try to propagandize society with the
rational concept that the blind are normal individuals without
vision. This desperate whistling in the dark does more damage than
good. The blind perceive it as a hypocritical distortion of actual
facts.It is dodging the issue to place the responsibility on the
unbelieving and nonreceptive popular attitudes.The only true answer
lies in the unfortunate circumstance that the blind share with
other neurotics the nonaggressive personality and the inability to
participate fully in society [Get this now, they are talking about
you and me].There are two general directions for attacking such a
problem, either to adjust the individual to his environment, or to
rearrange the environment so that it ceases to be a difficulty to
the individual. It is quite obvious that the latter program is not
only inadvisable, but also impossible. However, it is the attack
that nearly every frustrated, maladjusted person futilely attempts.

     Sixth, a social worker. This sweeping negation of all attempts
to modify the prejudicial attitudes of society toward the blind,
however eccentric and extreme it may sound, finds strong support in
the field of social casework. In areas where such ideas remain
steadfast, reads a typical report, it is the function of the social
caseworker to assist the blind person to work within these
preconceived ideas. Since handicapped persons are a minority group
in society, there is greater possibility of bringing about a change
in an individual within a stated length of time than there is in
reversing accepted concepts within the culture. The well-adjusted
blind person, it is argued, should be able to get along in this
restrictive social setting, and the caseworker must concentrate on
his personal adjustment since it is easier to reform the client
than to reform society.

     Seventh, a blind philanthropist. Let me close my list of
testimonials with one final citation. I think it must already be
sufficiently obvious that, granting the assumptions contained in
all these statements, the blind have no business organizing
them-selves apart from sighted supervision; that a social movement
of the blind and by the blind is doomed to futility, frustration,
and failure. But just in case the point is not clear enough, I
offer the considered opinion of a well-known figure in the history
of blind philanthropy: It cannot, then, be through the all-blind
society that the blind person finds adequate opportunity for the
exercise of his leadership. The wise leader will know that the best
interests of each blind person lie within the keeping of the nine
hundred and ninety-nine sighted people who, with himself, make up
each one thousand of any average population. He will know, further,
that if he wishes to promote the interests of the blind, he must
become a leader of the sighted upon whose understanding and
patronage the fulfillment of these interests depends.There is no
advantage accruing from membership in an all-blind organization
which might not be acquired in greater measure through membership
in a society of sighted people.

     What is the substance of all these damning commentaries? What
are the common assumptions which underlie the attitudes of the
leaders of blind philanthropy and the authorities on blind welfare?
The fundamental concepts can, I think, be simply stated. First, the
blind are by virtue of their defect emotionally immature if not
psychologically abnormal; they are mentally inferior and narrowly
circumscribed in the range of their ability and therefore
inevitably doomed to vocational monotony, economic dependence, and
social isolation. Second, even if their capabilities were different
they are necessarily bound to the fixed status and subordinate role
ordained by society, whose attitudes toward them are permanent and
unalterable. Third, they must place their faith and trust, not in
themselves and in their own organizations, but in the sighted
public and most particularly in those who have appointed themselves
the protectors and custodians of the blind.

     A few simple observations are in order. First, as to the
immutability of social attitudes and discriminatory actions towards
the blind, we know from intimate experience that the sighted public
wishes well for the blind and that its misconceptions are rather
the result of innocence and superstition than of deliberate cruelty
and malice aforethought. There was a time, in the days of Rome,
when blind infants were thrown to the wolves or sold into slavery.
That time is no more. There was a time, in the Middle Ages, when
blind beggars were the butts of amusement at country fairs, decked
out in paper spectacles and donkeys' ears. That time is no more.
There was a time, which still exists to a surprising extent, when
the parents of a blind child regarded his disability as a divine
judgment upon their own sins. But that time is now beginning to
disappear, at least in the civilized world.

     The blind are no longer greeted by society with open hostility
and frantic avoidance, but with compassion and sympathy. It is true
that an open heart is no guarantee of an open mind. It is true that
good intentions are not enough. It is true that tolerance is a far
cry from brotherhood, and that protection and trusteeship are not
the synonyms of equality and freedom. But the remarkable progress
already made in the civilizing of brute impulses and the humanizing
of social attitudes towards the blind is compelling evidence that
there is nothing fixed or immutable about the social status quo for
the blind and that, if the blind themselves are capable of
independence and inter-dependence within society, society is
capable of welcoming them.

     Our own experience as individuals and as members of the
National Federation of the Blind gives support at short range to
what long-range history already makes plain. We have observed and
experienced the gradual breakdown of legal obstacles and
prejudicial acts; we have participated in the expansion of
opportunities for the blind in virtually every phase of social life
and economic livelihood in federal, state, and local civil service;
in teaching and other professions; in the addition of a
constructive element to public welfare. Let anyone who thinks
social attitudes cannot be changed read this statement contained in
a recent pamphlet of the Federal Civil Service Commission:

     Sometimes a mistaken notion is held that the blind can do work
only where keenness of vision is not important in the job. The
truth appears to be that the blind can do work demanding different
degrees of keenness of vision on the part of the sighted. If there
is any difference in job proficiency related to a degree of
keenness of vision required for the sighted, it is this: the blind
appear to work with greater proficiency at jobs where the element
is present to a noticeable extent in the sighted job than where
vision is only generally useful.

     Second, are the blind mentally inferior, emotionally
adolescent, and psychologically disturbed; or on the contrary, are
they normal and capable of social and economic integration? The
evidence that they are the latter can be drawn from many quarters:
scientific, medical, historical, and theoretical. But the evidence
which is most persuasive is that which I have already presented: it
is the evidence displayed in the lives and performance of such
average and ordinary blind men and women as those who attended our
National Convention last summer. It is the evidence of their
vocational accomplishments, their personal achievements, the plain
normality of their daily lives. To me their record is more than an
impressive demonstration: it is a clinching rebuttal.

     It would, of course, be a gross exaggeration to maintain that
all blind persons have surmounted their physical disability and
conquered their social handicap.

     It is not the education of the sighted only which is needed to
establish the right of the blind to equality and integration. Just
as necessary is the education of the blind themselves. For the
process of their rehabilitation is not ended with physical and
vocational training; it is complete only when they have driven the
last vestige of the public stereotype of the blind from their own
minds. In this sense, and to this extent only, is it true that the
blind person must adjust to his handicap and to society. His
adjustment need not indeed must not mean his submission to all
prevailing social norms and values. His goal is not conformity but
autonomy: not acquiescence, but self-determination and
self-control.

     From all of this it should be clear that it is a long way yet
from the blind alleys of dependency and segregation to the main
thoroughfares of personal independence and social integration which
we have set as our goal. And I believe it is equally plain that our
progress toward that goal will demand the most forceful and
skillful application of all the means at our command: that is, the
means of education, persuasion, demonstration, and legislation.

     We need the means of education to bring the public and the
blind themselves to a true recognition of the nature of blindness
to tear away the fossil layers of mythology and prejudice. We need
persuasion to induce employers to try us out and convince society
to take us in. We need demonstration to prove our capacity and
normality in every act of living and of making a living. And
finally we need legislation to reform the statute books and
obliterate the legal barriers which stand in the way of normal life
and equal opportunity replacing them with laws which accurately
reflect the accumulated knowledge of modern science and the ethics
of democratic society.

     This final platform in our program of equality the platform of
adequate legislation is in many respects the most crucial and
pressing of all. For until the blind are guaranteed freedom of
opportunity and endeavor within the law there can be little
demonstration of their ability and little prospect of persuasion.
What is needed is nothing less than a new spirit of the laws, which
will uproot the discriminatory clauses and prejudicial assumptions
that presently hinder the efforts of the blind toward
self-advancement and self-support. The new philosophy requires that
programs for the blind be founded upon the social conception of
their normality and the social purpose of their reintegration into
the community, with aids and services adjusted to these -
conceptions.

     These then are the objectives of the self-organized blind;
goals freely chosen for them by themselves. And this is the true
significance of an organization of the blind, by the blind, for the
blind. For the blind the age of charity, like that of chivalry, is
dead; but this is not to say that there is no place for either of
these virtues. In order to achieve the equality that is their
right, in order to gain the opportunity that is their due, and in
order to attain the position of full membership in the community
that is their goal, the blind have continuing need for the
understanding and sympathy and liberality of their sighted
neighbors and fellow citizens. But their overriding need is first
of all for recognition of themselves as normal and of their
purposes as legitimate. The greatest hope of the blind is that they
may be seen as they are, not as they have been portrayed; and since
they are neither wards nor children, their hope is to be not only
seen but also heard in their own accents and for whatever their
cause may be worth.

     During the decade of the fifties at least until the outbreak
of the civil war in the closing years the organized blind movement
enjoyed rapid and steady growth not only in membership but also in
public reputation and influence. With the launching of a successful
fund-raising program early in the decade, it became possible to
spread the word of Federationism more widely and effectively than
ever through the new Braille Monitor, which was now published in
both Braille and ink print editions, as well as through a profusion
of speeches, articles, and special publications such as The Blind
and the Right to Organize: A Report to the Nation, a compilation of
key documents relating to that struggle by the National Federation
of the Blind.

     With increased information and publicity came enhanced
recognition and stature for the Federation and its leadership
notably its founder and chief executive, Jacobus tenBroek. In the
course of the struggle for the Kennedy bill, tenBroek and others of
his colleagues in the movement found themselves rather suddenly in
the limelight of public attention repeatedly interviewed on radio
and television, reported on in the press, and even (in the case of
one California newspaper) editorialized about. One of the most
significant and widely read examples of this newly favorable press
appeared in the New Yorker magazine on January 11, 1958, in the
form of a prose profile of President tenBroek, which vividly
conveyed both his forceful personality and his backbreaking
schedule of travels on behalf of the organized blind. For its
expression of the human and personal dimensions of leadership, the
New Yorker sketch remains a valuable memento of both the man and
the movement. Here is the article as it appeared in the magazine:

      NEW YORKER MAGAZINE FEATURES NFB PRESIDENT

     Jacobus tenBroek, a hearty, vigorous man of forty-six with
aquiline features, a ruddy complexion, and a carefully groomed
reddish goatee, is an authority on government and constitutional
law, a field in which he has published a number of highly regarded
books and monographs; the chairman of the Speech Department of the
University of California at Berkeley; a member of California's
Social Welfare Board; and the country's leading lobbyist and
campaigner against an adage that he deems mistaken, mischievous,
and far too commonly accepted the one that goes When the blind lead
the blind, they all fall into the ditch. As President and one of
the founders of the National Federation of the Blind, Professor
tenBroek, who lost his sight when he was a boy, has a formidable
spare-time schedule of speeches, conferences, and caucuses, through
which he seeks to spread his organization's belief that the blind
are much more capable than is generally realized of holding down
normal jobs and running their own affairs. I've had to make ten
flying trips throughout the country on the last twelve weekends, he
told us when he called on us at our office during a stopover of a
few hours in New York, in route from Washington, D.C., where he had
been talking with congressmen about legislation that his
organization is advocating, to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he
was scheduled to make a speech before one of the Federation's local
chapters. As a rule, I board the plane Friday evening, right after
my last class, he said. I prepare my speeches during the trip and
usually manage to pick up a return flight that gets me to Berkeley
just in time for my Monday-morning eight-o'clock class. He laughed.
My children I have three are getting fed up with this routine. They
say they're beginning to forget what I look like.

     One of Professor tenBroek's chief ambitions as he flies about
the country is to persuade people he meets that he is not
exceptional in either talent or character but pretty much an
ordinary man who has simply refused to accept the widespread
assumption that a blind person must live a dependent and sheltered
life. I've got a neighbor in Berkeley a blind man I've known since
we were classmates at school who built his house entirely with his
own hands, he said. It's quite a good-sized house, too about
twenty-seven hundred square feet. He built the forms, poured the
cement, put in the plumbing, did the wiring everything. The place
is on a fairly steep hillside, and before he could start he had to
make himself a large power-operated boom, for hauling his materials
up to the site. Now, there's a man that someone like me someone who
has no aptitude for that sort of thing would call an exceptional
person, but he doesn't seem to think he is. He says he just happens
to be handy with tools. The Professor shook his head in admiration.

     As things are now, he went on, most of the country's three
hundred and twenty-five thousand blind people who work are employed
in the special sheltered shops that society with the best and most
charitable intentions has set up for us, where we can make baskets
and such, and come to no harm. Only about two or three per cent of
us are holding normal jobs out in the world. My organization is
convinced at least twenty times that many could be doing so if they
had the chance. What we seek for the blind is the right to compete
on equal terms. In this, the Federation the only national
organization in this field whose membership and officers are all
blind is very much at odds with most of the traditional
organizations and agencies set up to help us, which are sure they
know better than we do what is good for us. But we've been making
considerable progress. In the last few years, we've succeeded in
persuading the Civil Service to let blind people try out for many
categories of jobs from which they used to be excluded.

     We asked Professor tenBroek what jobs he himself thinks are
impossible for the blind to hold. He laughed, stroked his goatee
profess orially, and said, Well, airplane pilot, I suppose though,
for that matter, planes fly most of the time nowadays on automatic
controls, don't they, and someday may be completely automatic.
Actually, I can't say what the limits are. Every time I think I
have hit on some job that a blind man couldn't conceivably hold, I
find a blind man holding it. One of my friends in the Federation is
an experimental nuclear physicist, and you wouldn't think of that
as a promising field for a blind man to be in. Dr. Bradley Burson
is his name, and he's at the Argonne National Laboratory, near
Chicago. When he was working on problems involving the decay of
radioactive matter, he invented some devices for himself that
measured the decay in terms of audible and tactile signals, rather
than the commonly employed visual signals. Some of the devices
turned out to be more accurate than the standard ones, and are now
widely used at the lab. I'd always assumed that being an
electrician would be impossible for a blind man, but not long ago
I found a blind electrician a fellow named Jack Polston. I went and
talked to his boss, and he told me that Polston does everything any
other electrician can do wiring, soldering, and all the rest. While
I was there, Polston was doing the complete wiring for a service
station, which I'm told is a particularly complicated job. To be
sure, he had been an electrician before he became blind, but don't
ask me how he solders without setting the place on fire. I
couldn't, even if I had my sight. Anyway, now that I've found him
I'm pestering the Civil Service not to disqualify blind people
automatically from trying out for electricians' jobs.

     Professor tenBroek paused for a moment, and then said, Don't
let me give you the idea that it isn't a nuisance to be blind. To
bump your head on an overhanging sign as you walk down the street
or to fall into a hole that anybody else can seeit's a nuisance, I
can assure you, but it isn't a catastrophe. He stood up, buttoning
his coat, and picked up his cane and his briefcase. Well, he said
briskly, it's after two o'clock, and I'll have to step lively if
I'm going to make it out to LaGuardia in time to catch the
three-fifteen for Springfield. If you'll be so kind as to see me to
the elevator, I'll carry on from there.

     Among the leaders of the organized blind, Jacobus tenBroek was
clearly pre-eminent in this first generation of Federationists; and
he remained so until his death in 1968. But from the start of the
movement he gathered around him the ablest men and women he could
find the best and the brightestamong the blind of the nation. Among
them were lawyers like Raymond Henderson of California; businessmen
like George Card of Michigan; social workers like Perry Sundquist
of California; and philosophers like Kingsley Price of Johns
Hopkins University. Specialized talents aside, the primary
characteristic which tenBroek sought in his circle of colleagues
was energetic devotion to the cause of the organized blind; and as
a teacher and mentor of youth he was particularly intent upon
seeking out this leadership potential among the younger members of
the movement. (One of his greatest disappointments over the years
was the reluctance of many successful blind persons of the
professional middle class to be identified with a movement of
rank-and-file blind people who not only were often unemployed but
were categorized as unemployable.)

     During the course of the fifties, year after year, the name of
one younger leader in the movement came increasingly to be heard in
the conventions, discussed in the meetings, pronounced in the
Braille Monitor, and recognized among the organized blind
everywhere. Kenneth Jernigan first sprang into national prominence
in 1952 when he organized the National Federation of the Blind
convention and was elected to the Board of Directors. From that
time on he was in the thick of it; by 1958, when Jernigan accepted
an appointment as director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, he
also became the Second Vice President of the National Federation of
the Blind, and the following year became the First Vice President.
The full scope and impact of Jernigan's participation in the
movement to that point was set forth in a 1958 Braille Monitor
article by the man who knew the most about it: Dr. tenBroek.
Ostensibly the article was an announcement to the membership of
Jernigan's Iowa appointment; in truth it was a tribute from the
Federation's leader and senior statesman to the younger man who had
become his chief lieutenant. In retrospect this testimonial takes
on a prophetic quality; for of all the confidantes and colleagues
who surrounded President tenBroek in that era, the one who was to
remain longest by his side, and ultimately to receive from his
hands the mantle of leadership, was the young man of whom he was
writing then.

     This is what Jacobus tenBroek said about Kenneth Jernigan in
1958:

     FEDERATION LEADER APPOINTED DIRECTOR  OF IOWA COMMISSION FOR
THE BLIND

     by Jacobus tenBroek

     Last month Kenneth Jernigan, a member of the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind, was appointed
director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind. This appointment was
not only appropriate it was significant.

     In his new position Mr. Jernigan has charge of all Iowa
programs for the blind with the exception of public assistance and
the state school for the blind. Among the services under his
direction are: vocational rehabilitation, vending stands, home
industries, home teaching, the distribution of talking books, and
registration of blind persons in the state.

     There are, of course, many Federationists who hold positions
in state and other administrative agencies. Some of these are the
directors of their agencies. There are, in addition, numerous
agency heads who are favorably disposed toward the organized blind.
They did not go from the movement to their administrative
positions; they came to, or at least towards, the movement from an
intelligent discharge of their administrative responsibilities. The
distinctive factor in the Jernigan appointment is that now a
National Federation leader and member of its Board of Directors has
been selected to serve as the head of a state agency for the blind.
Mr. Jernigan's appointment is indeed a tribute to the independent
and enlightened judgment of the Iowa Commission.

     There is a good deal of loose and self-adulatory talk among
certain AAWB leaders about their professional status and an alleged
lack of professionalism among the organized blind. This talk may be
examined from two sides: how professional are the agency leaders
and workers; how unprofessional are the organized blind. Whatever
answer may be given to the first question, there are many in the
organized blind movement whose knowledge about blindness and the
substance of administration of programs for the blind can only be
described as professional. So too as to their attitudes, their
caliber, their bearing, and, in many cases, their careers and
duties. In the present case, Kenneth Jernigan has been a
professional, in all these senses of the term for many years.

     The honor and the responsibility have especially fittingly
gone to Kenneth Jernigan. Few readers of the Braille Monitor and
fewer members of the Federation need to be reminded of the
character of this man and of the quality of his achievements. Since
his entrance into the movement nearly a decade ago and especially
since his election to the NFB Board of Directors in 1952 no one of
us has labored more unstintingly or battled more courageously for
the advancement of our common cause.

     To enumerate all of Kenneth's contributions would be to
trespass upon space limitations. I might recount a few of the
highlights of his career as a Federationist leader. He is, first of
all, the only member who has served on all the NFB's survey teams
those which canvassed the state programs for the blind of Colorado
and Arkansas in 1955 and of Nevada in 1956, at the request of their
respective governors, and set in motion a chain reaction of
liberalization and reform whose effects will be felt for years to
come. Kenneth also was the chairman of two of our most thoroughly
successful National Conventions those of Nashville in 1952 and San
Francisco in 1956. He has given selflessly of his time and
inexhaustible energy to cross and recross the country in the
interests of Federation unity, harmony, and democracy and has
performed miracles of diplomacy and arbitration in situations which
might best be described as those of peacemaking, problem solving,
and troubleshooting. More lastingly important even than this has
been his consistent contribution to the over-all leadership,
expansion, and sustained course of the movement.

     Much of Kenneth's most valuable activity on our behalf,
indeed, has been carried on behind the scenes. It is not widely
known, for example, that he is the author of those indispensable
guidebooks of our movement: What is the National Federation of the
Blind and Who Are the Blind Who Lead the Blind. He is,
additionally, the author of many Federation documents that have
gone unby-lined. He has represented the NFB, informally as well as
formally, at numerous outside conventions and gatherings throughout
the country. His speeches and reports on the floor of the National
Convention, year in and year out, have been both widely anticipated
events and uniformly applauded successes. One of these in
particular requires special mention: his address before the 1957
convention on Programs for Local Chapters of the Federation. Few
statements have more correctly portrayed and deeply instilled the
conception of the Federation made up as it is of local clubs, state
affiliates, conventions, officers, and headquartersas a single
unified entity each part of which is the concern, responsibility,
and local benefit of every individual member. By popular demand
this analysis has been Brailled, taped, mimeographed, and
distributed to Federationists throughout the length and breadth of
the land. His 1955 study, Employment of the Blind in the Teaching
Profession, carried out for the California affiliate of the
Federation, has been eagerly and broadly applied throughout the
country in the increasingly successful campaign to break down the
barriers to the hiring of blind teachers in the public schools. In
fact, there is scarcely any aspect of our national movement over
the past half-dozen years which has not benefited from the alert
counsel and untiring devotion of time and talent which Ken has so
willingly given.

     I have said that his appointment to the directorship of the
Iowa Commission is a tribute to the members of that enlightened
agency. It is no less a tribute to the membership of the Iowa
Association of the Blind, under the able leadership of Dr. H. F.
Schluntz of Keystone, Iowa.

     But in the end, of course, the credit for the appointment must
go mainly to Ken Jernigan. His objective qualifications include
upwards of a decade of counseling, administering, coordinating,
teaching, and public relations, first with the School for the Blind
in Nashville, Tennessee, and after 1953 with the Orientation Center
for the Adult Blind in Oakland, California. But to these formal
qualifications must be added such vital statistics as the
following:

     Totally blind from birth, raised on a rural farm in Tennessee,
and educated in the Nashville School for the Blind, Kenneth went on
to take a bachelor's degree in social science from the Tennessee
Polytechnic Institute graduating with the highest grades ever made
by any student enrolled at the institution. In addition he somehow
found time to become president of the Speech Activities Club,
president of the Social Science Club, member of Cabinet Tech
Christian Association, member of Pi Kappa Delta fraternity, winner
of first prizes in Extemporaneous Speaking and Original Oratory at
a Southeastern conference of the fraternity; to get a poem
published in a nationwide anthology of college poetry; and to be
elected to Who's Who Among Students in Colleges and Universities of
America.

     Following his graduation from Tennessee Polytechnic, Ken went
on to take a master's degree in English from Peabody College in
Nashville, plus an additional year of graduate study. Once again he
found enough time aside from his studies to head various societies
and win a variety of awards, including the Capt. Charles W. Browne
Award in 1949.

     I shall pass over lightly his brief career as a professional
wrestler during the summer of 1945; his operation of a furniture
shop the summer before, where he built all the furniture and
managed the entire business; and his two-year livelihood as an
insurance salesman prior to joining the staff of the Tennessee
School for the Blind. But these diverse adventures and
apprenticeships of his early career do serve graphically to
illustrate Ken Jernigan's extraordinary vitality of personality and
equally extraordinary drive and determination.

     This appointment poses a critical question and gives the
proper answer to it. Will the NFB give orders to Jernigan the
administrator or, alternatively, will Jernigan the administrator
change his role in the Federation?

     To pose this question at all presupposes some basic fallacies.
It presupposes that the organized blind are on one side of the line
and the agencies are on the other. It presupposes that the function
of the agencies is to rule and that of the blind to obey. It
presupposes that the agencies are professional and that the blind
are unprofessional; that the agencies know what is best for the
blind and the blind should accept it without question; that the
agencies are custodians and caretakers and the blind are wards and
charitable beneficiaries; that the agencies are the interpreters of
the blind to the sighted community and the blind are incapable of
speaking for themselves; that agencies exist because the blind are
not full-fledged citizens with the right to compete for a home, a
job, and to discharge the privileges and responsibilities of
citizenship. These are basic fallacies.

     The basic truth is that there is no disharmony, conflict, or
incompatibility between the two posts. The basic truth is that the
blind are citizens, that they are not wards, that they are capable
of speaking for themselves, and that they should and must be
integrated into the governmental processes which evolve, structure,
and administer programs bearing upon their welfare. The basic truth
is that agencies administering these programs, committed to the
democratic view of clients as human beings and as citizens and
joining them in the full expression of their capabilities, have a
vital role to play.

     There is thus no matter of choosing between two masters moving
in different directions. The common object can best be achieved
through a close collaboration between the blind and the agencies
serving them. The object cannot be achieved without that
collaboration. Separate sources of authority, organizational
patterns, and particular responsibilities do not necessarily, and
in this case do not properly, entail conflicting commitments.
Jernigan the Federation leader and Jernigan the administrator of
programs in Iowa are therefore at one.

     