                      Progress and Power: 
                  The First Jernigan Presidency

     On Easter Sunday, in the year 1980, Kenneth Jernigan sat down
to write an informal  Report to the Members  on the state of their
Federation, over which he had presided for more than a decade.
Looking backward through the years he was struck both by the scale
of progress in the movement and by the profusion of forms it had
taken.  If you consider the Federation of 1960 and compare it with
the Federation of 1980,  he wrote,  the ad-vancement is almost
unbelievable. In 1960 we customarily had three or four hundred
people at our annual convention banquets. We now have in the
neighborhood of four times that many! Then, we had no recorded
issue of the  Braille Monitor , no presidential releases on
cassette, no seminars, no nationwide distribution of television and
radio public service announcements, no Pre-Authorized Check plan,
no members-at-large and Associates program, and no affiliates in
several of the states. 

              The Federation's President continued:

      Today, what a difference! The  Monitor  is the most
influential publication in the field of the blind. Whether they
admit it or not, our opponents know it as well as we do. Our public
service spots cover the airwaves of the nation, and the
presidential releases bind us together in a family of unity and a
common bond of shared information and interest. We have our own
national headquarters building; and our Braille, print, and
recorded materials go out by the hundreds of thousands each year.
Our leadership seminars are strengthening our ties as nothing else
could. Each year our March on Washington and our continuing NAC
demonstrations bring hundreds of us together from throughout the
nation to give testimony to our ongoing strength and commitment.
What other group (either  of  or  for  the blind) could muster the
numbers we bring together to carry out our projects? Everybody
knows the answer: None.

     So wrote the leader of the world's largest organization of
blind people, reviewing the accomplishments and setbacks of the era
just past an era that constituted, during most of its span of
years, what has come to be known as the  first Jernigan presidency. 
That tenure in office had begun in 1968, following the death of the
Federation's founder and first President, Jacobus tenBroek. It came
to an end in 1977, when mounting health problems forced Jernigan
(temporarily, as it turned out) to resign his office. During those
nine years most of the advances and innovations he was later to
enumerate, in his  Easter Report  to the members, came into being
along with others which were largely taken for granted, such as the
steady but phenomenal growth of Federation membership and
attendance at National Conventions. Even in the late sixties the
sheer numbers of participating members seemed remarkable to
old-timers in the movement; at the Des Moines convention in 1968
there were nearly a thousand people on the floor at peak periods.
Some 730 of them attended the banquet that year to applaud their
newly installed President as he delivered an inspirational address
entitled  Blindness: Milestones and Millstones  in which he
memorialized the passing of the torch from one generation of
leaders to the next.

      This year [he said] is a time of mourning, and a time of
dedication. It is a time to look back, not in anger but in sorrow;
and it is a time to look forward, not in complacency but in
confidence. It is a time for continuity, and a time for change.

      With the death of our beloved President, Dr. tenBroek, we
have lost a leader but we have not lost direction. We mourn the
passing of a man, but not the end of a movement. On the contrary;
he has shown us the way; he has set our feet on the path; he has
fired our minds and fueled our resolution. He has passed the torch
to us; let us march with it, and hold it high.

     And President Jernigan concluded his address to a standing
ovation with these resonant words:

      Let the word go out from this place and this moment that the
torch has been passed to a new generation of blind Americans, a
generation born in this century and fully belonging to it, a
generation committed to the belief that all men (seeing or blind)
are capable of independence and self-direction, of attaining
equality and pursuing happiness in their own way, of serving each
other and helping themselves of walking alone and marching
together.

     Between that overture and that conclusion, the new chief
executive of the movement defined both the milestones of progress
and the millstones of resistance which together marked the pathway
of the organized blind into the mainstream of society. His address
was an artful blend of the abstract and the concrete of
philosophical discussion and practical illustration alternating in
tone and substance between the rhetoric of high purpose and the
immediacy of the telling example. With his homespun manner and the
trace of a rural Tennessee accent, Jernigan wore his learning
lightly; he made his points often through anecdote, and nearly as
often the anecdote was personal, drawn from his own life and
expressive of his inner feelings. If his language was frequently
poetic, it could also be blunt and earthy; as he himself once put
it (alluding to a favored  blind trade  of the sheltered shops), 
Let us call a spade a spade, and a broom a broom and let the
broomcorn fall where it may. 

     When Kenneth Jernigan rose in Des Moines to give his maiden
speech as NFB President, he was scarcely an unknown quantity to the
audience of Federationists; he had been a national leader of the
movement for over fifteen years and second in command for a decade.
Moreover, he was thoroughly familiar to the members as a speaker
and writer, much in demand at state conventions and frequently on
display in the pages of the  Braille Monitor . But this time it was
different; now it was the presidency, and this was the banquet
address. There was a new authority in the speaker's voice on this
night, a new dimension to his presence; and the audience was quick
to respond to it. Here was not merely a new hand at the helm but a
new voice on the rostrum, a distinctive personality and style which
rang out through the phrases of this noteworthy speech the first
one in a distinguished series of presidential addresses which would
epitomize the movement of the organized blind for nearly a score of
years to come.

     Here is the text of that address as given at the l968
convention banquet:

               BLINDNESS MILESTONES AND MILLSTONES
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      Twenty-eight is an awkward age in the life of a man or a
movement. It is inbetween the more impressive signposts of a
quarter-century and a full generation. But for members of the
National Federation of the Blind, the number twenty-eight is a
landmark; and the year 1968 will be long remembered as a milestone.

      This year is a time of mourning, and a time of dedication. It
is a time to look back, not in anger but in sorrow; and it is a
time to look forward, not in complacency but in confidence. It is
a time for continuity, and a time for change.

      With the death of our beloved President, Dr. tenBroek, we
have lost a leader but we have not lost direction. We mourn the
passing of a man, but not the end of a movement. On the contrary:
he has shown us the way; he has set our feet on the path; he has
fired our minds and fueled our resolution. He has passed the torch
to us: let us march with it, and hold it high.

      In this year of decision, then, as we reassess our movement
and our course, what major problems and challenges loom before us?
What mountains must we now move? What rivers must we cross? What
trails must we blaze?

      Of all the stumbling-blocks which (as the Bible reminds us)
are forever placed in the path of the blind, there is one which I
believe to be more formidable and fundamental than any of the rest.
Indeed, it is more than just a stumbling block it is the very
cornerstone of the whole vast structure of laws and institutions,
customs and practices, which have kept the blind from time
immemorial in sheltered custody and confinement.

      That cornerstone which is also a millstone around the necks
of those without sight is the complex of social attitudes
traditionally held toward blindness and the blind. It is these
attitudes which are most damning and damaging to our hopes for
opportunity and equality, for integration and independence. It is
concepts to be specific such as this, taken from the letter of an
insurance company official to an employer about to hire a trained
and qualified machinist who happened to be blind:

      Duane, your letter states that there are two or three
production jobs available for a person having this particular
handicap. I think it is good that anyone would hire handicapped
people however, I think that extreme good judgment should be used
in hiring a person who is totally blind, especially for a
manufacturing plant.

      I cannot imagine that this person would be put on a job where
there is machinery having moving parts where this person might
possibly get their hands involved. Neither can I imagine them
hiring a person and placing him on a job where he would have to
walk through the plant, with the possibility of him running into
machinery or stepping off into areas where he could be severely
injured. However, a manufacturing plant has many areas which are
hazardous. One important point of safety is to always be alert and
watching for the unexpected. I would assume that this person would
be guided when entering or leaving the plant so that he would not
run into something.

      What an exemplary attitude! exemplary in its ignorance and
blighting consequences. Today there are literally thousands of
blind persons successfully at work on power machines of all types
(by the way, did you ever see any machinery without moving parts?);
and their safety record, as insurance men, above all, ought to
know, is superior to that of their fellow-workers. And yet the old
attitudes and assumptions the damning image of the helpless blind
man drive all sense and reason from the head of this insurance
executive, and threaten to drive a perfectly good machinist out of
a job and very possibly out of a career.

      It provides an illustration of a tendency, long familiar in
welfare and charity work, to make moral and behavioral demands upon
blind persons of a kind not imposed upon the general populace. Some
years ago I asked a publisher of technical books for permission to
have a volume of his transcribed into Braille for the use of a
particular blind student. This is how his lawyer replied to me:

      We suggest that you give us the name of the blind student and
her age, and let us know whether you consider her character and
integrity to be above reproach. Assuming a favorable reply, we
would prepare a letter of agreement for the blind student to sign,
in which she would promise and agree to keep the work confidential
to herself and her teacher, and not to sell it or reproduce it in
any manner.

      This is how I replied:

      The young lady in question is a blind person receiving
services from our agency. Whether she will be able to become
self-supporting may well depend upon the training and help we can
give her and upon her background preparation to take advantage of
opportunities when they become available. For these reasons we have
felt it quite vital that we have the book in question in Braille
for her. Even so, there are certain ethical principles which we
feel we cannot violate. Personal information about this young lady
is, and ought to be, strictly confidential. Whether she is a model
of purity and virtue or an utter wretch has nothing to do, so far
as we are concerned, with whether she ought to have the right to
earn her daily bread. In fact, if one wants to be philosophical
about the matter, there might be more justification for making her
earn her own living if she were a `bad' girl than if she were a
`good' girl. Therefore, your request that we give you information
about her character seems singularly irrelevant.

      It is attitudes such as this which dog our footsteps as we
move out of the sheltered past, out of the long night of
custodialism and dependency, into the future of equality. And
attitudes like  this  from the manager of a factory in Iowa,
rejecting the request of students at the Iowa Orientation and
Adjustment Center to make a tour of his mill:

      We are certainly sorry [he wrote] to hear that you feel you
have been discriminated against by not being granted permission to
tour the mill. Our only concern was for your safety, for which we
would be solely responsible during the tour. We certainly would not
want any individual in your group to risk the possibility of a fall
or getting too close to any mill machinery. The refusal of the tour
perhaps sounded unfair to you, but if you will reconsider and put
yourselves in our position, you know we would have been severely
criticized if anyone in your group would have been injured during
such a tour. We are sure that if you will give this matter fair
reconsideration you will find no discrimination, only thoughtful
consideration, on our part.

      There is a fair and considerate attitude courteous, helpful,
wishing only to be of service. How often have blind persons been
stopped cold in their progress by the classic phrase:  Our only
concern was for your safety.  Our milestones of progress have been
reached despite such millstones of concern placed around our necks.

      The answer to that attitude of the mill manager is twofold:
first, blind student groups had actually toured his mill twice
before, without a mishap; the presumption ought to be that they
could tour it again with the same safety. Second, discrimination is
almost never a matter of intention or motive; it is a matter of
action and the consequences of action. If a drunk is refused
admittance to a restaurant on the grounds of drunkenness, that does
not constitute discrimination; for he meets the standard test of an
undesirable customer. If a blind man is refused admittance to a
restaurant on the grounds of blindness, that does constitute
discrimination; for blindness does not relate to any reasonable
standard of discrimination. When the blind students of a training
center all of them, by the way, well-schooled in the use of
machinery and in plant safety measures are turned away at the door
of the mill, it would serve the manager right if they staged a
mill-in!

      It might be added as a kind of happy ending to this episode,
that all such discriminatory exclusions and rejections are
hopefully at an end in Iowa with the passage by the state
legislature in 1967 of the Model White Cane Law. Unfortunately,
such attitudes of misconception and discrimination are not limited
to the public at large.

      The crippling and defeating assumptions which even today keep
the blind down and keep them out are to be found, not one bit less
frequently or less shockingly, among the very professionals upon
whom falls the responsibility for the education of the blind and
the enlightenment of the public.

      An agency professional once raised with me the question of
how best to give counsel to a mother with a newborn blind child. My
response was that I might send a blind girl of college age, who had
been without sight since childhood and who therefore could
demonstrate to the woman that blindness is not the end of the road.
Or, I said, I might send along a blind mother, with a child or two
of her own, who could present a contrasting but equally successful
case of adjustment.

      To all this my agency friend shook his head in disagreement
and disbelief. It wouldn't do, he said, to assign a blind person to
the case whether a mother, a college girl, or any one else because
she would not be able to perceive the visual cues revealing whether
the woman was embracing the blind child or giving it affection. In
fact, he lectured me at some length concerning the tendency of
parents to resent and reject their blind infants, and not pet or
caress them. Therefore, he argued, a sighted professional was
called for who could observe visually the facial expressions of
resentment and rejection, and provide appropriate therapy for the
mother.

      My reply to this line of reasoning was that the surest way to
create and reinforce such negative attitudes on the part of the
parent would be to dispatch his type of professional worker, bent
on discovering hostility and dispensing therapy at all costs. Where
there is no hostility to begin with, such a worker is likely to
create it and where hostility already exists, she is likely to
reinforce it. On the other hand, the well-adjusted blind mother or
college girl is a living demonstration of how to get along with
blindness regarding it as a mere inconvenience, not as a tragedy.
Such a blind person has many ways of observing the attitudes and
behavior of the new mother; but more important, after a few hours
with her, the mother is likely to see blindness in a new light and
her normal maternal instincts will do the rest. In other words, the
problem raised by my professional friend was not with the mother
but with his own misconceptions about blindness.

      Indeed, these false notions are to be detected among the very
experts who took part in a workshop on  Attitudes and Blindness, 
a four-day seminar conducted expressly to educate the staff of the
Office for the Blind of the Pennsylvania Department of Public
Welfare a meeting held not ten years ago, or five years ago, but in
1967.

      Listen to the views of a rehabilitation specialist employed
by the American Foundation for the Blind, as he explains to the
assembled professionals what blind people are like:

       Many of the blind,  he says,  look at the seeing as people
from whom to get something. Just because they're sighted, they owe
blind people something. 

      Is that an accurate diagnosis of common attitudes among the
blind? What is the basis for such a sweeping and belittling
generalization? And what is likely to be the reaction of a newly
hired sighted staff worker to this characterization of the blind
people with whom he is preparing to work?

      In this connection I would ask you to remember that this
specialist is speaking to professional workers at a conference
called for the express purpose of dealing with attitudes attitudes
of the blind toward the sighted and of the professional worker
toward the blind client. There is hardly an effort made to disguise
the condescension and contempt which he feels. The fact that this 
specialist  happens to be blind himself does nothing to mitigate
the tone of his remarks, and perhaps tells us more about his own
personal inadequacies and cynical motivations than about the
subject under discussion.

      But let us hear him out. He goes on to state that one of the
best examples of exploitation of the sighted by the blind  is using
them purely for their vision in volunteer activities serving the
blind. I know of one organization,  he says,  where blind people
join as regular, full participating members. But there is another
class of membership known as associate membership; this
classification is set up only for sighted people. Associate members
do not have the right to vote, do not have the right to hold office
(except for the office of treasurer, of course, which requires
sight) [blind treasurers, take note!] and may not serve on
committees except the entertainment, hospitality, and refreshment
committees. I'm afraid this attitude even pervades the individual
thinking of some blind people to a great degree,  he says, as he
quotes the thinking of an imaginary blind person thus:  You'd
better be just nice enough to them so that you can use them when
you want to use them, and deal with them when you want to deal with
them, and call on them when you can get something from them for
nothing.  Our rehab specialist then concludes:  I've seen this
attitude over the years, and I've not seen it change much. 

      The first response one is tempted to make is: If that is the
attitude he has seen over the years, he must truly be blind blind
to the presence of other and better relationships, of other and
better motives. But there is more to it than that. The speaker is
also attacking organizations of the blind such as the National
Federation of the Blind and the state affiliates attacking them on
the one hand as  exclusive  and on the other hand as  exploitative. 
To be more blunt about it, he is saying that we are prejudiced and
discriminatory: we judge ourselves to be superior to the poor
nonblind population, and let them into our society only as
second-class citizens, unable to vote or hold office. Then we
compound the felony by treating them as a minority class of
servants and social inferiors, fit only to perform the menial
chores of washing up, dishing out the food, and keeping the books.
What a picture of snobbery, condescension, and exploitation and
also, what a falsehood!

      We are, to be sure, organizations  of the blind  not
organizations of workers for the blind, or friends of the blind, or
of persons charitably disposed toward the blind. Our chief
distinction and reason for being is that we are blind people who
have come together to solve common problems, to make our own
decisions and to speak for ourselves. It follows that while we are
happy to have seeing people join with us, we would surely abandon
our distinctive identity if we should turn authority and
decision-making over to them.

      Therefore, just as other clubs and lodges have their
auxiliaries, so our federations of the blind make a place for
interested persons who are not blind. To make something prejudicial
out of this let alone to concoct a sinister declaration of
hostility and contempt toward the seeing is simply nonsense. Again,
one wonders what effect this kind of attribution of motives to
blind people must have upon the agency staff worker who is
preparing to work with the blind.

      But let us move on. We have not yet done with this
distinguished  specialist  from the American Foundation for the
Blind, whose contribution to the workshop discussion on attitudes
is much too rich with meaning to put aside lightly. Listen to this:

      Conversely, [he says] there are blind people who look at
sighted people as competitors.  I, as a blind person,  they say, 
must compete with this individual, not because of any spirit of
sportsmanship, or not because of any drive to improve my personal
position, but to prove myself as a blind person. I must prove not
only that I can do it, but that I can do it better.  [he goes on]
A friend of mine out in the Midwest, totally blind, lives in a very
lovely community on a rather large tract of land, and every
morning, winter or summer, he goes out and runs around the block,
just to prove to his neighbors that he is physically fit. This same
individual also has a bicycle, and he rides this around the yard,
particularly when his neighbors are coming home from work. He's got
to prove himself.

      What an aggressive ogre is that midwestern blind man, sitting
there on his tract of land, morning after evening, winter and
summer, waiting for his neighbors to come out so that he can ride
his bicycle noisily about the yard, or perhaps trot around the
block a few times  just to prove that he is physically fit.  In
order to get at the true character of this analysis of motives, let
us suppose a different scene. Let us suppose that the midwestern
blind man does not ride a bicycle at all, or run around the block,
or do any other outdoor exercise but simply sits quietly inside his
house, encountering no one except his professional friend from the
East. What then would be the analysis? May it not be that this
would strike our expert on attitudes as a sad situation indeed? Can
you not hear him, or someone like him, lamenting the  social
isolation  and morbid withdrawal of this poor fellow?

      No? Then consider this piece of jargon:

      There are innumerable things one could say about the
isolating factors which directly arise from blindness and what can
be done about them. First, to a blind person the social use of the
eye is impossible. But we believe nonetheless that we have some of
the essentials to prevent isolation. One of the most important is
the impetus we have lately given to mobility training. It has been
estimated that ninety per cent of the blind population is
essentially immobile. That alone tells us how isolating blindness
can be.

      That is not the same rehabilitation specialist I have been
quoting, but it is one very much like him. It is the voice of the
Chief of Services to the Blind of the Federal Vocational
Rehabilitation Administration. And the gist of his commentary is
that the common condition of the blind is that of social isolation
from which they can to some extent be rescued by means of increased 
mobility : such as, getting out into the world, riding bicycles,
and going around the block.

      This flat contradiction between the testimony of two eminent
experts in rehabilitation of the blind is a good example of what we
might call the  false dilemma  logic all too often encountered in
this field. To put it bluntly: the blind are damned if they do, and
damned if they don't. In the present instance, our midwestern blind
man finds himself damned by one specialist if he stays indoors in 
social isolation  and damned by another if he ventures outside for
a bit of healthy exercise which somehow gets converted into
unhealthy exhibitionism.

      That point, by the way, is worth considering for a moment. If
a blind man takes to running around the block, or riding a bicycle,
or doing any of the little behavioral things that normal people do
all the time, must he be doing them for some deep, dark impulse of
competition, or of  proving himself  rather than just  im proving
himself? Why is it that other people's behavior can be taken at
face value, but the behavior of blind persons cannot even where it
is the same? Instead, it must be subjected to intricate
investigation in psychiatric depth. Does not this devious and
suspicious approach to the attitudes and motives of the blind
reveal much about the attitudes of the investigators themselves?
Does it not betray a remarkable lack of faith in the rationality,
responsibility, and simple normality of their blind clients? Much
is made of the fact that the blind midwesterner waits to ride his
bicycle until his neighbors come home from work. It apparently
never occurs to the rehabilitation expert that the reason for this
timing might be that the blind man also works and so returns home
at about the same time as others in the neighborhood. One is
tempted to exclaim: Counselor, heal thine own attitudes!

      Before leaving this informative workshop conference of
rehabilitation experts, let us turn to another illustration of the
point we are making. Here is another expert from the Federal
Vocational Rehabilitation Administration, remarking on the curious
and morbid characteristic of many blind persons that they like to
get together with others who are blind.

      The more the individual has a sense of inferiority as a blind
person, [he says] the more he is likely to enjoy the company of
other people purely and simply because they are blind. I do not
mean that there is anything wrong with two blind people enjoying
each other's company, but the tendency to group together, in clubs
or organizations, in social groups, is partially based on the
desire for equality.

      In other words, there is nothing wrong with this socializing
and organizing on the part of the blind people; but on the other
hand, there is. If we look closely at it, all kinds of subterranean
and vaguely disreputable motives become apparent; it is all a
matter of inferiority, or some sort of urge to be equal when one is
not, or something else discovered by Freud or by Freudian social
workers. It cannot be because blind persons are people, and people
like each other's company. It cannot be because blind persons wish
to join hands to solve common problems, and find voluntary
association the natural and democratic way of going about it. No!
These are the normal, healthy, and obvious motives of  ordinary 
people; they will not do for a professional analysis of the
sub-ordinary and subordinate.

      So much for that publication on attitudes about blindness,
the result of a conference of specialists on rehabilitation. Let us
consider another publication circulated by a different group of
specialists getting ready to hold a rehabilitation conference of
their own. What we have here is a questionnaire sent out across the
country to instructors working in orientation and training centers
for the blind, who were invited to participate in a three-day
national workshop on personal management services, under the
sponsorship of the American Foundation for the Blind with the
collaboration of the Federal Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare. The questionnaire asked each instructor to state whether
he had or had not developed  a specific organized method or
technique  for the teaching of grooming and living activities to
blind people and, furthermore, whether the instructor found it
necessary  to  frequently  make changes,  or only   rarely  make
changes,  in these specific organized techniques. Now, here are
some of the activities for which it was expected that instructors
would have specific organized techniques and methods: brushing
hair, combing hair, tying shoes, lacing shoes, tying necktie,
putting dentifrice on brush, brushing teeth, tweezing eyebrows,
bathing with soap, using deodorants, shaking hands, asking for
help, refusing help, using the telephone and, under the heading 
Art of Attraction,   flirting  and  dating . (One is forced to
wonder what  specific organized method or technique  the agency
professionals reported in  that  field of personal activity!)

      What is to be thought of this high-level national conference
of rehabilitation experts and its preoccupation with such
earthshaking matters as these? Surely the first thought that comes
to one's mind is: Have they nothing more serious to do? Is this the
kind of problem that should be occupying the collective attention
of the nation's specialists on blindness problems like how (in a
specific organized way) to put the toothpaste on the brush, the
necktie on the neck, the soap on the body, or the shoe on the foot?
Perhaps the shoe should be on the other foot; perhaps blind people
ought to get together in a conference of their own and work out
specific organized techniques or methods for instructing
specialists in rehabilitation on such urgent matters of personal
hygiene as clearing cobwebs from the mind, stringing serious
thoughts together, and (under the heading of  Mental Attraction )
flirting with new ideas!

      What a commentary on the attitudes  toward  the blind held by
the very people assigned to improving and educating the attitudes 
of  the blind. Certainly if a blind person is defective mentally,
or disturbed emotionally, or handicapped multiply, there may be
need for attention to such elementary and superficial learning
tasks. But if not, then not! How many real and serious problems of
social relationship and participation go untreated and unattended
while these people play their frivolous and superfluous games.

      We could go on and on and on with still more examples of
demeaning and destructive attitudes on the part of professional
workers and administrators in the vineyards of blind welfare and
rehabilitation. Their name is legion; their sins are manifest;
their mischief is widespread. But there is one more thing to say
about them: they no longer hold the field alone. Their attitudes,
their teachings, their prejudices, their arrogance all are being
challenged by a new generation of professionals, a new spirit among
the blind, a new understanding on the part of the public at large,
and a new philosophy of rehabilitation.

      The name of the new professionals is not  workers  for  the
blind  but  workers  with  the blind.  Many of them, in steadily
growing numbers, are blind themselves. But, blind or sighted, they
base their entire approach on an assumption of responsibility and
an attitude of respect toward the people with whom they work. Their
injunction to the blind trainee or client is not  you cannot do it, 
but  do it!  Their doctrine, to borrow from the field of economics,
is that of  laissez-faire  let the blind person  be  let him become
let him  go !

      One of the basic principles of a democracy is the notion that
the balance of power shall be held by the non-professional, by the
public at large. In this connection the blind are fortunate, for
the professionals in the field (weighed down by vested interest and
accumulated doctrine) have often been slower to accept the new
ideas than the well-informed man-in-the-street. When faced with the
evidence of blind people living and working as normal human beings,
the average citizen has usually been able to accept the fact for
what it is without looking for hidden meanings or Freudian
explanations. The professionals are sometimes not so flexible in
their thinking.

      The very symbol and substance of the new ideas, and the
challenge to the old attitudes, can be found in the organized blind
movement. We are determined to speak for ourselves, and with our
own voice. The time is now, and the responsibility is ours. No one
will give it to us. We must take it for ourselves. And take it we
will!

      In this time of transition, in this changing of the guard in
the affairs of the blind, we might articulate our prospect and our
vision by paraphrasing some words from the inaugural address of a
recent President of the United States:

      Let the word go out from this place and this moment that the
torch has been passed to a new generation of blind Americans, a
generation born in this century and fully belonging to it, a
generation committed to the belief that all men (seeing or blind)
are capable of independence and self-direction, of attaining
equality and pursuing happiness in their own way, of serving each
other and helping themselves of walking alone and marching
together.

     The presidential succession which took place in l968 when the
convention chose Kenneth Jernigan to assume the chair left vacant
by the death of Jacobus tenBroek symbolized more than a ceremonial
changing of the guard. It represented, as we have already noted, a
transition of the generations from the era of the founders the
pathfinders who blazed the trail and laid the foundations of the
movement to their successors of the second generation, who in turn
were to build upon that bedrock an expanding institutional
structure that in time would tower over the field of work with the
blind and cast a lengthening shadow of authority and influence
across the land.

     That symbolic structure the National Federation of the Blind
had its original epicenter in California: the state where Jacobus
tenBroek lived and taught, where Newel Perry presided as mentor and
godfather to the movement, and where such early leaders as Raymond
Henderson, Perry Sundquist, and Muzzy Marcelino formed a nucleus
around which the Federation grew and flourished in the forties and
fifties. California also could claim in that period one of the few
training and orientation centers for the blind in the nation; and
it was the magnet of that center which, combined with the
opportunity to work directly with Dr. tenBroek, attracted a young
teacher of the blind named Kenneth Jernigan to the Bay Area in the
early fifties, where he and Dr. tenBroek commenced the close
working relationship that was to endure until the latter's death.
During these years it could be said, with considerable truth, that 
as California goes, so goes the Federation. 

     The epicenter of Federationism as a national movement began
gradually to shift following the transfer of Kenneth Jernigan to
Des Moines in l958 to become director of the Iowa Commission for
the Blind. During the sixties the Iowa Commission was transformed
from possibly the worst rehabilitation agency in the nation (in
l957 it was the lowest of all in job placements) to arguably the
best in the nation, by every measure of accomplishment; and in the
process of its phenomenal growth it spread Federationism and
spawned Federationists. Among the  brightest and best  who
graduated from the Commission's Des Moines orientation center in
this period and went forth as leaders of the movement were Marc
Maurer, Ramona Walhof, Peggy Pinder, James Omvig, and James Gashel.
And, as had occurred earlier in California, the Federation's state
affiliate in Iowa grew rapidly to become one of the largest and
most effective in the country.

     It is believed by many who have observed the Federation
closely over the last three decades that Jernigan's years in Iowa
contributed more to the current status of the National Federation
of the Blind, as well as to the field of work with the blind as a
whole, than has generally been recognized. One such person (a
former staff member) capsulized the experience as follows:

      In 1958 Kenneth Jernigan became director of the Iowa
Commission for the Blind. In 1978 he left Iowa. The coming to Iowa,
the twenty years there, and the leaving all three had a
significance in the history of the organized blind movement far
beyond the simply stated facts. Jernigan's decision to seek out and
accept the Iowa position set the focus for the succeeding decades
not only for his own career, but, to a large extent, for the
Federation as well. Had Jernigan in 1958 chosen to concentrate his
monumental youthful energy along the alternate path which he and
Dr. tenBroek seriously considered for him a career in national
politics the Federation at fifty would hardly resemble the
organization as it is today. And of Jernigan himself? Who knows.
But the road taken  was  Iowa and to understand the Federation
today, one must explore thoroughly the multiple levels of
Jernigan's twenty years as director of the Iowa Commission for the
Blind for those years and what has come to be known in broad sweep
as the  Iowa Experience  forever changed the world for the blind
even for those who didn't know then and who don't know now anything
about Iowa.

     The tangibles the huge library with its  books-on-demand 
transcription program, the Orientation Center, the thoroughly
modern headquarters building, the state-of-the-art equipment, the
salary schedules above those for other state workers and the
intangibles the gleaming corridor floors, the invitations to the
Governors' Balls, the Presidential Citation, the international
visitors, the upbeat media attention, the crisp  yes sirs  and  no
ma'ams  all proclaimed in ringing tones that which was the central
core of the  Iowa Experience : It is respectable to be blind. To be
in Iowa meant total immersion in that philosophical precept which
shaped and permeated it all from the inconsequential to the
bedrock.

     Some saw in Iowa a state rehabilitation agency, giving solid
service to the blind of the state and enabling them to become part
of the economic, social, and cultural fabric of their communities.
And they were right. Thousands of blind Iowans are living -
testimony.

     Some saw a model, a working embodiment of Federation
philosophy in action which could be duplicated. And they, too, were
right. Over the years they came, and looked. They learned and
believed and went away and built elsewhere. In varying degrees,
with surges forward amid steps backward, from the Southeast to the
Northwest tens of thousands were touched.

     Some saw a threat to an entrenched system of blindness
agencies which denied the capacity of the blind to live normal
lives and earn competitive wages. And The National Accreditation
Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped was
born.

     For some clients, staff, and observers (both blind and
sighted) it was a training ground, in a sense the Federation's West
Point. The finer points of philosophy were argued for hours on end;
public officials were managed with carrots and sticks; alternative
skills and techniques of blindness were honed to perfection; and
the mind was stretched with exercises in logical reasoning a
familiar sound being a student roaming the halls muttering,  If a
squirrel and a half ate a nut and a half in a day and a half, how
many nuts could nine squirrels eat in nine days? 

     In many these experiences forged a lifelong and unshakable
commitment to the National Federation of the Blind. During the
three decades (1960-1990) those who had the benefit of the
intensity of the Iowa training during the Jernigan years
(1958-1978) that unique mixture of skills training, mental
discipline, attitude examination, love, compassion, determination,
and hope which were the heart of Kenneth Jernigan's Iowa program
fanned out across the country assuming leadership positions at the
local, state, and national levels. One need only make a cursory
review of the leadership roles of the organized blind movement to
assess the impact of the Iowa years.

     Jernigan's establishment of the Iowa Commission for the Blind
program in 1958 had been a necessary and logical step in the
Federation's long-term strategy to build full first-class status
for the blind. The tangible success of the program in proving that
the average blind person could, indeed, hold the average job in the
average place of business vindicated Federation philosophy and set
the pace for others to emulate.

     Equally necessary and logical in the Federation's long-term
strategy was Jernigan's move in 1978 to Baltimore to establish the
National Center for the Blind. The National Federation of the Blind
had become so central a factor in the entire  blindness system 
that its principal leader could no longer (or ever again) be
constrained by ties to any governmental entity. With the move to
Baltimore and the establishment and expansion of the National
Center for the Blind, Jernigan was freed to concentrate his full
attention on building in depth from the grass roots up the
far-flung yet focused mechanism which by the end of the decade of
the 1980s had become the powerful force of the National Federation
of the Blind.

     During the seventies there was to be yet another shift in the
movement's center of gravity; this time, however, it would not be
concentrated in a particular state but distributed throughout the
country. The movement was to become, in a word,  national  in
character genuinely a  National Federation  rather than a
confederation of autonomous states, with one or another temporarily
predominant. There were various reasons for this new nationalism in
the organized blind movement among them the vibrant role of the
National Convention; the spread of the  Braille Monitor ; the
development of leadership seminars; and the initiation of recorded
presidential releases, which were sent each month to state
affiliates and local chapters. But the underlying impetus for the
trend derived from a powerful inner force which was transforming
the character of the National Federation from that of an ordinary
association to that of a special kind of  community .

                The Convention and the Community

     The National Federation of the Blind had been founded on twin
premises one theoretical and the other practical. From the very
outset its leaders knew that a set of principles, well-understood
and carefully applied, was essential to its success. Equally
important to success was the building of a strong, effectively run
organization to implement the basic principles. The prudent
marriage of philosophy and activism issued, over the years, into
the unique community of Federationism.

     Before the founding of the National Federation, there had been
little community among the blind, in America or elsewhere. There
were hundreds of thousands of blind individuals who composed a
distinguishable population; but they were rarely aware of anything
in common other than the lack of sight. It was Jacobus tenBroek,
educator and theorist, who gave to this scattered collection of
blind Americans a set of guiding principles and a solid structure
through which to nurture and actualize them. In turn it was the
special genius of Kenneth Jernigan to turn the structure into a
community.

     The notion of a blind community evolved gradually within the
structure of the National Federation of the Blind. Through the
early years recruitment into the ranks of the Federation was slow
and sporadic, and growth was further hampered by the civil war of
the late fifties. But the years of battle, internal and external
alike, not only tested and tempered the mettle of the
Federationists who endured; it also made of them kindred spirits,
co-participants in a movement, brothers and sisters of an extended
family in short, members of a close-knit community. By the end of
the sixties, there was evolving in the ranks of the Federation an
almost palpable spirit of joint venture and common purpose what one
member called  sharing and caring  defined by the proven capacity
of the members to achieve together what none could do alone. This
was a community forged by an act of will, a collective act, on the
part of a once-scattered people traditionally discouraged from
organizing or associating. They had been brought together in l940
by a common need; now they were beginning to come together through
a common bond. Such a bond was far from customary among the blind.

     It should be remembered that blindness itself has always been
isolating in multiple ways. First of all, it was commonly assumed
by blind persons and those about them that independent mobility the
simple act of getting around on one's own was impossible for the
blind. Second, attitudes about blindness often contained an element
of social embarrassment and discomfort occasioned by the very
presence of a blind person making everyone feel relieved when he
stayed home  where he belonged.  Third, many people both sighted
and blind associated blindness with helplessness; hence, a blind
person (one not acquainted with the Federation and its philosophy)
often attempted to cover a lack of self-confidence by assuring
himself that he was better than other blind people the rest of whom
were clearly more helpless than he was. Accordingly all contact
with other blind people was to be rigorously avoided. While Jacobus
tenBroek had recognized these isolating factors from the outset of
the movement, it was Kenneth Jernigan who took it upon himself in
the early fifties as a teacher and counselor to work directly with
blind persons to overcome this isolation and turn around the
defeatist attitudes. First in California and later in Iowa,
Jernigan worked in orientation and adjustment centers for the adult
blind, bringing blind people together from geographically scattered
locations into a single setting. There he concentrated upon
instilling into them a sense of independence and self-reliance,
grounded in the recognition that they could be proud of their own
accomplishments and that they might share this pride with others.
Hundreds of blind persons, through the years, learned the meaning
of independence from Dr. Jernigan and returned as self-confident
citizens to find careers and establish families in their home
communities. Many of them thereafter made a point of retaining
their contacts with Dr. Jernigan and his colleagues and of reaching
out in their turn to other blind men and women open to the new
ideas. As one of these former students put it:  Recruitment into
the Federation is still a matter of one person telling another. 
And the rate of transmission of the message was accelerated, year
by year, as more and more students learned independence and moved
confidently out into the world, spreading the word as they went.

     But independence alone was never sufficient; there were still
the stumbling-blocks of public disbelief and rejection. For these
blind men and women of the new generation found that while they
might now find a competitive job, raise a family, pay taxes, get
about in the world, and generally take pride in themselves, they
could still be ejected from a restaurant if the owner deemed their
presence disturbing to other patrons. Jernigan's students (and
those that they in turn recruited) discovered that there were
problems to be solved and changes to be made that no blind
individual alone could manage; only collective action could do the
job. Like the members of the organized labor movement before them,
they learned that  in union there is strength.  But there was an
added dimension the closeness of a shared crusade, which touched
every aspect of the lives of its participants. In particular, the
annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind more and
more took on the qualities of a giant meeting of the clan, or the
reunion of a vast extended family, while also retaining its
practical function as a forum for concerted action. By the end of
the sixties the outlines of a genuine community were becoming
visible within the structure of the organized blind movement.

                          The Seminars

     As the decade of the seventies got under way, the Federation
was growing and flourishing on all fronts. The days of the civil
war were nearly a decade in the past no longer within the
experience or even the memory of many current members. States never
previously organized were now joining the national movement and
states once torn by civil strife were rejoining in a campaign led
by President Jernigan to establish beachheads, in the form of
affiliates, in all fifty states. Local chapters were proliferating
and individual membership, in all parts of the country, was rapidly
expanding. Every year the National Convention broke existing
attendance records (in l969 the number officially registered was
770; in l97l it was l,00l; and in l973 it was l,506). No one was
heard complaining about this trend; nevertheless it began to be
recognized that growth itself, for all its virtues, could generate
problems of its own if not carefully channeled: problems of
complexity, enormity, and anonymity. These  growing pains,  of
course, were unknown to the previous generation. Through the early
decades of the movement, leaders of talent had emerged infrequently
and were then swiftly brought into the circle of leadership where
everyone knew everyone else and worked closely together. But with
the growth and geographic spread of the Federation, the possibility
arose of individual leaders in various parts of the country
becoming isolated from one another and working in different
directions, thus sowing the seeds of future discord. With this
situation in mind, President Jernigan in l973 instituted a series
of leadership training seminars which were to become a permanent
fixture in the movement. The object of the seminars, then and
later, was to bring together in the setting of the national
headquarters a number of members (averaging about 25) from
throughout the country who had demonstrated leadership and
commitment to the goals of the Federation. From their inception the
seminars were held two or three times yearly, at first in Des
Moines and later in Baltimore. By l990 not a single state remained
unrepresented by at least a few seminar participants over the years
and there was no state which was not stronger for the experience.

     The special value of these seminars, for those who took part
in them, stemmed in large part from the intensity of the
experience. The seminarians lived and learned and worked together
for four active days, at close quarters with one another and with
the national President (first Kenneth Jernigan and later Marc
Maurer). They came to know the institutional workings of the
national headquarters; they learned the history of the movement
from the people who made it; they mastered the structure of the
basic laws governing work with the blind, and they reasoned through
(and talked and argued through) the handling of hundreds of
problematic situations drawn from actual experience which were
posed to them by the President. These contingencies gave the new
leaders an opportunity to ponder issues of administration, of
policy-making, of finance, and of the routine daily tasks of
keeping a movement composed mainly of volunteers working happily
along toward its goals. The outcome of each of these seminars was
and remained a disciplined body of Federationists, schooled in
history and relevant law, skilled in the arts of leadership, and
welded together through the bonds of friendship and camaraderie.
Whenever these seminarians attended a National Convention, they
found a ready-made group of companions to whom to turn for advice,
for assistance, and for association.

     For over a decade and a half these national seminars produced
a substantial corps of Federation leaders, dispersed widely through
the country yet held together by the ties of comradeship. Largely
because of this informal network of seminarians, the Federation's
National Convention during the course of the seventies ceased to be
a collection of separate state delegations and took on the
character of a true distillation of the national blind community
what one Federationist called a  secular society of friends.  The
NFB convention traditionally held each year in the week surrounding
Independence Day afforded a panoply of illustrations of this
communal spirit in action. Blind people from all walks of life
willingly took on a variety of tasks that might have nothing to do
with their backgrounds but everything to do with helping the
convention run smoothly. Some of them stood for hours at a stretch,
directing traffic or assisting at microphones; others worked at an
array of tables, demonstrating new devices or handing out
literature. But it was more than the mechanics of the convention
for which these members tended to feel responsible; it was the
well-being and high spirits of others as well. Should a member turn
up with a new baby, for example, what seemed like half the
convention might drop by to meet the child. And if a family had
suffered a loss, hundreds of Federationists were likely to come
around to express their sympathy.

     In l989, a much-loved member who happened to be the spouse of
the Nebraska state president suddenly died just before the National
Convention. The most poignant moment of that year's convention came
during the roll call of states on Thursday morning, July 6, when
Nebraska was called. After giving the detailed information required
of each official delegate, Barbara Walker who was attending the
convention with her two young children spoke these words to the
three thousand people in the auditorium:

      I want to say to everyone here that our Federation family
does many things for many people. At this particular time I want to
thank everyone for the support that has been shown to my family as
we go through the most difficult time I have ever known. I want in
particular to thank Fred Schroeder for the eulogy he delivered on
behalf of this organization at the services for Jim. It reached
many people. I have received calls from people who have opposed our
organization on many occasions who, I believe, were reached (and
reached deeply) by the message. As we continue in the various
struggles which we have to face, I will pledge to do my best to do
the work which Jim faithfully honored all the years of his life. I
need our Federation family very much right now, and everyone here
is responding in a way that is unbelievable to me. Thank you very
much.

     The National Convention meant many things to many different
people. Sometimes it was very personal. One year, a member had
found a job in another town but lacked the money to move; his
fellow Federationists reached into their pockets and made the move
possible. Another year a member was running for elective office;
conventioneers from all over the country contributed to the
campaign of this blind person who was venturing forth into elective
politics. Sometimes it was a small matter that spoke of trust and
caring such as the time when a blind machinist brought her own
tools to the convention to show other blind people how she did it.
She described her job and then asked that the tools be passed
around. They were valuable implements, and someone worried aloud
that she might not get them back from the two thousand-plus people
in the room. Over the microphone she laughed and said she was not
concerned; her fellow Federationists would see to that. She was
right, of course.

     The Federation's soaring rate of internal growth which only a
few years before had been halted and reversed under the stress of
civil war was surpassing expectations even before the eventful
decade of the sixties had come to an end. At the 1969 convention
held in Columbia, South Carolina, the number of delegates in
attendance approached 1,000. It was at the Columbia convention that
President Jernigan seized upon and adapted to new purposes the
favorite catchword of the sixties:   revolution .  He spoke in his
banquet address of  a revolution that had just begun to happen a
revolution of the future as well as of the present  a revolution in
the field of blindness that  will replace old outlooks with new
insights.  In sounding the thematic note that more than any other
seemed to epitomize the decade of the sixties in America, Jernigan
was also striking a chord for the seventies which would resound
throughout his first presidency: a new spirit of aggressive
self-confidence and determination on the part of the organized
blind. Other Jernigan speeches before this one and many more to
follow would also emphasize this theme of forceful resolution, of
the sense of a new identity ( we know who we are ) and of refusal
to turn back or be turned around. But in 1969, in a strongly worded
address entitled  Blindness: New Insights on Old Outlooks,  the
Federation's President expressed these concepts with unsurpassed
cogency and flair.

     The full text of that speech follows:

             BLINDNESS: NEW INSIGHTS ON OLD OUTLOOKS
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      We are accustomed, in our day, to talk and hear about
revolutions: revolutions past and revolutions present; revolutions
violent and revolutions nonviolent; revolutions political,
economic, technological, racial, social, cultural, and
generational. They are of many varieties, these revolutions; but
they have at least one thing in common namely, their historical
reality. Either they happened in the past, or they have happened in
our own time.

      I wish to speak to you, however, about a revolution that has
just begun to happen a revolution of the future as well as of the
present. This revolution is one that should have run its course
already; and it is one that will, irresistibly, come to fruition
and make good its promise in the years ahead. Moreover, it is a
revolution which I intend to stir, foment, and agitate; and I hope
to solicit your active support in fanning the flames. In fact, if
we can get enough people to join us on the barricades, we will not
only have set the revolution on its course, but we will have won
it.

      For the revolution that has just begun to happen is a
revolution in the public mind in the minds of us all a revolution
in our attitudes and assumptions, our deepest premises and
prejudices, concerning blindness. It is a revolution to replace old
outlooks with new insights.

      In a world of many revolutions of constant novelty and
change, of experiment and originality, of new thoughts and fresh
ideas in such a world it is astonishing that we can still be ruled,
in any sphere, by superstitions that date to the caveman and images
more appropriate to the ice age than the space age. Yet that is
still in simple fact the state of our thinking (and, therefore, of
our teaching, planning, and programming) about the blind.

      This is not to say that there has been no progress. On the
contrary, the revolution is well begun; it is on the right track;
and it is steadily gathering force and gaining ground. Ever since
the National Federation of the Blind came on the scene a generation
ago, bringing with it the nerve of independence and the shock of
recognition, there has been a shaking of the foundations throughout
the field of work with the blind and in the world beyond. But in
view of the immensity of the task before us even in its preliminary
phase of ground-breaking, mind-clearing, and institutional renewal
it is clear that the revolution has barely been launched. To
paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is not yet the beginning of the
end; it is not even the end of the beginning; but it is the
beginning of the beginning. Our revolution is under way. It cannot
now be stopped or pacified until it has achieved its goal of
overthrowing the graven image which looms as a stumbling block in
the path of the blind that image of their nature and limitations
which is graven in stone upon the public mind, stamped upon the
yellowing pages of the statute books, and nestled in the dusty
corners of custodial institutions.

      What then are the outlines and features of this graven image?
First, it is an image of  helplessness  not just of visual
disability but of total inability. Second, it is an image of 
abnormality  not just loss of sight but loss of mental and
emotional stability. (The blind man, in short, is thought to be not
just affected in the eyes but touched in the head.) Third, it is a 
 broken image   an image of impairment, of imbalance, and
disharmony rather than of wholeness and symmetry an image that
calls attention to what is missing rather than what is present, to
lacks and losses rather than strengths and talents. Helplessness,
abnormality, incompleteness: these are the essential ingredients of
a bitter and explosive brew thoroughly aged and definitely sour
which flows like bile through the veins and capillaries of the body
politic.

      It is no surprise to find the old stereotype, the graven
image of blindness, surviving among the ignorant and innocent. It
is another matter to find it flourishing in the gardens of supposed
enlightenment and knowledge, among the very people who pride
themselves upon their liberal minds and generous hearts such
people, for instance, as those who run the Peace Corps and the
VISTA program of the War on Poverty. I would remind you that the
poverty program came into existence proclaiming itself to be in the
very forefront of progressive thought and modern sophistication. It
talked, and talks, of such advanced ideas as  maximum feasible
participation  on the part of its clients, the poor. It will be
well to bear in mind those protestations and pretensions, in light
of the tale I am about to unfold.

      Listen now to a true adventure, or misadventure, involving
both the Peace Corps and VISTA, which occurred to one of our own
active members of the National Federation of the Blind, a leader in
her state affiliate. Let me say first that this woman, besides her
prominent role in the Federation, has made her living as a physical
fitness instructor for fifteen years, has served two terms as
president of a statewide public speaking group, and during a recent
political campaign covered some fifty precincts by herself, much of
the time on foot.

      Now on with the story. It began with her application to join
the Peace Corps as a volunteer an application which was turned
down,  two years  after its submission, on the ground that a blind
person could not conceivably get along alone in a foreign country
(this despite the fact which was duly noted in her application,
that she had  twice  wandered the length and breadth of Mexico
unaccompanied). The Peace Corps asked no further questions, made no
other inquiry, sought no additional data. She was blind; that was
enough to bury the application and kill the dream.

      Then came VISTA which launched a recruiting drive in her home
town. Again she applied. Her references were promptly investigated;
a physical examination followed, and soon there came a two-page
telegram stating,  You are considered for immediate placement Wire
us collect Phone us collect.  She wired that she was instantly
available, and sat back to await further instructions. It was a
long wait. Nearly a full year later she received a lengthy
questionnaire from VISTA one which is so remarkable in its method
and assumptions that it deserves detailed attention.

      Under the heading of  Mobility,  the questionnaire sets forth
the following queries:  Do you use a wheel chair?  ( No,  she
replied.)  How far can you wheel?  (Not more than ten miles between
coffee breaks,  was her answer.)

       Can you move alone from wheel chair to car? Can you move
alone from wheel chair to bed? Can you move alone from wheel chair
to seat? Can you move alone from wheel chair to bath? Can you move
alone from wheel chair to toilet? Do you use crutches?  (Her
answers were: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and no.)

       Do you climb steps?  (Yes.)

       Do you use public transportation?  (Yes.)

       Do you open and close doors in getting around?  (Yes.)

       To what extent can you get around in ice, snow, rain, mud,
heat, and other weather conditions?  (She answered:  To any extent
necessary.)

      All of this appeared on the form under the heading of 
Mobility.  The second category of questions bore the title  Self
Care,  and included the following:  Have you ever lived alone, away
from home before?  (Answer:  Yes: my home is where I make it; I
have lived alone for thirty years. )

      Then:  Are you able to live alone?   Would you prefer to live
alone?   Do you dress yourself alone?   Do you handle your own
toileting?   Can you prepare your own meals?   Do you feed
yourself?  (To this last, instead of merely repeating her standard 
yes answer, our Federationist replied:  I have never suffered from
malnutrition from inability to find my mouth.)

      The questions continue:  Do you go around unaccompanied to
work?   Do you go around unaccompanied to meetings?   Do you go
around unaccompanied to shop?  And then this:  What daily living
situations are difficult for you to handle?  (Her answer:  Dealing
with people who ask questions like these. )

      Nestled among the forest of questions, by the way lest it be
supposed that our Federationist had somehow received the wrong
application form was this:  Do you use a seeing eye dog?  She
answered  No. 

      Under the heading of Special Care,  the question was asked: 
What physical therapy will you continue while in VISTA service? 
(Her reply was:  Swimming, judo, and weight-lifting, if possible
they are not essential. )

      Under the category  Use of Special Services,  there were
three questions to which the respondent made three answers
befitting a true Federationist. The dialogue went as follows:

       Question :  Have you received physical therapy?   Answer:  
During some fifteen years of instructing others in physical
fitness, I have had to take much of my own advice. 

       Question:   Have you received speech therapy?   Answer: I
have been vice-president and program director of Republican
Speakerettes, a public speaking group. 

       Question:   What contacts have you had with your Vocational
Rehabilitation Division, or State Department of Education?  (Please
explain in detail.)  Answer:   Poor: it would seem that I remain
un-rehabilitated. 

      Thus ended the encounter of the blind Federationist with the
forward-looking, people-serving, modern-minded agencies of VISTA
and the Peace Corps. Of course she never heard again from VISTA. If
she had, and if somehow she had been accepted as a  Volunteer in
Service to America,  her response would have been predictable; for
in her letter to me, she concluded the narrative of her
misadventure with this sentence:  Of course all this is merely a
matter of curiosity, since I no longer have the slightest interest
in VISTA or anything remotely connected with it. 

      What then of  maximum feasible participation  in the Poverty
Program? Here is an agency, self-proclaimed as the most progressive
in the land, dedicated to ending prejudice and bringing equality,
dignity, and full participation to all who are socially deprived or
disadvantaged. What  vistas  does it open for the blind? How much
respect does it confer upon the vigorous and enterprising blind
applicant? The answer is self-evident. The questionnaire speaks
grossly for itself and I think all of us read and reject its
message loud and clear. In only one small corner, tucked away at
the very end of the three-page document, is there any effort to
determine the skills or abilities of the candidate. That effort is
contained in a single question one out of a total of thirty-eight!

      It is not as if the Peace Corps or VISTA had never had
experience with a blind applicant since in a few scattered
instances blind persons have actually been accepted for service
both here and abroad service well-performed, incidentally, by all
accounts and records. It is, rather, that these successes were
apparently dismissed as isolated instances, and that the image of
the helpless, hopeless blind man remained intact with all of its
defeatist presumptions and insulting implications.

      So much, then, for the new and modern agencies of social
conscience and enlightenment. Let us turn to the older, more
experienced institutions of public service. Can it be that the
blind fare better here? Is the graven image of the helpless blind
man more, or is it less, apparent among such stalwart public
institutions as, for example, the city fire department?

      For an insight into this question, consider an incident which
occurred recently in a midwestern city of moderate size. In that
city is a rooming house in which there happen to reside, among
others, a number of persons who are blind. One day the owner of the
rooming house was startled to observe a number of firemen on her
front lawn in the act, apparently, of putting up a large
illuminated sign of some kind. Asked what they were doing, and why,
the men replied that they were, indeed, installing a sign one that
bore the single luminous letter  I.  That letter, they told the
landlady, stands for  invalid,  and therefore would serve to notify
all and sundry that the rooming house harbored invalids an item of
information presumably of value in case of fire or other disaster,
since  invalids  (in this case, blind people) are helpless and
would need assistance in time of peril. Moreover, said the firemen,
when they had finished installing the sign on the lawn, they
intended to come inside and affix smaller signs, also bearing the
luminous letter  I,  upon the doors of each and every one of the
blind tenants.

      (It is not clear, incidentally, whether the insignia on the
doors, and at the entrance of the rooming house, were to be scarlet
letters. But surely they would carry much the same stigma,
contempt, and condemnation as the famous scarlet letter  A  for
adultery which was forcibly worn by the ill-fated Hester Prynne of
Hawthorne's novel.)

      Understandably, the landlady was distressed at the prospect
of an illuminated sign at the front of her house, advertising the
presence of  invalids  within. She called upon the firemen to cease
and desist; and eventually, after some threat and bluster, these
public servants did back down. But only part way. They still
insisted upon fastening the  I  signs on the doors of the rooms
occupied by blind tenants. Indeed, they gained the reluctant
permission of the landlady to do so; and the conspicuous little
plaques with the single glittering letter would doubtless be there
today, were it not for the staunch resistance of the blind tenants
who showed themselves ready to stand in the doorway if necessary in
order to protect their rooms and their characters from being thus
marked and maligned.

      I am pleased to report that the blind residents won the day,
and preserved their integrity unmarked, but it is noteworthy that
the firemen gave way not because they were converted or persuaded
not because they saw the error of their ways but only because they
were effectively resisted. No doubt the fire chief and his minions
in that city (as in many others) still believe that blindness is
equivalent to helplessness, and that blind persons are immobilized
incompetents, unable to fend for themselves in the event of fire,
crisis, or calamity.

      This story again illustrates the tendency, as common among
public officials as among the public at large, to attribute
incompetence (both physical and mental) to persons who are blind.
To the firemen in question the blind person is literally a dead
weight, a burden to be carried like a piece of furniture from the
scene of danger. To the Peace Corps and the Poverty Program, he is
at best chair-borne and at worst bed-ridden.

      If these two sets of public institutions, national and
municipal, are thus dominated by the graven image of blindness,
where can we turn for more realistic, reasonable, and respectable
assumptions? Surely, one might suppose, there is at least one safe
place, one institution secure from prejudice and ignorance, and
immunized against the subtle poisons of condescension and contempt
namely, the institutions and agencies actually concerned with the
education and rehabilitation of blind persons and with the
dissemination of the facts about blindness to the public. There at
least, it would seem certain, we should find a new image of the
blind man and of his true needs and abilities one that does not
strain at gnats or suffer foolishness gladly, one that rises above
the trivial and superficial in order to concentrate upon the
paramount problems that block the way to full equality and
independence for all blind people.

      Let us see. Here is a promising professional publication,
produced by the Institute of Blind Rehabilitation of Western
Michigan University, at Kalamazoo, in cooperation with the
Rehabilitation Services Administration of the U.S. Department of
Health, Education, and Welfare. Do we find, here, the sense of
importance and the urgency of commitment that are lacking
elsewhere, along with recognition of the intellectual and physical
capability the plain normality of the blind person?

      The title of this exhaustive ten-page treatise is  Techniques
for Eating A Guide for Blind Persons .1 These are the opening words
of the preface:  After a cursory glance at the title of this
manual, many people would dismiss it as relatively unimportant, or
surely as something that does not present problems to blind
persons. Nothing could be further from the truth.  Methinks the
authors do protest too much; as the Biblical admonition has it, the
wicked flee when no man pursueth. For at the very outset the tone
is so defensive as to suggest a lack of confidence in the topic.

      However that may be, the next words betray a striking lack of
belief in the general capacities of blind persons; for it develops
that these authors are not addressing the blind person at all, but
rather the people around him (families, counselors, guides, and
other nursemaids) who are there to take care of him and be
responsible to him.

       This manual does not pretend to have all the solutions to
the problems presented to the blind individual when eating. At
best, it is only intended to serve as guidelines for those who will
be working with the blind individual in this specific area. It
should be helpful to families or rehabilitation personnel who are
in direct contact with the blind individual. Above all, it must be
remembered that the acquisition of these skills and techniques
require constant practice under close supervision.  (I must
interrupt here to say as an old-time grammarian that the
subject-verb disagreement in the foregoing sentence comes from the
treatise, not from me!)

      What are these intricate  skills and techniques  which
require such constant practice under such close supervision? The
table of contents tells us, under the general heading of 
Techniques: 

       To Approach Table Exploration of Place Setting, Orientation
to Contents of Plate, To Cut Meat With Fork, To Cut Meat With Knife
To Butter Bread or Roll, To Pour Salt and/or Pepper, To Put Sugar
Into Beverage, To Pour Cream, To Pass Foods (and), To Eat on Tray. 

      Here are some examples of the intricacy and complexity of the
problems dealt with in this scientific exposition by the authors
both of them, as we are told, experts in education and
rehabilitation of the blind:

       During the course of eating, it is advisable to bend the
trunk forward, bringing the face above the plate, should something
fall from the fork. 

       In the process of eating, foods may be picked up by the
`stab' method which involves inserting the tines of the fork into
the food and lifting. This is used for such solids as string beans,
fruit salad, etc.; or foods may be picked up by the `scoop' method,
which involves dipping the forward part of the fork down into the
food, leveling the fork, and then bringing it up. 

       In situations where it is difficult to pick up the food, a
`pusher' may be used. This might be a piece of bread or roll, or
another utensil such as a spoon or a knife, which holds the food in
position to be picked up with the fork. 

      Now for some concrete techniques, skills, and scientific
methods:

       To approach table: (1) Place one hand on back of chair; (2)
With free hand, scan arms and/or seat of chair to ascertain shape
and whether or not the chair is occupied.  (One wonders, in the
context of all this frivolous nonsense, whether the authors would
also advocate, should the chair be occupied, scanning the occupant
to ascertain shape.)

      Under the heading  Exploration of place setting,  we find the
following:

       To locate plate, with flexed arms and curled fingers, lift
hands to top edge of table and move gently toward center of table
until contact is made.  And a little later on:  With arms flexed,
and fingers curled, follow right edge of plate, and extending arm
and fingers gradually, angle to the right to locate tea cup and/or
glass. 

      Here is an especially complicated maneuver, apparently
modeled after jungle-warfare instructions in an army field manual:

       Using edge of plate as point of reference, approach contents
of plate from above with tines of fork in perpendicular position.
Insert fork into food at positions of 6 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 12
o'clock, and 3 o'clock, identifying food by texture and/or taste.
(Fork may be brought to mouth as desired.) 

      In the detailed discussion of how  to butter bread or roll, 
consisting of seven steps or operational phases, there is one I
find particularly fascinating. It is  Number 4. Break the roll. 

      Let me quote just three more specific techniques which appear
in the course of these illuminating instructions:

       To eat pie, begin at the tip and, either stabbing or
scooping, work toward the back of the pie. 

       To take a roll or cookie, locate edge of plate and gently
move in to find item.  And finally:

       The sensation of hot and cold indicates where hot and cold
foods are located.  I was glad to learn that; aren't you?

      Something of the condescension of this pompous parade of the
obvious and the trivial may be observed in the quotation which
serves as frontispiece to the publication. It is attributed to Emil
Javal, and reads as follows:  Meals being for the blind the
pleasantest moments of life, it is very important for him to train
himself to eat properly, so that he may feel in a position to
accept an invitation out. 

      Now, why are meals  the pleasantest moments of life   for the
blind ? Can it be because (as some people appear to believe) the
blind, in their helpless condition, knowing themselves to be
incompetent and irrelevant if not quite immaterial, can have few
joys other than eating?  What is a man,  asked Hamlet,  if his
chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A
beast, no more. 

      And what about that crack about being in  a position to
accept an invitation out.  Out of what the almshouse? Solitary
confinement? Why must the blind person wait for  an invitation out, 
unless he is in truth not capable of sallying forth on his own or
of  inviting people in ? Such an archaic attitude might have been
suitable in, say, 1905; but we are far removed today from the
conditions of social isolation and enforced idleness which this
quotation conjures up. The real value of the quotation is the very
opposite of that intended by the authors of this tiresome treatise
on table topography, this god-awful guide to gracious
gourmandering, this moronic manual on meal-time mastication, this
oddball odyssey for outlandish oenologists, this poor man's primer
on polite pantry protocol and perpendicular pie-pushing. The
frontispiece quotation, and indeed the whole sad tract, is
graphically illustrative of the demeaning and dispiriting image of
blindness and the blind which still controls the thoughts of far
too many agency professionals, and so controls the lives of the
blind.

      And what does all of this mean? What is the significance of
these acts and attitudes on the part of government officials and
workers with the blind? It is not merely that these several
isolated incidents occurred. It is not even that they are
symptomatic of a broader pattern of thought and deed, and therefore
not isolated at all. It is rather that they bespeak the dominant
theme of public and official opinion which everywhere characterizes
the image of blindness.

      That is the dark and threatening significance of the events
which I have laid before you. But such events as these, however
common, however destructive, no longer stand alone. Of still
greater significance is the positive fact that we have come to
recognize these sordid myths and misconceptions for the lies which
they are; that we have organized; that we have  mobilized 
ourselves into a powerful movement to change the total landscape of
the country of the blind; that we have not only won friends and
influenced people in our cause but have won battles and influenced
the course of public policy.

      It is significant, too, that more and more professionals in
the field of work with the blind in the private agencies, in
government, in the foundations and universities are receiving our
message and rallying to our cause. It is significant that more and
more blind persons are employed, in better and better careers. It
is significant, most of all, that despite the heritage of old
outlooks, despite the deep hold of the graven image upon their
minds, the general public is beginning to show itself ready to
listen, to learn, and to understand.

      The challenge is ours, and the time is now. Our revolution
will not wait, and it will succeed but only if we take the lead and
take the risks. It is for us to persuade, to participate, to
persevere and to prevail and prevail we will!

      The words of Abraham Lincoln, spoken a hundred years ago, are
no less applicable to us today:  We cannot escape history. No
personal significance or insignificance will spare one or another
of us. This fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in
honor or dishonor to the last generation. We, even we here, hold
the power and bear the responsibility. 

      The time is now, and the challenge is real. I ask you, with
all that the question implies: will you join me on the barricades?

     FOOTNOTE

      1.  Techniques of Eating: A Guide for Blind Persons .
Prepared by Lloyd C. Widenberg and Ruth Kaartela. Published by
School of Graduate Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo,
Michigan 49001.

     Increasingly Jernigan was asked to address official gatherings
concerned with broad issues of education and the general welfare.
One such occasion was a Governor's Conference on the Future of
Education held in Des Moines during October, 1969, and attended by
over 800 educators and other professionals. Dr. Jernigan was
invited, as an educator himself, to speak on the then-controversial
subject of innovation in education. His response, although it did
not deal directly with blindness and the blind, was infused with
the philosophy and outlook he had acquired through two decades of
association with both the organized blind and the service agencies
of the blindness system. This is what he had to say:

   THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION INNOVATION: PANACEA OR PANDEMONIUM?
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      The question before us on this panel is: Educational
Innovation Panacea or Pandemonium. My response to that question is,
summarily, that innovation cannot be a panacea, and need not become
pandemonium. At the least it is a palliative, and at best it may be
a progression. Nothing is more evident today, to the layman as well
as to the expert, than our  systems for the delivery of learning 
that is, our schools are in trouble. Not only in Iowa, but all over
the land and at all levels from elementary to university we seem to
be going  up the down staircase. 

      At the college level, students in significant proportions, if
not in alarming numbers, militantly confront and sometimes defy
their professors and administrators. The common denominator of
their various demands is, however, not revolution at least not yet
but innovation. The cliche most commonly employed to express this
demand is  relevance ; and that tiresome term (if it means anything
at all) means new departures both in the substance and procedure,
the goals and the methods, of academic experience. But that is not
all there is to the theme of innovation in higher education. Two
recent and broadly influential studies of the college crisis,
neither of them concerned primarily with student protest and both
of them the work of sociologists illustrate in their titles the
centrality of the principle of innovation. One is  The Academic
Revolution , by Christopher Jencks and David Riesman; the other is 
The Reform of General Education , by Daniel Bell. Let me, for the
moment, simply take note of this pervasive and persistent emphasis
on innovation in the current literature on the higher learning in
America.

      At the secondary level the issues are not quite the same but
are no less caught up in considerations of reform and experimental
change. Here the problem is more commonly one of drop-outs than of
sit-ins (although Students for a Democratic Society, as you know,
has begun a campaign to organize the high schools); and questions
of contemporary relevance, immediacy, and cogency, are the burning
issues in social studies, if not everywhere else in the curriculum.

      At the elementary level, where creativity has its native
stronghold, the theme of innovation has been a constant perhaps the
only constant for more generations than any one now living can
remember. Whatever may be said in criticism of our primary schools
today, they are a far cry from the Dotheboys Halls of Dickens's
time, where Nicholas Nickleby and his fellow scholars carried on
their rote learning and ritual recitations in constant terror and
discomfort under pain of daily floggings designed to correct that
constitutional flaw in the disposition of all children known to the
devout as  infant depravity. 

      Innovation in the shape of humanitarian reform and
child-centered learning entered the American schoolhouse with John
Dewey and his progressive philosophy even before the turn of the
century. It has since been revitalized through successive
theoretical transfusions, notably the self-motivating methods of
the Montessori school; and today, after many backings and fillings,
innovation is again a conspicuous feature of learning theory and
methodology in elementary education. But the tide, of course, does
not flow all one way. The innovative spirit, with its passion for
change and its impatience toward convention, never proceeds very
far in any community without encountering resistance; and in the
present conservative climate of opinion across the country (brought
on in large part, as I believe, by excessive demands for change),
it is unlikely that innovators will have their way entirely at any
stage of the educational ladder.

      No doubt this is as it should be. The history of American
education may well be read as a dialectical process of alternating
challenge and response between the forces of innovation and those
of tradition. But it should not be supposed that this competition
of viewpoints is unhealthy in principle or destructive in tendency.
On the contrary, it is the educational analogue of the democratic
political process on one hand and of the competitive enterprise
system on the other. For the debate I am talking about is not over
ends and basic values, but rather over means and interpretations.
The real enemy of innovation, it should be understood, is not
tradition but inertia. Tradition, wherever it is viable and
valuable, welcomes change and progress; innovation, wherever it is
sensible and successful, soon turns into tradition. The
relationship between innovation and tradition, in the school as in
society, is properly not one of conflict but of continuity. Each
perspective in fact needs the other. Without regular injections of
innovative energy, tradition deteriorates into dogma; without the
sober and corrective prudence of traditional wisdom, innovation
becomes mere novelty, hovering on the edge of chaos.

      I hope that I have said enough to demonstrate my own
partiality for innovation, disciplined by a respect for the past,
in the curriculum and the classroom at all levels of the
educational system. Indeed, it would be a betrayal of my own
professional career and commitment were I to suggest otherwise. As
director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind over the past dozen
years, I have been at the storm center (some might say I have been
the storm center) of full-fledged revolution in the education of
blind people away from conventional indoctrination in the sheltered
blind trades and from adjustment to lives of quiet desperation
toward the higher ground of complete equality, independence, and
participation. The blind students who pass through our
rehabilitation center here in Des Moines emerge not as dependent
conformists ready for the broom shop and the rocking chair, but as
self-sufficient citizens ready to lead their own lives, to go their
own way and to grow their own way rebels against the 
establishment,  no doubt, but rebels with a cause. That cause, that
sense of mission, may be defined as faith in their own capacity,
individually and collectively, to assume the active role of  change
agents  in the uncomprehending world around them: more
specifically, to reconstruct the social landscape of the country of
the blind. Our commitment in the programs of the Iowa Commission is
therefore to innovation in the fullest sense, both in ends and
means; and in the exercise of this commitment we are continuously
experimenting and improvising, remaking and revamping, branching
out and breaking through, in every phase of our operation.

      Having said that much for innovation, let me reverse
direction and say a few words against it. It is a truism that we
live in an age more accustomed to change, more comfortable with
abrupt transitions and large-scale alterations, than any previous
age in history. Moreover, we Americans are geared toward the
future, almost obsessively forward-looking, utterly fascinated with
the shape of things to come. Planning, forecasting,
prognosticating, predicting, projecting, extrapolating these are
our characteristic national pastimes. Witness, as a case in point,
the structure and focus of the present conference. Its subject is
education, yes; but it is not  education today,  let alone 
education in retrospect or in historical perspective.  No; it is 
The Future of Education.  And the opening panel this morning was
appropriately entitled  2001: An Education Odyssey. 

      Well and good. As an avid science-fiction reader and amateur
futurist myself, it would come with ill grace from me to scorn this
forward-oriented posture. My concern is only that, in our haste to
get to tomorrowland, in our absorption with the themes of change
and innovation, we may overlook the stubborn realities of today and
disdain the crucial lessons of yesterday. In the field of
education, as in that of government, we cannot afford to break
precipitously with what Walter Lippmann has termed the  traditions
of civility  and what Edmund Burke called the  prudential wisdom of
the past.  For to break away from that usable past is to break away
from the moorings of civilization itself and to drift unpiloted not
toward the good society of our dreams but toward the  Brave New
World  of our nightmares.

      It is not only innovation which cannot be regarded as a
panacea for our problems. Education itself must not be burdened
with unreasonable demands and expectations. It would be difficult
to overemphasize the importance of the schools, and especially of
the universities, in the future conduct of our civilization; but it
would not be at all difficult to overestimate their capacities and
resources. As far back as a decade ago Dr. John W. Gardner, the
president of the Carnegie Corporation and since Secretary of
Health, Education, and Welfare in the Johnson Administration, could
declare:  The role of the universities is undergoing a remarkable
change. They are thrust into a position of great responsibility in
our society a position more central, more prominent, more crucial
to the life of the society than academic people ever dreamed
possible.   Indeed, it is this explosive growth of the American
college system which Professors Jencks and Riesman have designated
the  academic revolution  and which they describe in their
magisterial volume in tones fraught at least as much with concern
and apprehension as with optimism and affirmation. Just as the
lower schools cannot be all things to all children, so the
universities cannot be all things to all men. In short, to avoid
falling into pandemonium we must avoid falling back upon panaceas.
In the allocation of roles and values to the educational
enterprise, we shall need to keep our heads and maintain our
balance in more ways than the one under discussion in this panel.
If it is important to strike a balance between the forces of
innovation and those of tradition, it is equally vital to balance
the values of a general or liberal education against those of
vocational and professional training. And most crucial of all may
be the need to balance the esthetic and moral persuasions of the 
soft  humanities against the aggressive imperatives of the  hard 
sciences. Let us admit that there is no imminent danger of our
neglecting or disparaging the latter. Between Sputnik I and Apollo
II, little more than a decade apart, we have thoroughly redirected
and rededicated our educational investment toward the advancement
of science and the nurture of its technological progeny. I have no
desire to minimize the magnificent accomplishments which have
resulted from that national decision. The proof, after all, is in
the pudding or, rather, the proof is written on the moon and stars.
But possibly the time has arrived for a reassessment of educational
priorities and of the social values that undergird them. As we
rocket down the skyways and spaceways of the future, let us not
forget what the year 1984 conjured up in the mind of one sensitive
futurologist the British author George Orwell. It was a vision of
hell in the shape of a technological paradise. It was the
anticipation of a future society which had lost its head, its
nerve, and its soul. That imaginary civilization failed, not for
lack of innovation or of information not for lack of scientific and
technical skills or of psychological knowledge but for lack of
belief in the values and requirements of free men. Its failure, in
a word, was educational.

      I cannot leave this issue without a brief extension of my
remarks in a particular direction. In all that I have said thus far
I have, perhaps, been guilty of perpetuating the favored illusion
of schoolmasters, that education is a strictly formal affair
confined to primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions and to
the span of years between five and twenty-one after which it
vanishes like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only a bad taste and a wry
grin behind. That assumption is, of course, pedantic poppycock.
Education is merely learning, intellectual or cognitive growth, and
it proceeds continuously in one form or another from cradle to
grave. Much of this lifelong process is, to be sure, what Paul
Goodman has labeled  mis-education  and others have termed 
negative learning  a good deal of which takes place in unstructured
settings (such as watching TV) and even in unwitting or unconscious
circumstances (such as watching TV commercials). Learning of a more
active kind occurs in other situations, which are wholly or
partially non-academic and extra-curricular, but which function as
extensions of the academy  classrooms without walls,  as it were.
Many of these settings are sufficiently well known to need no
mention; but there are others, close to my own experience, which
are germane to our theme of educational innovation. Perhaps the
most far-reaching example of informal education today, involving
millions of Americans, is to be found in the vast array of public
aids and services aimed at the disabled, disadvantaged, and
deprived. Not all of these services of course entail the
transmission of new learning; but it is remarkable how many of them
do, and in how many ways. Here are a few: vocational
rehabilitation, vocational education, compensatory education,
counseling and guidance, self-support and self-care, group therapy
and sensitivity training, apprenticeship and internship programs,
VISTA, Manpower Development and Training, Youth Corps, Head Start,
Upward Bound, orientation and adjustment services, and so on and
on.

      In these proliferating programs of quasi-educational impact,
already almost more in number than anyone can tabulate, there is
continuous innovation and that is doubtless to the good. But there
is also continuous indoctrination and that is presumably to the
bad. If the millions of citizen-clients are not being enlightened
by these services, they are unquestionably being influenced; and I
wish only to suggest that we might do well to ponder the quality
and direction of that educative influence.

      As someone has surely said before me: when tyranny comes to
America, it is likely to come in the guise of  services. 

      I can do no better, in bringing my remarks to an end, than to
offer you a quotation from a small book which has meant much to me,
and perhaps also to some of you  The Prophet , by Kahlil Gibran:

      Then said a teacher, Speak to us of Teaching.

      And he said:

      No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies
half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

      The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his
followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his
lovingness.

      If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of
his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.

     In 1970, at the Federation's thirtieth anniversary convention,
President Jernigan delivered a banquet address which many veteran
members of the movement were later to regard as among the most
eloquent of his long career in the leadership of the organized
blind. Speaking on the topic,  Blindness The Myth and the Image, 
Jernigan exposed the hidden dimension of mythology and superstition
which still conditioned social attitudes toward the blind. In
particular he struck at the  disaster  concept of blindness with
its melodramatic insistence upon regarding every blind person as a
tragic figure; and he demonstrated in graphic detail that this
mythical image was prevalent not merely in public opinion but in
professional policy and practice.

     Here in full is the text of that speech:

                BLINDNESS THE MYTH AND THE IMAGE
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      It is not only individual human beings who suffer from what
the psychologists call an  identity crisis  that is, a confusion
and doubt as to who and what they are. So do groups of human beings
communities, associations, minorities, even whole nations. And so
it is in this year of space if not of grace with the blind,
organized and unorganized. We are, as I believe, in the midst of
our own full-fledged identity crisis. For the first time in
centuries perhaps in a millennium our collective identity is in
question. For the first time in modern history there are anguish
and argument, not only as to what we are, but as to what we may
become. The traditional images and myths of blindness, which had
been taken for granted and for gospel throughout the ages, both by
the seeing and by the blind themselves, are now abruptly and
astonishingly under attack.

      Who is it that dares thus to disturb the peace and upset the
apple cart of traditional definitions? The aggressors are here in
this room. They are you and I. They are the organized blind of the
National Federation. It is we who have brought on our own identity
crisis by renouncing and repudiating our old mistaken identity as
the  helpless blind.  It is we who are demanding that we be called
by our rightful and true names: names such as  competent, normal,
and equal . We do not object to being known as  blind , for that is
what we are. What we protest is that we are not also known as 
people , for we are that, too. What we ask of society is not a
change of heart (our road to shelter has always been paved with
good intentions), but a change of  image  an exchange of old myths
for new perspectives.

      Of all the roadblocks in the path of the blind today, one
rises up more formidably and threateningly than all others. It is
the invisible barrier of ingrained social attitudes toward
blindness and the blind attitudes based on suspicion and
superstition, on ignorance and error, which continue to hold sway
in men's minds and to keep the blind in bondage.

      But new attitudes about the blind have come into being. They
exist side by side with the old and compete with them for public
acceptance and belief. Between the two there is vast distance and
no quarter. As an example consider the following quotation:  The
real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight. The real
problem is the misunderstanding and lack of information which
exist. If a blind person has proper training and if he has
opportunity, blindness is only a physical nuisance. 1

      That is a quotation from an administrator in the field of
work with the blind. Here is another quotation from another
official:  We must not perpetuate the myth that blindness is not a
tragedy. For each person who has learned to live an active,
fruitful life despite blindness, there are thousands whose lives
have lost all meaning. A blind person can't be rehabilitated as a
crippled person may be. You can give a [crippled] man mobility, but
there is no substitute for sight. 2

      Those two quotations represent the considered judgments of
two professionals in the field of services to the blind. The
statements are squarely contradictory. If one of them is true, the
other must be false. Which are we to believe? There is no doubt as
to which of the two would win a public opinion poll. The more
popular by far is the second the one that repudiates as a shocking
fiction the very idea that blindness is anything less than a total
tragedy.

      Let us take note in passing of the peculiar tone of finality
and conviction in which this second statement the  hard line  on
blindness is expressed. I believe there is a striking irony in it
which all of us would do well to recognize, for it conveys the
distinct impression that there is something cruel and unfair to
blind people in the mere-nuisance concept of blindness, as opposed
to the evidently kinder and fairer portrayal of the condition as an
overwhelming disaster.

      The difference between these two perspectives on blindness is
not merely that one is optimistic and the other pessimistic. There
is more to it than that. The crucial difference is that one view
minimizes the consequences of the physical disability and actively
rejects the notion that blind persons are somehow  different.  Its
emphasis is upon the normality of the blind, their similarity and
common identity with others, their potential equality, and their
right to free and full participation in all the regular pursuits
and pastimes of their society. The accent here, in a word, is 
affirmative : it is upbeat, dynamic, rehabilitative. It makes much
of opportunity and capacity and does not dwell on deprivation and
disability.

      By contrast the other point of view which we might call the 
disaster  concept deliberately maximizes the effects of blindness:
physically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially. Its
emphasis is upon what is missing rather than what can be done upon
lacks and losses rather than upon capacities and strengths.
Blindness, these spokesmen are inclined to tell us, is a kind of 
dying ;3 and those who are blind (so we are repeatedly informed)
are  abnormal  they are  different  they are  dependent  they are 
deprived  they are  inferior  and above all, they are  unfortunate
. The accent here, in a word, is  negative . It is downbeat,
pessimistic, professionally condescending, frequently
sanctimonious, and ultimately defeatist.

      I submit that this disaster concept of blindness is not only
a popular opinion among professionals and the public today. It is,
with only a little updating and streamlining, the ancient myth of
blindness the classic image of the blind man as a  tragic figure .
Let me be clear about this use of the term  tragic.  In its
classical sense, tragedy is not mere unhappiness. It does not refer
to accidental misfortune or limited harm, which can sensibly be
overcome. Tragedy involves a sentence of doom, a dire destiny,
which one can only confront in all its unalterable terror but can
never hope to transcend. The sense of tragedy, in short, is the
sense of calamity to which the only appropriate response is
resignation and despair. These words of Bertrand Russell convey the
mood exactly:  On such a firm foundation of unyielding despair must
the soul's habitation henceforth securely be built. 

      How does the tragic view of blindness find expression in
modern society? I would answer that it takes two forms: among the
public it takes one form, and among professionals another. On the
public and popular side, it tends to be conveyed through images of
total dependency and deprivation images, that is, of the  helpless
blind man.  A typical recent example occurred on the well-known TV
program,  Password,  in which a number of contestants take turns
guessing at secret words through synonyms and verbal associations.
On one such show the key word to be guessed was  cup.  The first
cue word offered was  tin ; but the guesser failed to make the
connection. The next cue word given was  blind  which immediately
brought the response  cup.  There you have it: for all our
rehabilitation, all our education, and all our progress, what comes
to the mind of the man in the street when he thinks of a blind
person is the tin cup of the beggar!

      Not only to the man in the street it also comes, with a
slight twist, to the mind of the lady in the newspaper advice
column.  Dear Ann Landers,  read a recent letter to the well-known
oracle and advisor by that name:  I lost my sight when I was eight
and I have a wife and three children. It's very hard for a blind
man to make a living because nobody wants to hire me. So I do the
next best thing. I sit on the corner with a cup and sell pencils.
We have moved to several different cities and have done all right.
In this town two cops have told me that begging is against the law
and to get moving. Why should there be a law against a man trying
to make a living? My wife is writing this for me and we need a fast
answer so please hurry. Signed, Tough Luck. 

      To which Ann Landers says:  No one needs to beg in America.
There are countless  welfare organizations  who will help you.
Write to American Foundation for the Blind.  

      That seems at first glance to be a hopeful and constructive
suggestion. But take another look: what the lady is suggesting is
that the blind man go on welfare that the only organizations that
can help him are welfare agencies! Here is a man who, by his own
word, is only trying to make a living. His problem is that no one
has hired him and that he had apparently not had adequate training,
encouragement, and orientation; so he is making a living the hard
way. But, to the lady columnist, his blindness is the problem. It
rules him out of the job market and onto the charity rolls. It
never even occurs to her that he might seek rehabilitation, or that
it might be available to him.

      Ann Landers, of course, is not a professional counseling
psychologist or social-work specialist. But she might as well be.
As it happens, there is no clear line of demarcation between the
popular stereotypes about blindness and the supposedly more learned
conceptions of many professionals in work with the blind. A
remarkable illustration of assumptions shared in both worlds is to
be found in the unbelievable shenanigans of a fascinating
philanthropic organization called the Stevens Brothers Foundation
of St. Paul, Minnesota. In a circular letter sent to  all State
Supervisors of the Blind  (note that wording), under recent date,
the director of the Foundation wrote as follows:

      Our activities for aid to the Blind for next year will
consist of sending samples of some of the following items for which
we have made application for Patents, Registered Copyrights and
Trademarks:

      Templet-Giant Embossed Telephone Dial for the Blind

      E-Z-I Dropper and Washer for the Blind

      Goldlettering-Silverlettering on Dark Background for the
Industrial Blind

      Emergency Whistle for the Blind (and to protect women in
emergencies)

      Nonskid Barrosette Icegrips for the Blind

      Koffeemugg for the Blind

      Solesatisfier for Aching Feet of the Blind

      National Uniform for the Blind

      Organization to Investigate the Attributes and Skills of   
Blind Flying Bats Insofar as they may be applicable to the   Blind

      Rockerwheel Krutch for the Crippled, Lame and Blind

      My Lord and Ladyships Personal Mechanical Valet for the Blind

      Eskeymo Bonnet

      Buttonon Necktie for the Blind

      Children's Fabrique for Finger Etching Entertainment       
      Commercial Toymakers for the Blind

      Wraparound Overcoat Tails Leg Warmers for the Blind [and]

      Wraparound and Fastenup Muffler Warmer for the Blind.

     Pervading this ludicrous, if well-intentioned catalog of
artificial aids and fantastic gimmicks is the assumption that the
tragic plight of the blind leaves them helpless to do anything at
all for themselves without a battery of gadgets not even tie their
ties, handle the telephone, lift an ordinary coffee cup, appear in
public without a special identifying uniform, walk on icy surfaces
or without aching feet or even walk without a  krutch,  such as
needed by the crippled and lame!

      If any doubt remains concerning the attitude of the Stevens
Brothers toward those whom they seek to help, it is set at rest by
the concluding paragraph of their letter:  Our experience has been
that we have found those  patients  who use their Signature and
Envelope Addresser Cards  learn very quickly  how to use the
Letteriter and we hope that you have the same success in training 
your Blind  in using these Cards.  Blind persons, it would seem,
are to be regarded as  patients  who, despite their dreadful
infirmity,  learn very quickly  to operate simple gadgets that is, 
 our  blind  do so, and it is hoped that   your  blind  may be
trained to do likewise.

      There may be those who would dismiss this rigmarole as merely
the work of a harmless crank, not to be taken seriously by anyone
in a position of authority or respectability. Would that it were
so. But the most astonishing thing about the exploits of the
Stevens Brothers of St. Paul is that they have been found
acceptable by a high official of the Federal Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare. In fact, he recommends that the
philanthropists send their materials to the American Foundation for
the Blind and the American Printing House for the Blind. And this
same official, coincidentally, has maintained on more than one
occasion that blindness can not be regarded as an inconvenience but
must be faced up to as an unmitigated disaster.

      Yet, is it only coincidence that the man who rejects the
nuisance-concept in favor of the disaster-concept of blindness
should also be the man who finds acceptable the frivolous gimmicks
of the Stevens Brothers? Perhaps; but I think not. I believe there
is a direct connection between the philosophy and the practice,
between the theory and the behavior. Feeling as he does that the
blind are truly different that they are, in the words of a recent
article  socially isolated  from others and trapped forever in the
tragedy of their dark fate feeling this, what could be more natural
than the idea of filling their empty and separate world with toys
and games, with wraparound tails, and funny uniforms?

      Nor does this government official stand alone in his
acceptance of the work of the Stevens Brothers. A veritable flood
of congratulatory letters came to the St. Paul philanthropists both
from here and abroad in response to their overtures, and were
immediately circulated by the hundreds and thousands to public
agencies and government officials throughout the world to add
respectability to what otherwise would have appeared as sheer
nonsense or fantastic lunacy. Here is a typical letter from a state
director of services to the blind:

       We shall be very honored, indeed, to act as your agent in
distributing these aids to the blind persons in schools and
institutions. Congratulations on your exploration into other
possible aids and areas where some aid or benefit could result to
lessen the handicap of blindness. Best wishes to you for continued
success in your efforts, and may health and happiness be yours in
great abundance. 

      Here is another, from the head of services to the blind in a
different state:  We will be happy to participate in the
distribution of the material for the blind which you have been
sending us. We feel the material which you so generously are
providing will be very beneficial to the blind. 

      Here is another, from a workshop for the blind in Bombay,
India:  Words are inadequate to express our deep sense of gratitude
for your generosity and willing assistance in promoting the cause
of the welfare of the blind. 

      Here is yet another, from the director of the Nak-Tong
Revival Home in Pusan, Korea:  Once again the Thanksgiving Season
ushered out the Autumn and brings in the Winter, with the turkey
steps forward. Furthermore, it's most richest season for us
mankind, with poverty averting her head and will not spoil the
feast of harvest. While we who lost touch love again and workers
pause to pray, the children and adult patients of the Nak-Tong
Revival Home should like to extend their sincere greetings to the
benefactors like yourself for their goodwill during the past year. 

      There are many other letters besides; but none of them, I
feel, can top that! Surely all of these professionals, who take
such delight in the toys and gadgets of the Stevens Brothers, would
subscribe to the philosophy of one of their colleagues, as uttered
some years ago!  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 own choosing this is to fill the life of any one with the
things that make life worth living. 4

      Let me remind you of the way in which Dr. Jacobus tenBroek,
then in his prime as President of the National Federation of the
Blind, responded to that statement. In one of his great convention
speeches,  Within the Grace of God,  he quoted the passage and went
on to say this:  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 suitable accessories to a life well filled with
other things a home, a job, and the rights and responsibilities of
citizenship, for example. 5

      The point I am seeking to make now is the very same point
that Dr. tenBroek was seeking to make then. There are two opposing
conceptions of the nature of blindness at large in the world. One
of them holds that it is a nuisance, and the other that it is a
disaster. I think it is clear that the disaster concept is
widespread alike in popular culture and in the learned culture of
the professionals. Moreover, I would submit that the concept itself
is the  real  disaster the only real disaster that we as blind
people have to live with and that when we can overcome this
monstrous misconception, we shall ring down the curtain forever on
the fictional drama entitled  The Tragedy of Blindness. 

      In order to emphasize still further the full extent to which
the disaster concept the tragic sense of blindness prevails among
the professionals in our field, let me introduce in evidence
another exhibit. It is a comment from overseas by an official of
the National Council for the Blind of Ireland. This is what he says
of the blind people of his country:  Although the exceptional and
stubborn can learn a trade or pursue an education up to university
level [note that  up to ] and follow successful careers, such cases
are unusual. Since unemployment has always been a factor in our
economy, there are not many posts available. We lack the industries
with the necessary repetitive machinery on which the blind can
safely work. 

      All that needs to be remarked about that dreary pronouncement
is that it heavily reinforces the defeatist notion that blind
persons in general (those who are not peculiarly stubborn and
exceptional) should give up any idea of pursuing a normal trade or
even of attaining an ordinary education, and should resign
themselves to the prospect (itself not too likely) that society in
its kindness may be willing to set aside enough repetitive and
mechanical chores to take care of most of them, in penury and
penitence.

      If you think this dark picture reflects only the bogs and
mists of old Ireland, consider this letter from the Dean of
Admissions of Oral Roberts University, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, written
not in the last century or even ten years ago but on May 27, 1970,
to a blind applicant for admission:

      Dear     :

      We have received your application for admission and are very
impressed with the academic record you have established in high
school.

      In checking your application I notice that you are blind. At
this time, ORU does not have the facilities to accommodate blind
students. There is a possibility that some type of program will be
initiated in future years; however, at this time, I regret that we
will be unable to admit you.

      If you have any questions, please let me know. We will be
praying with you that the Lord will guide and direct you.

      Cordially yours, 

      There it is again. One's academic record is impressive, says
the Dean; ordinarily it would constitute the sole and sufficient
evidence of capability. But unfortunately it appears that one is
blind; therefore the academic record, however impressive, is
suddenly irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial. For the
university, says the Dean, does not have the  facilities  to
accommodate blind students whatever those facilities might be.
Never mind that there are not, should not, and need not be any such
facilities, any special aids or instruments, anywhere that blind
college students matriculate. Someday, says the Dean, there might
be  some type of program ; in the meantime, we shall pray that
others may possess more faith, hope, and charity than we at Oral
Roberts Christian University.

      The life of a blind person, in this considered spiritual
view, is therefore a life without meaning just as it is in the
secular view of the Stevens Brothers. Fill it with whistles and
tricks, wraparound tails and funny uniforms, but do not undertake
to enrich it with higher education or imbue it with serious
purpose.

      To the deans of small faith and their like-minded ilk, to the
Landers sisters and the Stevens brothers and their relatives
everywhere, we have not progressed at all beyond the outlook of the
primitive Mediterranean society, thousands of years ago, among whom
it was a common saying that  the blind man is as one dead. 

      How are we to reply to these prophets of gloom and doom, who
cry havoc and have nothing to offer us but whistles in the dark? We
might use logic or theory. We might use history or precept. But the
simplest and most effective argument comes from our own experience
as blind people. Everything which we are and which we have become
rises up to give the lie to the disaster concept of blindness. We,
the blind people of this country, are  now  working as farmers,
lawyers, scientists, and laborers; as teachers, mechanics,
engineers, and businessmen. We are  now  functioning in all of the
various professions, trades, and callings of the regular community.
We do not regard our lives, as we live them on a day-to-day basis,
as tragic or disastrous and no amount of professional jargon or
trumped-up theory can make us do so. We know that with training and
opportunity we can compete on terms of equality with our sighted
neighbors and that blindness is merely a physical nuisance.

      The blind people of yesterday, and the day before yesterday,
had little choice but to accept the tragic view of the
gloom-and-doom mongers the prophets of despair. Their horizons were
limited to the bounty of charity, and their world was bounded by
the sheltered workhouse. At every turn they were reminded of their
infirmity; on every occasion they were coaxed into immobility and
dependency. It is no wonder that they fulfilled the prophecy of
despair; believing it themselves, they made it come true.

      But that was another time, another era, another world. We the
blind people of today have carried out a revolution, and have won
our independence. We have won it by finding our own voice, finding
our own direction, and finding our own doctrine. That doctrine may
be simply stated: it is that the blind are normal people who can
not see. It is that blindness is not a dying, but a challenge to
make a new life. It is also that there are none so blind as those
who will not see this simple truth.

      The blind people of today, in a word, were not born
yesterday. We who are blind do not accept the tragic prophecies of
a dire fate. We have a rendezvous with a different destiny. The
destiny we go to meet is that of integration and equality of high
achievement and full participation of free movement and
unrestricted opportunity in a friendly land which is already
beginning to accept us for what we are.

      That is where the blind are leading the blind. Let those who
would resist or deny that destiny remain behind, imprisoned in
their own antique myths and images while the rest of us move on to
new adventure and higher ground.

      FOOTNOTES

      1. Iowa Commission for the Blind,  What Is the Iowa
Commission for the Blind?  Published by the State of Iowa, Des
Moines, n.d.

      2. Dr. Jules Stein,  Blindness Study Urged by Doctor,   New
York Times , November 19, 1967, p. 19.

      3. Reverend Thomas J. Carroll,  Blindness What It Is, What It
Does and How to Live with It  (Boston: Little Brown and Company,
1961).

      4. Philip S. Platt,  Challenges of Voluntary Agencies for the
Blind.  Paper read at convention of the American Association of
Workers for the Blind, June 26, 1951, p. 8.

      5. Dr. Jacobus tenBroek,  Within the Grace of God,  An
Address Delivered at the Banquet of the Annual Convention of the
National Federation of the Blind held in San Francisco, July 1,
1956.

                  Leadership and the Barricades

     From its beginning the Federation was concerned with the
nature of leadership and the relation of that leadership to the
individual members throughout the organization. Philosophical
questions dealing with the principles of leadership commonly
alternated in conventions and conferences with pragmatic issues
dealing with the tactics of leadership. Oncoming leaders of the
younger generation exchanged views with grizzled veterans of the
first generation; elective officers and rank-and-file members
parleyed at meetings and collaborated on resolutions defining,
amending, and fine-tuning the functions of leadership. And
successive Presidents, like Kenneth Jernigan at the 1971 convention
in Houston, shared their thoughts and convictions with the throng
of attending members in annual presidential reports as well as in
the more ceremonial banquet addresses.

      There is a kind of covenant in this organization between the
membership in convention and the Executive,  said President
Jernigan in the course of his 1971 report.  I've tried to keep the
faith with you, and I believe you have kept it with me. The
President of this organization is not simply an impartial chairman
presiding over a group of disjointed affiliates. I believe that you
elect a President to conduct an administration; that you elect him
to take stands on issues; and that you expect him to lead. I
believe that if he doesn't lead the way you want him to lead, that
you can and will rise up and throw him out. And that's what
democracy means. 

     The President continued:  I think you ought to throw me out of
office just as much for inaction or for over-caution, for not
leading, for not doing things to help blind people, as you would
for rash or precipitous actions and for ill-timed judgments. In
other words, I believe that you elected me to lead a movement to
try to improve the conditions of the blind, and as long as I'm
President, so help me God, I'm going to lead.

      We are a cohesive, spiritual movement,  he concluded.  We are
an army of liberation for blind people. We are a tough, fighting
force. We are a responsible organization. We are a call to
conscience and I think, incidentally, that we are unstoppable and -
unbeatable. 

     In his banquet address at the 1971 convention Jernigan linked
the theme of leadership with that of relationship more
particularly, the various and shifting relationships between the
organized blind and elements of the blindness system. In a rousing
speech received with waves of applause and a final standing
ovation, the NFB President warned all who still clung to the old
ways of condescension and caretaking that a day of reckoning was at
hand.  We don't want strife or dissension,  he said,  but the time
is absolutely at an end when we will passively tolerate
second-class citizenship and custodial treatment. We are free men,
and we intend to act like it. We are free men, and we intend to
stay that way. We are free men, and we intend to defend ourselves.
Let those who truly have the best interest of the blind at heart
join with us as we move into the new era of equality and
integration. Let those who call our conduct negative or destructive
make the most of it. 

     The full text of his speech tersely and aptly entitled  To Man
the Barricades  follows:

                      TO MAN THE BARRICADES
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      Some of you may remember the story Will Rogers liked to tell
about his early career as a comedian in vaudeville.  I used to play
a song called `Casey Jones' on the harmonica with one hand,  he
said,  and spin a rope with the other, and then whine into the old
empty rain barrel and then in between the verses I used to tell
jokes about the Senate of the United States. If I needed any new
jokes that night, I used to just get the late afternoon papers and
read what Congress had done that day, and the audience would die
laughing. 

      This story reminds me of my own activities over the past
twenty years. I have gone all over the country as the guest of
blind groups and civic associations; and, like Will Rogers, I tell
stories about the Government of the United States particularly the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and the other 
professionals  doing work with the blind. And when I need any new
jokes, I just get the latest reports from the agencies and
foundations and read what they have been doing recently and the
audience dies laughing. Unless, of course, there are people in the
audience who are blind, or friends of the blind and they die
crying.

      Which is a roundabout way of saying that much of what goes on
in the journals and laboratories and workshops of the agencies for
the blind these days is a cruel joke. It is a mockery of social
science and a travesty on social service. Far from advancing the
welfare and well-being of blind people, it sets our cause back and
does us harm.

      The blind, along with some other groups in our society, have
become the victims of a malady known as  R and D  that is, Research
and Demonstration. The R and D projects are largely financed by the
Federal Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and account
for an ever-increasing chunk of its budget. The whole tone and
direction of programs for the blind in the country rehabilitation,
education, social services, and the rest have been altered as a
result. The art of writing grant applications, the tens of millions
of dollars available to fund the approved R and D projects, the
resulting build-up of staff in universities and agencies for the
blind, the need to produce some sort of seemingly scientific
results in the form of books and pamphlets to justify the staff
salaries and the field trips and conferences, and the wish for
so-called  professional  status have all had their effect. Blind
people have become the  objects  of research and the  subjects  of
demonstration. They are quizzed, queried, and quantified; they are
diagnosed, defined, and dissected; and when the R and D people get
through with them, there is nothing left at all at any rate,
nothing of dignity or rationality or responsibility. Despite all of
their talk about improving the quality of services to blind people
(and there is a lot of such talk these days), the research and
demonstration people see the blind as inferiors. They see us as
infantile, dependent wards. The signs of this creeping
condescension of this misapplied science, this false notion of what
blind people are, and of what blindness means are all about us.
Some things are big, and some are little; but the pattern is
conclusive and the trend unmistakable.

      Consider, for instance, what has happened to the talking
book. From the very beginning of the service from the Library of
Congess back in the 1930s, the first side of each talking-book
record has concluded with these words:  This book is continued on
the other side of this record.  The flip side has always ended
with:  This book is continued on the next record.  Surely no one
can have any serious quarrel with this language. It serves a
purpose. The reader, absorbed in the narrative, may well not
remember whether he is on the first or second side of a record, and
the reminder is useful and saves time.

      In the last three or four years, however, something new has
been added. After the familiar  This book is continued on the next
record,  the statement now appears:  Please replace this record in
its envelope and container.  That one, I must confess, crept up on
me gradually. Although from the very beginning I found the
statement annoying, it took some time for its full significance to
hit me.

      Here I was, let us say, reading a learned treatise on French
history a book on Gallic statesmanship one which presupposes a
certain amount of understanding and mental competence. The
narrative is interrupted by a voice saying  Please replace this
record in its envelope and container.  Then it strikes me: These
are the words one addresses to a moron or a lazy lout. These words
do not appear on records intended for the use of sighted library
borrowers. They are intended for the blind. To be sure, they are
not an overwhelming or unbearable insult. They are only one more
small evidence of the new custodialism, the additional input of
contempt for the blind recipient of services which is in the air
these days.

      I have heard that the words were added at the request of some
of the regional librarians because certain blind borrowers were
careless with the records. Are sighted people never careless with
books or records? Are such words at the end of the record really
likely to make the slob less slobby? The ordinary, normal human
being (blind or sighted) will, as a matter of course, put the
record back into the envelope and container. What else, one
wonders, would he do with it?

      Regardless of all this, one thing is fairly certain: My
remarks on the subject will undoubtedly bring forth angry comments
from library officials and others that I am quibbling and grasping
at straws, that I am reading meanings that aren't there into
innocent words. To which I reply: I am sure that no harm was meant
and that the author of the words did not sit down to reason out
their significance, but all of this is beside the point.  We  have
reasoned out the significance, and we are no longer willing for our
road to hell to be paved with other people's good intentions, their
failure to comprehend, or their insistence that we not quibble.

      Here is another illustration again, a slight and almost
trivial affair. I had occasion recently to visit a public school
where there was a resource class for blind and partially seeing
children. The teacher moved about with me among the students.  This
little girl can read print,  she said.  This little girl  has  to
read Braille.  Now, that language is not oppressively bad. Its
prejudice is a subtle thing. But just imagine, if you will, a
teacher saying of a pair of children:  This little girl  can  read
Braille; this little girl  has  to read print.  The supposition is
that the child possessing some sight, no matter how little, is
closer to being a normal and full-fledged human being; the one
without sight can't cut it and has to make do with inferior
substitutes.

      Confront that teacher with her words, and she will be hurt.
She will say,  But that is not how I meant it. It was simply the
way I said it.  It is true that she was not consciously aware of
the significance of her statement and that she did not mean to say
what she said; but she said exactly what she meant, and how she
felt. And her students, as well as visitors to her classroom, will
be conditioned accordingly. I don't wish to make too much of the
teacher's terminology, or the words on the talking-book record.
Neither exemplifies any great cruelty or tragedy. They are,
however, straws in the wind; and either of them could be the final
straw the straw that breaks the blind man's back, or spirit. Far
too many backs and spirits have been broken in that way, and the
breaking must stop.

      As I have said, some of the recent incidents in our field are
small, and some are big; but they fit together to make a pattern,
and the pattern is conclusive. During the past decade, for
instance, the vocational employment objective of rehabilitation has
steadily receded before the advancing tide of  social services  and 
research and development,  and the Division for the Blind in the
Federal Rehabilitation Service has diminished accordingly in
prominence and importance. By 1967 rehabilitation had taken such a
back seat that it became submerged in a comprehensive pot of
Mulligan stew set up by the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare called  Social and Rehabilitation Service,  with the
emphasis clearly on the  social.  A new public-information brochure
turned out by HEW, listing all the department's branches and
programs, placed rehabilitation where do you suppose? dead last.

      As far as the blind were concerned, the ultimate blow fell
late last year.  Federal Register  document 70-17447, dated
December 28, 1970, announced the abolition of the Division for the
Blind altogether, and its inclusion in the new Division of Special
Populations! And who are these  special populations ? They include,
and I quote,  alcoholics, drug addicts, arthritics, epileptics, the
blind, heart, cancer, and stroke victims, those suffering
communication disorders, et cetera.  (I leave the specifics of that 
et cetera  to your imagination.) Therefore, half a century after
the establishment of the federal vocational rehabilitation program,
and almost as long after the development of a special division of
services for the blind (and still longer since the creation of
separate agencies or commissions for the blind in most of the
states) the blind of America were to lose their identity and return
to the almshouse for the sick and indigent.

      This was too much, and every major national organization and
agency (both  of  and  for  the blind) combined to resist it. By
February of 197l the HEW officials had made a strategic withdrawal.
They announced that they had never intended to downgrade or
de-emphasize services to the blind; but that in order to clear up
any possible misunderstanding they were establishing a new  Office
for the Blind,  to be on a par with the  Division of Special
Populations,  and in no way connected with it. Thus (for the
moment) the tide was reversed and the power of united action
demonstrated; but the tide is still the tide, and the trend is
still the trend.

      It is not difficult to find the evidence. For example, under
date of February 4, 1971, the Federal Rehabilitation Services
Administration issued an information memorandum entitled 
Subminimum Wage Certificates for Handicapped Workers.  The document
is self-explanatory; it is damning; and it is all too indicative of
what is happening to the blind in America today.  A recent revision
to the wage and hour regulations,  the memorandum begins,  broadens
State vocational rehabilitation agencies' certification
responsibility with respect to employment of handicapped workers at
subminimum wages. The responsibility was previously limited by
regulation to certain categories of handicapped persons employed 
by sheltered workshops . 

       The revision to the wage and hour regulations, effective
February 4, 197l,  the memorandum continues,  authorizes State
rehabilitation agencies to certify certain disabled persons for
work  in competitive employment  at less than fifty percent of the
statutory minimum wage but not less than twenty-five percent. 

      So said HEW in February of this year! No longer must the pay
be even fifty percent of the minimum wage! No longer is it limited
to the sheltered shop! It may now be extended to private industry,
to so-called  competitive  employment! And this, we are told, is 
rehabilitation . We are not to quibble. We are not to read meanings
into things which are not there. We are not to find patterns or
trends or hidden significance. No! We are to take our twenty-five
percent  competitive  employment, and be grateful for it. That is
what we are  expected  to do, but I doubt that we will do it.

      I have already spoken about R and D the so-called  research
and demonstration  financed ever more heavily and lovingly by the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. I have at hand a
typical product of  R and D  a comprehensive 239-page publication
of the American Foundation for the Blind, entitled  A Step-by-Step
Guide to Personal Management for Blind Persons .1 I invite you now
to accompany me on a step-by-step guided tour through its pages and
mazes. But let me warn you: It may be a bad trip.

       One of the areas,  we are told at the outset of this
guidebook,  where independence is valued most highly by a broad
spectrum of blind persons is personal management.  I myself would
put that a little differently. I would say that the blind person
should, and commonly does, take for granted that independence
begins at home that self-care comes before self-support but that
what he values most highly in life is not his ability to master the
simple rituals of daily living, such as are detailed in this
manual. It is not his ability to wash his face, take a shower,
clean his nails, brush his hair, sit down on a chair, rise from a
chair, stand upright, wash his socks, light a cigarette, shake
hands, nod his head  yes,  shake his head  no,  and so on and so on
through two hundred-plus pages of instruction. No, these are not
the supreme attainments and values in the life of the blind person,
or of any other civilized person. They are merely the elementary
motor and mechanical skills which represent the foundation on which
more meaningful and significant achievements rest. The skills of
personal management are rudimentary, not remarkable.

      However, the American Foundation's guide to personal
management for blind persons does not put the matter in such modest
perspective. Rather, it is blown up to majestic proportions, as if
it were not the beginning but the end of self-realization and
independence. Most of all, it is presented as a very difficult and
complicated subject this business of grooming and shaving, bathing
and dressing virtually as the source of a new science. Much is made
of the  need for an organized body of realistic and practical
personal management techniques.  The American Foundation, out of a
deep sense of professional obligation and the excitement of
pioneering on new scientific horizons, agreed as long ago as 1965
(in its own words)  to undertake the responsibility for developing,
over a period of years, workable personal management techniques for
blind persons.  To begin with, an AFB staff specialist was assigned
to coordinate the project, and he proceeded immediately to carry
out a massive survey of agencies throughout this country and Canada
on such life-and-death questions and critical issues as how to
teach blind persons to shake hands correctly and put the right sock
on the right foot.

      But surveys at a distance, no matter how thorough and
scientific, were not good enough for such profound subject matter.
No. What was needed was (to quote the report)  the pooled thinking
and experience of a fairly large number of persons from diverse
backgrounds and programs.  In short, what was needed was a
conference, or better yet, a series of conferences in big hotels in
major cities, complete with workshops, round-tables, lunches,
dinners, social hours, and sensitivity sessions. In the words of
the report:  For three years, 1967, 1968, and 1969, national
meetings were held in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans at which
key personnel from representative agencies met both to develop
techniques and methods and to refine and improve already existing
ones. 

      Here, to illustrate, is a typical technique developed and
refined over the years in New York, Chicago, and New Orleans,
representing the distilled wisdom (if that is the proper
expression) of key personnel from diverse backgrounds and
specialized programs. Here, under the broad classification 
Bathing,  is the sixteen-step procedure for the  Sponge Bath.  I
quote in full:

       Orientation : Discuss how equipment can be most efficiently
used when taking a sponge bath.

       Equipment : Water, two containers, soap, cloth, towel, bath
mat.

       Technique :

       1. Disrobe.

       2. Put water of desired temperature in sink or container.

       3. Thoroughly wet washcloth and gently squeeze cloth
          together.

       4. Take one corner in right hand, the other in left hand,
          bring corners together and grasp in whole hand.

       5. With other hand grasp remaining cloth. Hold washcloth in
          closed fist.

       6. Hold one hand stationary while turning other hand to
          squeeze excess water.

       7. Unfold cloth and drape over palm of one hand. With other
          hand pick up soap and dip into water, then rub back and
          forth from wrist to tips of fingers on cloth.

       8. Place soap back in dish.

       9. Place soaped cloth in dominant hand.

      10. Starting with face and neck, rub soaped cloth over skin
          portion.

      11. Place soaped cloth in water and wring as described above
          several times until soap has been removed.

      12. Use same motion as step 10 to rinse soap from face and
          neck.

      13. Unfold towel. Using either or both hands, dry using a
          vigorous rubbing motion.

      14. Continue to each section of body-washing, rinsing, and
          drying.

      15. As towel gets damp, shift to a dry section.

      16. For drying back, put bath towel over right shoulder,
          grasp lower end hanging in back with left hand and grasp
          end hanging in front with right hand. While holding towel
          pull up and down alternately changing position of towel
          until entire area of back is dry.

      Immediately following this highly developed and refined
technique the product of five years of national conferences and
international surveys is the step-by-step guide to taking a  tub
bath.  I feel that you will want to know that this affair of the
tub represents a more advanced and elaborate enterprise in personal
management. The greater complexity is evident at the outset. You
will recall that the first step in the sponge bath technique was: 
Disrobe.  But the first step in the tub bath exercise is:   Disrobe
and place clothing where it will not get wet .  That is, of course,
a substantial increase in subtlety over the sponge bath.

      Let us pause here for a moment and contemplate the
significance of that instruction:

       Disrobe and place clothing where it will not get wet.  What
does it tell us about the intelligence the  presumed  intelligence
of the blind person under instruction? It tells us that he has not
the sense to come in out of the rain; or, more exactly, that he has
not the sense to bring his clothes in out of the shower. He is
presumed to be either a mental case or a recent immigrant from the
jungle, who has never taken a bath before. This latter possibility
is given additional credence by instruction number fifteen:  As
towel gets damp, shift to a dry section.  If the trainee has ever
bathed before, he will know about that. Only if he is a babbling
idiot or Bomba, the Jungle Boy, does he need to be given that
extraordinary advice. This presumption of incompetence or newborn
innocence on the part of the blind person is, indeed, pervasive of
the entire 239-page guidebook.

      What else can it mean to say, with regard to the technique
for shaking hands:  If desired, the hands may be moved in an up and
down motion?  What else can it mean to say, with regard to the
technique for nodding the head:  The head is held facing the person
to whom you wish to communicate. With the head held in this
position, move the chin down towards the floor about two inches
then raise it again to the original position. Make this movement
twice in quick succession. 

      One last quotation, before we leave this magisterial work of
applied domestic science. Under the general heading of  Hand
Gestures,  we find, the technique for  Applauding.  It goes like
this:

      a. With elbows close to the body, raise both hands until the
forearms are approximately parallel to the floor.

      b. Move each hand towards the other so that they come in
contact with one another towards the center of the body.

      c. The thumb of both hands is held slightly apart from the
other four fingers which are held straight and close together.

      d. The fingers of the right hand point slightly toward the
ceiling and the fingers of the left hand slightly toward the floor
so that when the hands come in contact with each other the palms
touch but the fingers do not.

      e. The thumb of the right hand rests on the knuckle of the
left thumb, the fingers of the right hand being above the fingers
of the left hand.

      f. The hands are brought back to a position about eight to
twelve inches apart then brought together in a quick slapping
motion.

      g. Polite applause would require slapping the hands together
about twice each second. More feeling would be expressed by the
rapidity, rather than the volume or loudness of the individual's
applause.

      2.  Hands Inactive : When the hands are not being used for
some specific purpose, the most common position is resting the
hands in the lap. For example, the back of the left hand might rest
on the left or right leg, or in between, with the palm turned up;
the right hand with the palm turned down over the left hand and the
fingers of each hand slightly curled around each other.

      I cannot leave this great book and its truly vital subject
without reading to you the  Foreword  as written by Mr. M. Robert
Barnett, executive director of the American Foundation for the
Blind:  We would like to take this opportunity,  he writes,  to
express our appreciation to the many persons professionally
involved in work for the blind across the country whose five years
of hard work, creativity, and experience have made  A Step-by-Step
Guide to Personal Management for Blind Persons  a reality. For many
years, countless persons have expressed a need for such a manual
and we hope that this publication will help to fill that need. 

      I would like to know who those  countless persons  are who
have expressed a need for such a manual, wouldn't you? Are they
blind persons and if so have they been waiting all these years
without being able to test the water, clap the hands, lift the
bale, tote the barge, nod, shake, shimmy, rattle, and roll? How
have they managed their lives all these years without this personal
guide from the American Foundation and its cohorts?

      But maybe they are not the ones who have expressed a need for
such a manual. Perhaps it is not the blind at all but as the
Foundation puts it those  professionally involved in work for the
blind  to whom this definitive guidebook is addressed. Not our
blind brothers, but our blind brothers' keepers. Presumably they
are the ones who are to conduct the  orientation  sessions which
precede each of the various procedures and techniques such as: 
Discuss types of ties and materials from which ties are made (silk,
linen, leather, knit, synthetic, and wool).  And:  Discuss reasons
for brushing hair regularly and the suitability of different types
of brushes  (scrub brushes, toothbrushes, horse brushes,
sagebrushes, brushes with the law, et cetera). Well, admittedly, I
added the last part of that sentence myself; but I maintain that it
is no different in character, and no more foolish, than the trivial
and vacuous material set forth in most of the 239 pages.

      Indeed, the very triviality and vacuity of this misguided
guidebook may deceive some readers into dismissing it as an
unfortunate exception, not characteristic of the main body of work
turned out today by serious scholars and professionals in the field
of work with the blind. Let me emphasize, therefore, as strongly as
I can, the typical and conventional character of this manual. It is
not the exception. Its name is legion; its approach, its
philosophy, and its superficial contents have been duplicated many
times over in the research and demonstration projects of the
American Foundation for the Blind, the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, the college institutes, and the State
agencies caught up in the profitable cycle of grants, surveys,
tests, and questionnaires.

      There is another potential objection to dispose of. That is
the supposition that this set of instructions, simple-minded as it
is, is not really intended for the ordinary, capable blind person
but only for a minority. Moreover, it is true that the book itself
makes a verbal nod in this direction, admitting modestly that its
techniques are not the only ones possible and that there may be
other ways to approach the same goals. But the book also contains
an opposite disclaimer, to the effect that the proposed techniques
may be too complicated and advanced for some blind persons to -
handle without preliminary instruction. However that may be, it is
clear that this lengthy five-year report is meant to be circulated
generally to agencies and schools, to parents and counselors, to
guides and custodians, without reservation or qualification.

      The best evidence of how this book is intended to be read is
to be found in its title. It does not say that it is a step-by-step
guide to personal management for mentally retarded or extremely
backward blind persons. It does not say it is a guide for tiny
children. It says what it means, and means what it says namely,
that it is  A Step-by-Step Guide to Personal Management for Blind
Persons .

      And we can do no less than that ourselves; we must also say
what  we  mean. As long as such insulting drivel about us continues
to be issued in the name of science by agencies doing work with the
blind as long as federal money continues to be available to support
it as long as the climate of general public opinion continues to
tolerate it as long as blind persons continue to be found who can
be coaxed or hoodwinked into participating in it then, for just so
long must we of the National Federation of the Blind raise our
voices to resist it, denounce it, and expose it for the
pseudoscience and the fraud which it is.

      The federal research and demonstration projects, the wording
on the talking-book records, the attempt to abolish the Division
for the Blind in federal rehabilitation, the payment of subminimum
wages in sheltered shops and private industry, and the guidebooks
to tell us how to run our daily lives are all straws in the wind,
signs of the times. But there are other, more hopeful signs. Though
the Library of Congress tells us to replace our records in the
envelopes and containers, its book selection policies have been
refreshingly updated. More and better books are now available to
the blind than ever before, including bestsellers and popular
magazines. Likewise, though the Division for the Blind was
abolished at the federal level, the move was successfully resisted
and reversed. And although teachers still talk of blind people who 
have  to read Braille and can't read print, although subminimum
wages are still allowed in sheltered shops and private industry,
and although the Foundation's guidebook is still distributed by the
hundreds and thousands to slow our progress, we (the organized
blind) are abroad in the land in growing numbers aware of the peril
and prepared to fight it. It is just that simple: We are prepared
to fight, and we will fight. We don't want conflict or trouble with
anyone; we don't want to quibble or be aggressive or militant; we
don't want strife or dissension; but the time is absolutely at an
end when we will passively tolerate second-class citizenship and
custodial treatment. We are free men, and we intend to act like it.
We are free men, and we intend to stay that way. We are free men,
and we intend to defend ourselves. Let those who truly have the
best interests of the blind at heart join with us as we move into
the new era of equality and integration. Let those who call our
conduct negative or destructive make the most of it!

      I want to say a few words now to those agencies doing work
with the blind who march with us in the cause of freedom, who are
glad to see the blind emancipated, and who work with us as human
beings not as statistics or case histories or inferior wards. To
such agencies I say this: You have nothing to fear from the
organized blind movement. Your battles are our battles. Your cause
is our cause. Your friends are our friends. Your enemies are our
enemies. We will go with you to the legislatures and the federal
government to secure funds for your operation. We will urge the
public to contribute to your support. We will defend you from
attack and work with you in a partnership of progress.

      Now, let me say something to those agencies who still look
back to yesterday, who condescend to the blind, who custodialize
and patronize. To them I say this: Your days are numbered. Once men
have tasted freedom, they will not willingly or easily return to
bondage. You have told us as blind people and you have told the
community at large that we are not capable of managing our own
affairs, that you are responsible for our lives and our destinies,
that we as blind people must be sheltered and segregated and that
even then, we are not capable of earning our own keep. You have
told us that we as blind people do not really have anything in
common and that we, therefore do not need an organization that
there is no such thing as an  organized blind movement.  But you
have not spoken the truth.

      If you tell us that you are important and necessary to our
lives, we reply: It is true. But tear down every agency for the
blind in the nation, destroy every workshop, and burn every
professional journal; and we can build them all back if they are
needed. But take away the blind, and your journals will go dusty on
the shelves. Your counselors will walk the streets for work, and
your broomcorn will mold and rot in your sheltered shops. Yes, we
need you; but you need us, too. We intend to have a voice in your
operation and your decisions since what you do affects our lives.
We intend to have representation on your boards, and we intend for
you to recognize our organizations and treat us as equals. We are
not your wards, and there is no way for you to make us your wards.
The only question left to be settled is whether you will accept the
new conditions and work with us in peace and partnership or whether
we must drag you kicking and screaming into the new era. But enter
the new era you will, like it or not.

      Next, I want to say something to those blind persons who are
aware of our movement and who have had an opportunity to join it
but who have not seen fit to do so. In this category I also place
those blind persons who are  among  us but not really  of  us, who
(technically speaking) hold membership in the Federation but are
not really part of the movement. The non-Federation and the
noncommitted blind are a strange phenomenon. Some of them are
successful in business or the professions. I have heard them say, 
I really don't need the Federation. Of course, if I could do
anything to help you people, I would be glad to do it, but I am
independent. I have made it on my own.  I have heard them say:  You
really can't expect me to go down to that local meeting of the
blind. Nobody goes there except a few old people, who sit around
and drink coffee and plan Christmas parties. I am a successful
lawyer, or businessman, or judge; and I am busy. Besides, they
never get anything done. They just talk and argue.  I have heard
them say:  I don't know that I necessarily have anything in common
with other blind people just because I'm blind. Almost all my
friends are sighted. My life is busy with bowling, hiking, reading,
or my business or profession.  I have heard them say:  You people
in the Federation are too aggressive. You are always in a fight
with somebody, or bickering among yourselves. I am an individualist
and never was much of a joiner. 

      I have heard some of them say:  I am an employee of a
governmental or private agency doing work with the blind, and I
think it would destroy my professional relationship with my clients
if I were to work actively in the Federation. Anyway, we all have
a common concern, the betterment of blind people; so I'll make my
contribution by working as a `professional' in the field. Besides,
not all blind people agree with you or want to join your
organization, and as a `professional' I have to represent and work
with all blind people. 

      I have heard them say all of these things, and to such blind
persons I say this: You are patsies! Not only that but you are also
deceiving yourselves and failing to act in your own best interest.
Further, you are profiting from the labor and sacrifice, and are
riding on the backs of the blind who have joined the movement and
worked to make it possible for you to have what you have. Some of
you feel superior to many of the blind who belong to the Federation
(especially those who work in the sheltered shops or draw welfare),
but your feelings of superiority are misplaced; for collectively
these people have clothed you and fed you. They have made it
possible for you to have such equality in society and such
opportunity as you now enjoy. Resent what I say if you will, but it
is the truth, whether you like it or not and whether you admit it
or not. It is true for those of you who work in the agencies as
well as for those of you who work in private endeavor.

      If you think this movement should be better or that it should
be of higher caliber, then join us and help make it that way. If
you think the local meetings or the state conventions are dull or
uninspiring, then do your part to make them different. Even animals
in the jungle have sense enough to hunt in packs. The blind ought
to be at least as intelligent.

      We need you, and we want you as active participants in the
movement; but until you will join, we must do the best we can
without you. We must carry you on our backs and do your work for
you, and we will do it. The fact that we say you are patsies does
not mean that we resent you. Far from it. You are our brothers, and
we will continue to look upon you as such, regardless of how
irresponsibly you behave. We are trying to get you to think about
the implications of your actions. We are trying to get you to join
with us to help make things better for other blind people and for
yourselves. We are trying to get you to stop being patsies.

      Finally, I want to address myself to the active members of
the NFB to the blind, and to our sighted brothers who have made our
cause their cause. To the active Federationists I say this: We are
not helpless, and we are not children. We know our problems, and we
know how to solve them. The challenge which faces us is clear, and
the means of meeting that challenge are equally clear. If we fail
in courage or nerve or dedication, we have only ourselves to blame.

      But, of course, we will not fail. The stakes are too high and
the need too great to permit it. To paraphrase the Biblical
statement: Upon the rock of Federationism we have built our
movement, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! Since
1969 we have talked a great deal about joining each other on the
barricades. If there was ever a time, that time is now. What we in
the Federation do during the next decade may well determine the
fate of the blind for a hundred years to come. To win through to
success will require all that we have in the way of purpose,
dedication, loyalty, good sense, and guts. Above all, we need
front-line soldiers, who are willing to make sacrifices and work
for the cause. Therefore, I ask you again today (as I did last year
and the year before): Will you join me on the barricades?

      FOOTNOTE

      1. American Foundation for the Blind,  A Step-by-Step Guide
to Personal Management for Blind Persons , New York, New York,
1970.

     When the delegates gathered in Chicago for the 1972
convention, their numbers and enthusiasm gave tangible evidence of
the growing impact which the Federation was having on the lives of
the blind of the nation. Themes of leadership and relationship of
what role the blind should play in determining their own destiny
and in their interaction with the governmental and private agencies
established to give them service, as well as with the general
public were again major focal points of attention and discussion.
By 1972 the ranks of the first generation had thinned. This was the
second generation (the new generation) taking up the banner and
carrying it forward in the Federation's struggle for equal
treatment and first-class status in society. In this banquet
address President Jernigan captured the mood of the convention and
charted the course for the years ahead.

      We must never forget the historic and social significance of
our movement or lose perspective in the momentary triumph of
victory or sadness of defeat,  he told the banquet audience.  The
course is well-marked and clear. It has been from the beginning;
and, unless we lose our nerve or betray our ideals, there can be
absolutely no question that the future is ours. 

     He went on to declare that, more than ever in matters
affecting the blind,  the choice is fundamentally one of competing
philosophies. On one side is the philosophy which regards the blind
as innately different and inferior to the sighted. On the other
side is the philosophy which regards us as innately normal and
equal to the sighted. These two conceptions compete with one
another in virtually every area of life from occupation to
recreation, and from cradle to grave. One of them regards blindness
as a dead end; the other regards it as a live option. 

     Here is the text of the 1972 banquet address:

                  BLINDNESS THE NEW GENERATION
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      When I was a schoolboy taking literature classes, there was
a helpful formula which told something of the development of the
short story in America. It went like this:  Poe standardized it;
Bret Harte localized it; Hawthorne moralized it; O'Henry humanized
it; and Mark Twain humorized it. 

      It seems to me that this formula, with a little
rearrangement, might well apply to the problem of blindness as it
has come to be defined and dealt with by various social groups and
interests. Thus we might say of blindness that many of the
professional agencies tend to dehumanize it; the experts jargonize
it; the counselors psychoanalyze it; the journalists sentimentalize
it; the fund raisers melodramatize it; and the organized blind what
do we do? we recognize it, naturalize it, and seek to de-mythicize
it.

      In the face of all these  izers  and  izings,  it might seem
there is no end of attitudes and approaches to the problem of
blindness. But I believe that underlying all the variations there
are two fundamentally opposing viewpoints: One of which is
positive, still believed only by a minority, and true; the other of
which is negative, widely accepted as fact, and thoroughly false.
In one way or another everything we of the National Federation of
the Blind do or say recognizes this philosophical conflict. It has
been so since our founding in 1940.

      We must never forget the historic and social significance of
our movement or lose perspective in the momentary triumph of
victory or sadness of defeat. The course is well marked and clear.
It has been from the beginning; and, unless we lose our nerve or
betray our ideals, there can be absolutely no question that the
future is ours.

      The first 32 years constituted a generation of growth: From
infancy to maturity, from weakness to strength, from innocence to
experience. It was also a generation of struggle, against alien
forces from without and dissident forces from within a struggle for
survival and a test of endurance. That baptismal generation is now
over and finished. The struggle has been won: The tasks of early
growth completed. We are now well into our second generation.

      At first glance it might seem that today we find ourselves on
a new battlefield, facing new issues: As in fact, to some extent we
do. The problems of the future, which even now press upon us, might
initially seem to be quite different from the problems of the past
but this is more appearance than reality.

      During the first generation of the Federation, Dr. tenBroek,
our beloved leader, talked to us year after year about the
misconceptions and stereotypes of blindness, the false images and
ancient superstitions which dog our steps and are believed by a
majority of the worker in governmental and private agencies, as
well as by the public at large. These misconceptions and
stereotypes, these false myths and images, still dog our steps and
are still our principal problem. The thing that has changed is our
strength and our numbers, and particularly, the momentum of our
impact and our sense of purpose. The problem is the old problem but
we are not the old we let there be no mistake about that. We are a
new breed, the organized blind; and we are abroad in the land. We
have come of age with united action, organizational experience,
resources, self-awareness, self-belief, and unshakable -
determination.

      In the justice of our cause (and regardless of the costs) we
are absolutely unstoppable and unbeatable. An increasing percentage
of the public is beginning to understand, and even the agencies and
foundations (some gladly and some with mulish bad temper) are
coming to recognize the facts of life.

      Therefore, I come to you tonight as I have done on previous
occasions and as Dr. tenBroek did before me to talk to you about
our problems as individuals and as a movement, and to plan with you
the concerted action we must take.

      As I have said, the choice is fundamentally one of competing
philosophies. On one side is the philosophy which regards the blind
as innately different and inferior to the sighted. On the other
side is the philosophy which regards us as innately normal and
equal to the sighted. These two conceptions compete with one
another in virtually every area of life from occupation to
recreation, and from cradle to grave. One of them regards blindness
as a dead end; the other regards it as a live option.

      Let me offer you an illustration from what may seem the
relatively unimportant area of recreation. I would not mention it
at all if it were unique or exceptional. But it is not. It is the
typical and standard thinking which pervades the field of work with
the blind today which fills the journals, saturates the
conferences, and motivates the actions of the so-called 
professionals.  It is the very heart and soul of what we as blind
people must change if we are to be free citizens instead of wards
and change it we will.

      A short time ago I received a book from Brigham Young
University, accompanied by a letter which read:  Dear Sir: If you
believe that the blind person needs to enlarge his narrowed
horizons and keep himself physically strong and toned, you will be
interested in the first edition of one of our newer books  Swimming
for the Blind , by Gloria R. Seamons.  The letter continued: 
Exercise may be more important for the blind than it is for the
sighted, and swimming may well be the best kind of exercise a blind
person can perform. 

      This communication, like the book it accompanied, fairly
radiates the dead end philosophy of blindness. It begins by
assuming that the blind person, any blind person, has  narrowed
horizons,  which need to be enlarged and that swimming is the best
available means of doing it. Poor blind fellow, he must lack the
ability to handle more serious or complicated methods of broadening
his experience or enlarging his horizons. Nor is that all: 
Exercise may be more important for the blind than it is for the
sighted.  Why? Is it because blind people are presumed to be
immobile and passive creatures, who must be stirred and prodded
into vacating the rocking chair for a little exercise?

      Now, I myself happen to believe that swimming is an excellent
form of recreation and exercise,  for anyone . It is good for
bald-headed men, red-headed women, gifted children, and persons who
are blind but neither more nor less for any of them than for the
rest of them. To suppose otherwise is to impute a form of
inferiority (of peculiar weakness) to the group singled out. This
is, however, precisely the imputation of the book to which I refer, 
Swimming for the Blind . Thus, the introduction contains such
statements as the following:

       The activities of the sightless `are limited, and there are
not many occasions when they will have an opportunity to call upon
such qualities as strength, speed and endurance. '  Or try this
one:  Shall they be handicapped with feebleness, awkwardness, and
helplessness in addition to blindness?   Or try this:  It is lack
of energy and determination, not the want of sight that causes so
many failures among the blind. 

       In swimming alone,  the book goes on to tell us,  can the
average person without sight leap freely into the air without fear
of injury. In swimming alone can they move freely alone while using
a large number of the `big muscle' groups of the body.  

       Sterling states,  the book points out, that  it offers a
creative life to replace the destructive one. Swimming is more of
a social asset to the blind than the general public. A blind person
fits well into a swimming party, but he often feels out of place in
other activities. 1

      So says this typical bit of would-be research produced at
Brigham Young University, but the blind person might well feel out
of place even in a swimming party if he should practice the method
devised by a scientific instructor named Belenky who, we are told, 
divided his beginning skills into eight phases. One of these phases
included a `whomping' movement in which the student was on `all
fours' in the shallow water. It was accomplished by a jump in which
both hands were lifted out of the water. 2

      Despite the adventurousness of the  whomping  movement,
Belenky (as it turns out) is far from adventurous concerning the
abilities and general competence of the blind.  Any person,  he is
quoted as writing,  but particularly a blind child, should at all
times be aware not only of his abilities in the water, but his
limitations as well. He should strive to overcome these
limitations, but never can he be permitted to be foolhardy. 3

      Another expert named Sterling carries this prudence and
caution even farther. He recommends that the blind swimmer use  a
sponge taped to the top of the swim cap or head to avoid injury and
lessen tension in learning to swim on the back. 4

      If the sponge on the head doesn't relieve all the tension of
the swimmer, there is always the therapy of music which we are
told,  has been found to be beneficial for relaxing the students
before the class begins or during the play period. It also provides
a rhythm to which a swimmer may match his strokes. When piped
underwater, music can make inviting the practice of rhythmic
breathing. 5

      With a sponge on top, and music underneath, what more could
the blind swimmer desire? Well, perhaps, he could be coddled,
comforted, and controlled in the course of his training as
exemplified by the following five-step set of instructions under
the heading,  Health and Safety Measures :

      1. The instructor must be the eyes for the visually impaired
swimmer. Students should be met at the dressing room door and led
to the pool at the shallow end. 

      2. The teacher must work in the water with the swimmer. The
student should not be overprotected, however, but should be
encouraged to become as independent as possible.

      3. The instructor must be aware of danger signals such as
chilling or over exertion and should allow the student to leave
when necessary.

      4. If it is found necessary to leave the student, he should
be placed in contact with the side of the pool, the deck, or a
chair.

      5. The blind often have a discharge from the eyes and nose.
Facial tissues should be kept handy.6

      And one final warning from this expert to the teacher:  Each
student should be allowed to work at his own rate, for rushing may
impede learning. Generally the sightless progress more slowly than
their seeing peers. Repetition, therefore, is important. 7

      If I may sum up the essential points of these various
instructions, they would seem to be as follows: The blind are
dumber than other people. They are weepers and snifflers. They
cannot be trusted to find their own way to the pool or be left
alone, even in shallow water. Even more briefly, I might sum up
what they are saying like this: You can lead the blind to water,
but you can't let them think.

      To these would-be scientists, with their insulting drivel, we
the blind have something to say: You claim to be experts about
blindness, and you say you are professionals; but in reality you
are neither. You are witch doctors and fakes. In the name of
helping us you hurt us, and you call it  professionalism.  You even
do it with our own tax money. We are here to tell you that we have
had enough, and we are also here to tell you that we are going to
put a stop to what you are doing. Call us radicals and militants if
you will, but heed what we say. We have the will and the means to
give force to our words, and your days are numbered!

      If what I have been describing were unique, we might pass
over it with amusement and even perhaps with tolerance. But it is,
as I have already indicated, far from isolated. It runs like a
polluted stream through most of the professional and technical
literature of rehabilitation, and it bespeaks a deeply held
assumption of the innate and ineradicable difference the essential
inferiority of those of us who are blind.

      Here, for a similar example, is Irwin M. Siegel, M.D.,
speaking on  The Biomechanics of Posture  in a symposium on
Parameters of Posture and Mobility in the Blind, held at the
Illinois Visually Handicapped Institute not long ago.  Much
postural divergency,  Dr. Siegel says,  is particular to the fact
of blindness.  What he means by that is but let him say it in his
own words:  A rapidly growing blind child is awkward in his
movements because he has a poor discriminative appreciation of
spatial relationship and is, therefore, totally oblivious of
grossly faulty posture. He does not have the vocabulary or the
experience. 8

      Now, let us play a little trick on Dr. Siegel. Let us repeat
his statement, word for word, put with one slight change. Let us
leave out the word  blind.  Now, the statement reads:  A rapidly
growing child is awkward in his movements because he has a poor
discriminative appreciation of spatial relationship and is,
therefore, totally oblivious of grossly faulty posture. He does not
have the vocabulary or the experience.  I ask you, is that
statement any less acceptable any less factual or plausible than
the original, which referred exclusively to the blind child? If you
agree with me that it is not, then I have made my central point: It
is not only beauty  that is in the eye of the beholder; it is also 
inferiority .

      We are not yet through with Dr. Siegel and his syndrome of
postural divergency on the part of the blind.  Some of the problems
commonly seen,  he says on the same page,  are as follows: (1)
Dorsal round back (kyphosis), often due to a structural problem
that cannot be helped by exercise. Sometimes bracing may be
necessary. (2) Twisted back (scoliosis), yet another structural
problem which may occasionally require operative correction. (3)
Flat feet, often correctible through proper foot wear. 9

      Now, let me just say about all this that it is not only
nonsense but dangerous nonsense. In its correlation of blindness
with flat feet, twisted back, and round back, the statement takes
leave of all scientific sense and sanity and enters the realm of
superstition. It may be that some people who are blind have flat
feet; many, very many, do not, and never have had. It may be that
some people who were raised in Canada have round back or twisted
back; that does not make it a  Canadian condition.  To say that 
blind  people have flat feet, or that fast-growing  blind  children
(not just children) are awkward in their movements, is to imply a
cause-effect relationship in which blindness is the cause of a host
of secondary disabilities and problems. It never ceases to amaze me
that would-be scientists, when they are in pursuit of a
generalization or a federal grant, can be more unscientific and
downright stupid than ordinary, illogical laymen. In other words,
as far as I am concerned, Dr. Siegel has not caught the blind
flat-footed, even if he should happen to have dorsal round back.

      It is surely the case that the main trouble with the
treatment of blind people is not that we have been overlooked but
that we have been over seen . We have been over-surveyed,
over-classified, and over-studied, as well as overprotected. We
have been subjected both to  in tensive examination and to  ex
tensive treatment. We have been aided and comforted, attended and
supervised, virtually from cradle to grave. We have been
transformed from people into clients, and from clients into
patients; and, as I have already said, we are tired of it and
intend to put a stop to it. Let those who resent this make the most
of it. After all, it is  our  lives that are involved, and we mean
to act accordingly.

      Is it any wonder, in view of these prejudices and
misconceptions on the part of self-proclaimed  professionals,  that
the general public should be confused and undecided in its
attitudes toward blindness? The extent of this confusion is
documented every day in terms of wild attributions, arbitrary
exclusions, and discriminatory practices directed against blind
persons. Recently in Iowa, for example, the head of the State
University's Institute of Agricultural Medicine made headlines with
a dire warning about the results of the misuse of ammonia as a farm
fertilizer:

       We're greatly concerned,  he said,  with ammonia accidents
because the penalty for a mistake could be so severe blindness. How
can a farmer farm without eyesight? We're concerned with all kinds
of agricultural accidents but even if a farmer loses a finger in a
machine accident he can still farm, but not if he's blind. 10

      So said the university official. Such statements help us keep
perspective. With all the massive publicity we have carried on in
Iowa radio, television, newspaper, public speaking, and the rest a
prominent spokesman of our State University can unqualifiedly
declare (and the newspapers are willing to print his declaration
without editorial challenge) that a blind person cannot farm. Yet,
there are many blind farmers throughout the nation. Several of them
are in the State of Iowa. One of them (totally blind and quite
successful) is a member of the policy board of the Iowa Commission
for the Blind. He is in the audience tonight.

      As this episode suggests, great reinforcement of negative
images and superstitions concerning blindness comes from the
popular mass media of communication the press, TV, radio, movies,
even comic strips and comic books. As a vivid example in the latter
domain, a recent issue of  Batman  grossly exploited public doubts
and fears about the blind, disguising an army of  crooks  as blind
men complete with tin cups, pencils, heavy wooden canes, dark
glasses, and signs reading,  I AM BLIND.  Upon first discovering
these hoods tapping along the sidewalk, Batman exclaims to his
sidekick:  Odd, Robin! So many blind men out this late after
midnight. Almost looks like they're holding a convention in town! 
 Not odd at all, Batman,  replies Robin.  They are! The `U.S.
Sightless Society' is meeting here in Gotham.   Then,  says Batman, 
it's  doubly  odd!  At which point the text reads:  What has Batman
noticed that escapes even the trained eyes of his veteran junior
aide, Robin? And possibly you, reader?  What do you suppose it is?
Simple. In Batman's words:  Why would a convention of `sightless'
persons be out on the town sightseeing?  They couldn't be, of
course; so they must be fakes and crooks. Now I wonder what that
makes of you and me? And what does it make of our own  U.S.
Sightless Society  the National Federation of the Blind? We, too,
have tours, and some of us (I suppose) are fakes and crooks; but
the two things are not necessarily related.

      A short time ago tragedy struck a famous personage who is
near and dear to us all the great detective of the comic page, Dick
Tracy. He was totally blinded (or so we were led to believe) by a
fire which consumed his home and left only Tess Trueheart intact
and able-bodied. What happened to Tracy was what happens to blind
people almost invariably in fiction and the funnies: He dropped out
of all public activity ( A blind detective?  hooted the chief of
police:  Don't make me laugh! ), and Tracy took to shuffling about
the city with dark glasses and an old-fashioned, heavy cane,
accompanied in every drawing by the words  tap-tap.  There was much
weeping and wailing down at the police station and great
celebration among the criminal element until one day, a few weeks
later, it was revealed that his blindness was only a hoax; and Dick
Tracy could emerge from darkness and oblivion and once again take
up his career as the scourge of the underworld. The comic strip has
not only sentimentalized his blindness but had fictionalized and
melodramatized it as well, playing on the ancient myth and
exploiting it for all it was worth.

      Insulting and humiliating as all these items from the
professional literature and the mass media are, they might be
tolerated except for the fact that they translate into acts of
discrimination against individual blind persons and into
second-class citizenship for all of us who are blind. This is what
I have repeatedly tried so unsuccessfully to communicate to the
members of the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving
the Blind and Visually Handicapped. It is what other minority
groups have said concerning their problems to government and the
public at large. Harriet Beecher Stowe, for instance, could not
write  Uncle Tom's Cabin  today, nor could  Amos `n' Andy  find a
radio audience in the present climate of public opinion. The reason
is obvious, and we as blind persons must understand that reason
thoroughly and act accordingly.

      Let me give you an example, a very recent example, of what
happens to blind people in the climate of public opinion which
permits the sort of professional literature and popular comics we
have been discussing.

      My example is drawn from correspondence which took place not
long ago between a blind college student and a college
administrator. The story began when Pat Wright, a scholarship
winner at Occidental College in California, made application, along
with two of her sighted classmates, to transfer to Howard
University as an exchange student. It should be borne in mind as
the narrative unfolds, that Howard is regarded by many as the
nation's foremost black college with a high reputation for courage
and leadership in the struggle for civil rights.

      In his formal reply to the application of the three
Occidental College students, Howard's vice president for Student
Affairs indicated his acceptance of the two sighted applicants and
went on to state:  I do have reservations with respect to Miss Pat
Wright, the young lady who is blind. Given the nature of racial
conflicts and concerns operative today, I would strongly advise
against Miss Wright's coming to Howard. Many people today are
extremely insensitive and bent on causing problems for others. It
is my feeling that Miss Wright would find the experience to be less
than rewarding. 

      There you have the logical result of the attitudes inherent
in the professional literature and the comics. Miss Wright, the
so-called  young lady who is blind,  brought the matter into focus
in her letter of reply:

       In examining your most polite and proper refusal,  she
wrote,  I find that without doubt your rejection of me is
discriminatory, infringing upon my human right to live in the world
in a place and manner of my own choosing. I resent most strongly
the prejudicial implications of that statement. You seem to be
operating under stereotyped notions that people who are blind are
by nature passive, incapable of adapting to new situations;
inadequate to handle emergencies; physically immobile; physically
incapable of functioning `normally' in the `sighted world'; and
particularly vulnerable to the physical, verbal, and emotional
abuses of `normal' people. 

      There is more to Miss Wright's reply including a reference to
the apparent likelihood that she was being discriminated against on
grounds of race and sex as well as of blindness. As it turns out,
that was unfair; for in a second letter addressed to her, the
university administrator took pains to point out that no such
multiple prejudice or discrimination was intended.  I regret,  he
wrote,  that your interpretation of my letter was so at variance
with its intent and wish to assure you that my decision was based
largely on the absence of any special facilities and services in
any campus building, for the blind, and not because of your race or
sex. I would make the same decision in the case of a black male
applicant. 

      There it is again. There is no consciousness whatever of any
prejudice or discrimination in this act of blunt rejection. The
applicant for admission, it is clear, might be almost anything or
anybody, and still be quite acceptable anybody, that is, other than
a blind person, whose condition allegedly necessitates  special
facilities and services. 

      I have chosen this particular illustration, out of many
similar cases which turn up every year, because it is especially
rich in irony. What would this black official of a black university
make, one wonders, of a rejection issued to a black applicant by
any school on grounds that there were no special facilities or
services available for students with black skins? He would, of
course, cry  Jim Crow.  He would protest that segregation and
separate treatment are relics of a bygone prejudiced past,
violating alike civil rights and constitutional commands.

      As with the professional literature and the mass media, so
with Pat Wright. The story is typical, not unique. Variations of
her experience are enacted hundreds of times every day throughout
the nation. Not only do they occur in major events but in the small
incidents so familiar to us all. How often, when a blind person and
a sighted person are together in a restaurant, does the waitress
say:  Does he want cream in his coffee?  How often, in fact,
(regardless of the setting) is the conversation concerning the
needs, wishes, actions, or abilities of the blind person directed
to a sighted associate, as if the blind person were not there at
all? Of even more significance, how often does the blind person
fail utterly to grasp the implications of the situation and show
his conditioning to the stereotype by laughing at the whole thing,
exhibiting his so-called  sense of humor?  It is not necessary to
be deadly serious and never smile, but fat people who make jokes
about themselves for being fat or black people who poke fun at the
Negro stereotypes are usually more pathetic than humorous. We as
blind people should not be defensive or have chips on our
shoulders. Neither should we fail to understand what these things
really mean and what actions must be taken.

      In the small incidents and the gut issues of existence the
stereotype confronts us every day. It confronts us in the sheltered
shops which pay subminimum wages; it confronts us in the agencies
which fear the justice of our cause and seek to dismiss us as
militants and radicals; it confronts us in the distortions and
jargon of the professional journals; it confronts us in the
colleges and universities which deny admission; it confronts us in
the insurance companies which refuse equal coverage; it confronts
us in the landlords who hesitate to rent; it confronts us in the
factories and offices which find reasons for exclusion and denial;
it confronts us in the pity we constantly receive from the general
public; it confronts us in the pathetic pride of those blind
individuals who try to shun other blind people and our movement and
who say,  I am independent I am uniquely talented I am not like
other blind people I have made it on my own with sighted people ;
and finally, it confronts us in the lack of self-respect and the
scraping and bowing of those blind persons who fawn on the agencies
and their sighted neighbors and who are ashamed of their blindness
and behave like the  Uncle Toms  they are. It confronts us, in
short, in all of the activities and aspirations which go to make up
life itself.

      By any standard one cares to set, the challenge is
formidable. The government and private agencies, established to
assist the blind, more often than not serve as stumbling blocks to
keep us down and keep us out. The mass media, while
well-intentioned and willing to help, reinforce the worst and most
destructive of the misconceptions. The American Council of the
Blind, that small group of bitter dissidents who splintered away
from our movement a decade ago, is widely regarded as nothing but
a front for the worst of the agencies a company union, and a force
for disunity. The National Accreditation Council for Agencies
Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped, the self-appointed
custodian and keeper of the blind, is working diligently to gain
power and respectability. Partly because of all these things and
partly because of long-standing tradition, the thinking of the
general public is still largely controlled by superstition,
prejudice, and ignorance about what we are and what we hope to
become.

      This is the picture, but it is only part of the picture. All
I have said is true; yet, the future has never looked as bright as
it does today. The reason is simple. We the blind are organized,
and on the move. We have faith in ourselves and belief in the
justice of our cause, and we have the determination and the
resources to translate our faith and belief into action and
accomplishment. Above all, we have found (in the National
Federation of the Blind) the unifying force, the vehicle for
success.

      I want to make it clear that we are not condemning all
agencies doing work with the blind. Far from it. We would not be
where we are today had it not been for the help and understanding
of progressive agencies. As I have said many times before, such
agencies have nothing to fear from us. We work with them in
partnership and harmony.

      In fact, our purpose is not to condemn at all but to bring
change to be seen for what we are and heard with our own voice. The
truth is as basic and elemental as this: We are simply no longer
willing to live as second-class citizens. Regardless of the cost or
hostility, we won't do it. If our choice is to have confrontation
or to lie down and be walked on like rugs, then the choice is
painful, but it is also inescapable. It must be confrontation.

      In the struggle we do not stand alone. More and more of the
blind are rallying to the cause, and many of the sighted are as
dedicated to the movement as we are. An increasing number of the
agencies are working with us, and there is noticeable improvement
in the public attitude. Even so, the days ahead will be a time of
serious challenge and conflict.

      In stating our position perhaps we can do no better than
paraphrase the words of William Lloyd Garrison, spoken over a
century ago: We have determined, at every hazard, to lift up the
standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation. That standard
is now unfurled; and long may it float till every chain be broken,
and every blind person set free.

      We are aware that many object to the severity of our
language, but is there not cause for severity? We will be as harsh
as the truth, and as uncompromising as justice. We are in earnest.
We will not equivocate. We will not excuse. We will not retreat a
single inch. And  we will be heard !

      This is the watchword and the message of the new generation,
the new breed of the blind. It is the force of Federationism. It is
the spirit of the movement. I say to every blind person who hears
these words and to every sighted person who is truly a friend of
the blind that the need is great and the time is now. The issues
are drawn.

      As I conclude, I am sure you know what question I will ask
you. Think carefully and don't respond unless you mean it unless
you are willing to give of your time, your money, your strength,
and your spirit. I ask you now, as I have done before: Will you
join me on the barricades?

      FOOTNOTES

       1. Gloria R. Seamons,  Swimming for the Blind  (Provo, Utah:
Brigham Young University Press, 1966), pp. 1-3.

       2.  Ibid ., p. 6.

       3.  Ibid .,p. 12.

       4.  Ibid .

       5.  Ibid ., p. 13.

       6.  Ibid ., p. 17.

       7.  Ibid .

       8. Irwin M. Siegel, M.D.,  The Biomechanics of Posture:
Applications to Mobility in the Blind,   Parameters of Posture and
Mobility in the Blind , Illinois Visually Handicapped Institute and
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan
University, 1969), p. 50.

       9.  Ibid .

      10.  Des Moines Sunday Register , August 8, 1971, Section T,
p. 1.

     @SUBTITLE = Marching on Washington

     One of the more tangible signs of the new mood of exuberant
confidence which characterized the organized blind movement during
the first Jernigan presidency (roughly corresponding to the decade
of the seventies) was the singular annual pilgrimage that came to
be known as the  March on Washington  and later as the  Washington
Seminar.  Beginning in 1973, the National Federation of the Blind
organized these enthusiastic gatherings of members from across the
country typically numbering in the hundreds who trekked to the
nation's capital for visits with their congressmen to talk about
matters of concern to the blind. James Gashel, the Federation's
Director of Governmental Affairs, described a typical three-day
gathering in an article in the July-August, 1979,  Braille Monitor
. His authoritative account makes clear both the political impact
and the educational value not to mention the inspirational effect
of this yearly mobilization of blind people in the capital city.
Gashel's report also offers an insight into the complexities of the
legislative process at the top level of government with all its
formal hearings, informal meetings, and still more informal
maneuvers and compromises. Finally, this story reveals something
about its author, the Federation's ingenious and indefatigable  man
in Washington.  Here is the text of his report:

                    MARCH ON WASHINGTON 1979
                         by James Gashel

      Since 1973 when Federationists first turned out in numbers to
visit the members of the Congress in their Washington offices, we
have developed and refined the technique and come to refer to these
gatherings as  Marches on Washington.  The issues have varied from
time to time; the first Marches dealt almost exclusively with NAC
and our effort to block further federal funding of this disgraceful
AFB power grab maneuver, but by 1976 our voices had been heard
sufficiently, and no more federal money went to NAC.

      This done, the 1977 March focused on improving services to
blind persons through legislation aimed at authorizing special
federal funding to separate agencies for the blind which offer
comprehensive rehabilitation and related services. We also gathered
support for our Disability Insurance bill as the 95th Congress
settled in to consider Social Security legislation. Again, the
effort and the participation of nearly 200 Federationists who came
from across the country at personal expense proved worthwhile, for
during the 95th Congress we made progress by securing new authority
for specialized services for the blind through the Rehabilitation
Act, and we succeeded in obtaining an increase in the amount which
blind Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries can earn
before losing benefits. Above all, of course, we also renewed our
relationships with the law-makers who represent us in Washington,
and where we have not had contacts before, we were able to
establish them.

      The March in 1979 maintained the fine traditions we have
built for large turnouts and hard work. The agenda for the three
days beginning April 30th and ending May 2nd was packed, but the
Federation representatives, who traveled from as far as Utah and
Idaho, had enough enthusiasm and stamina to keep pace with the
rigorous schedule. Well over one hundred assembled for the advance
briefing at 9 p.m. Sunday, April 29th, and by Tuesday, with a fresh
contingent of troops from Pennsylvania, our numbers had nearly
doubled. President Jernigan opened the Sunday evening meeting by
bringing all of us up to date on the most recent national
developments, and he outlined the challenge of the three days just
ahead. Dr. Jernigan also announced that remodeling of our new
national headquarters building was complete, so that visiting
Federationists would be able to see the facility fully occupied and
operational on Tuesday, May 1st. This was truly the high point of
the trip to Washington this time, seeing our own National Office
close to the nation's capital and realizing the great potential it
offers us for growth.

      As for our work on Capitol Hill, the kick-off event was a
Senate hearing to review the progress made to date in implementing
the Randolph-Sheppard Act Amendments of 1974. Senator Randolph
presided over the hearing in the beginning, receiving testimony
from a panel of NFB leaders and government witnesses. The full text
of the NFB testimony will appear elsewhere in this issue. While our
spokesmen were Arthur Segal, president of the Blind Merchants
Division; James Sofka, president of the NFB of New Jersey; Victor
Gonzalez, chairman, Agency Relations Committee, NFB of West
Virginia; and James Gashel, the voice of the NFB was also heard in
numbers, over 150 strong as we crowded into the packed hearing
room, filling every chair and lining the walls.

      This was known as an  oversight  hearing which Congressional
committees conduct from time to time to see what steps should or
can be taken to better enforce the laws. NFB Resolution 78-19
expressed the Federation's outrage at the statements and
diversionary tactics of some of the major federal agencies which
have been maneuvering to avoid providing business opportunities for
blind vendors on federal property. The resolution called for
oversight hearings, so we set to work on this by asking Senator
Randolph to place this item on the top of the agenda for the
Subcommittee on the Handicapped during the 96th Congress, and the
Senator responded positively. In fact, this was the first hearing
conducted by the Subcommittee, and it generated a great deal of
attention.

      Although oversight hearings rarely solve anything, they help
to get issues and evidence on the record, and the data uncovered by
this hearing will be of real value as we seek improved business
opportunities through the vending facilities program. At this
writing, the record is not fully developed (much is done in writing
before and after the hearing), but we learned a number of
interesting things. For example, we were told that there are
presently 291 cafeterias which could be operated by blind persons
on Department of Defense property, but only one (located on a
military base in Ohio) is currently in the Randolph-Sheppard
program. Upon hearing this, Federation representatives from that
state sent word to the front that the base served by this cafeteria
will be closed in two years a fact which certainly dims the
military's shining example. It was obvious to everyone that
especially the Department of Defense was having a hard go at
finding good things to say about their responsiveness to the
Randolph-Sheppard Act, for although it had nothing whatsoever to do
with the subject of the hearing, the representative from the
Defense Department made a point of explaining how much the military
is actually doing to help the blind, helping us, that is, by doing
business with the sheltered workshops through National Industries
for the Blind. Apparently this man has not been reading the  Wall
Street Journal , and the Subcommittee was not impressed.

      The hearing proceeded somewhat in this vein with the federal
government witnesses trying to explain to Senator Randolph how much
they supported the blind vendor program and with the Senator
probing each of them with specific questions regarding their
agency's lack of compliance with the law. Senator Randolph had
heard our message, and he did his best to help bring out the
issues. Later, he made his commitment clear as some of us met with
him during lunch in the Senate dining room while the Subcommittee
staff took testimony from other witnesses, including the American
Council of the Blind. Specifically, we discussed how best to use
the results of this hearing to improve the situation for blind
vendors, and we agreed on the approach of establishing an action
agenda for solving specific issues. Already we have initiated this
process with an on-the-spot investigation of some problems in the
blind vending program in West Virginia, but much more remains to be
done.

      With the oversight hearing concluded, we set to work on other
legislative concerns; high among them, of course, our continued
drive for minimum wage protection for blind people. In the March
issue of the  Braille Monitor  we described a rule-making petition
which the NFB has filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, but this
does not spell an end to our efforts to achieve the same goal
legislatively. In fact, the work in the Congress on this is very
much in high gear. On April 26, Congressman Phillip Burton
introduced the Minimum Wage for the Blind bill once again; the
number for this Congress is H.R. 3764, and the bill is identical to
H.R. 8104, which Mr. Burton introduced in the 95th Congress and
which stirred up much interest, including attracting the  Wall
Street Journal 's awareness through the hearing which was held.

      Elsewhere in this issue we will reprint the fact sheet used
by Federation representatives to explain the current law and its
negative impact on the earning power and the personal dignity of
productive blind workers. This fact sheet should be helpful to all
Federationists in asking for support and co-sponsorship of H.R.
3764 by the members of the House of Representatives. In fact, all
members of the House should be asked to co-sponsor the Minimum Wage
for the Blind bill, and they should inform Phillip Burton of their
desire to do so. Soon we hope to announce some action on a Senate
version of this bill, but for now our attention must be focused on
the House.

      With respect to minimum wage, it is important to note that
the new chairman of the Labor Standards Subcommittee (the
Subcommittee in the House to which H.R. 3764 has been assigned) is
Congressman Edward Beard of Rhode Island (a real friend of the
Federation) and a co-sponsor of Mr. Burton's minimum wage bill in
the 95th Congress. During the March we met with Mr. Beard to
discuss plans for this legislation in the present Congress, since
he is now in the position of scheduling Subcommittee action. While
at this stage there are no specific target dates for Subcommittee
consideration of the bill, there is every reason to believe that
H.R. 3764 will not sit idle during Mr. Beard's tenure as chairman
of the Labor Standards Subcommittee, and yet much, of course, will
depend on what we do to gather support for the bill.

      As we made the rounds on Capitol Hill, we also called
attention to the continuing problem of discrimination against the
blind in employment. On February 22, Senator Harrison Williams,
chairman of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources
introduced a bill known as the  Equal Employment Opportunity for
the Handicapped Act,  which promises substantially increased civil
rights protection for persons having  handicapping conditions  as
defined in the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The number of Senator
William's bill is S. 446, and we are currently working to enlist
Senate co-sponsors. The fact sheet which can be used to explain the
employment discrimination against blind people which occurs and the
potential advantages of S. 446 appears elsewhere. Our efforts in
generating interest for this legislation were highly successful,
and Senate hearings are now scheduled for June 20th and 21st.
Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives we met with Carl
Perkins, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, who
agreed to support this legislation actively through his leadership
position in the House, and we assembled a long list of
Representatives who indicated their desire to co-sponsor the
companion bill to S. 446 when it is introduced in the House. At
this writing, it is too early to announce the number of the House
bill, but members of the House of Representatives who wish to
co-sponsor the Equal Employment Opportunity for the Handicapped Act
should be advised to inform Mr. Perkins of their support. This will
help the legislation get underway in the House with a long list of
sponsors.

      Passage of S. 446 can be seen as the next phase of civil
rights protection for blind and handicapped persons which began
with our work on the model white cane laws at the state level over
the past decade. Also, with the help of Federation support, several
states have included the disabled in the state civil rights laws,
and it has long been our objective (confirmed in resolution 78-24)
to expand our civil rights protection into federal law. Senator
William's bill (and the companion bill to be introduced in the
House) offers hope that this may now be achieved.

      Of course, we must never visit Capitol Hill without
continuing to talk about the need for improvements in the Social
Security Disability Insurance program. At the end of the 95th
Congress, James Burke, who had sponsored our Disability Insurance
bills and helped us achieve some progress, retired, leaving the
chairmanship of the Social Security Subcommittee in the House of
Representatives to Congressman J.J. Pickle of Texas. Unfortunately,
Mr. Pickle is not yet of the same persuasion regarding our plans
for changing the Social Security Disability Insurance program, so
chances for favorable action at the Subcommittee or Committee level
(that is, the House Ways and Means Committee) have dimmed.

      Nonetheless, our efforts to attract supporters to the concept
of improved Disability Insurance for the blind must continue. The
fact sheet which explains the history of the proposed legislation
and the need for it will also be found elsewhere in this issue,
along with Dr. Jernigan's article,  Why Should the Blind Receive
Disability Insurance?  (revised and updated to reflect the 1977
Amendments to the Social Security Act).

      At least ten members of the House have introduced identical
Disability Insurance for the Blind bills in the 96th Congress. The
first of these is H.R. 1037, by Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez of
Texas. Other members who support this legislation should also be
encouraged to introduce identical bills. Although it is too early
to announce the number yet, Senator Dennis DeConcini of Arizona
will soon be introducing a Senate version of this bill, and
Senators should be urged to co-sponsor by contacting Senator
DeConcini.

      At this stage in the 96th Congress it appears that there may
be a serious effort to enact legislation making a number of changes
in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, but many of
these would merely aggravate the problems which now exist in the
system rather than solving them. For this reason, we must continue
to inform our Senators and Representatives that the Social Security
Disability Insurance program fails to meet our needs and helps to
keep blind people out of the workforce.

      While the foregoing legislative concerns represent
longstanding commitments of the Federation to improve the lives of
blind people, it also became necessary for us to deal spontaneously
with a problem related to our public image as represented by the
statement of Joseph Hendrie, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, comparing the confusion at the Three Mile Island
Nuclear Plant in Pennsylvania to  a couple of blind men staggering
around making decisions.  This statement of Dr. Hendrie's was
quoted in the national news media only a few days in advance of our
March on Washington, and it was clear to everyone that we ought to
make a response. This we did in the form of a resolution, which
read:

      WHEREAS, the official transcript of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC) held on March 30, 1979, quotes NRC Chairman,
Joseph M. Hendrie, as saying:  It's like a couple of blind men
staggering around making decisions,  in describing the actions of
officials in dealing with problems at the Three Mile Island Nuclear
Power Generating Facility; and

      WHEREAS, Chairman Hendrie's statement demonstrates his
personal ignorance and represents the traditional false stereotypes
about the helpless and incompetent blind; and

      WHEREAS, the principle problem faced by blind men and women
not actively participating in the mainstream of American life is
the lack of understanding about blindness which exists resulting in
widespread discrimination against the blind; and

      WHEREAS, Chairman Hendrie's statement can only serve to erode
further the public attitude about blindness with the result that it
will reduce the chances of full participation in the social and
economic life of this country; and

      WHEREAS, Chairman Hendrie's gross insensitivity is amplified
by his high public office: NOW, THEREFORE,

      BE IT RESOLVED by the representatives of the National
Federation of the Blind assembled in Washington, D.C., April 29,
1979, that we demand a public apology by Chairman Joseph M.
Hendrie, accompanied by a public commitment to off-set the negative
impact of his remarks by establishing the goal of making the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission a model employer of blind persons at
all levels.

      During the March this resolution was hand-carried to Dr.
Hendrie's office, and so far the response has been a great deal of
hand-wringing and some stumbling words of apology, but no
commitment yet to do it publicly. It seems that Dr. Hendrie is a
bit skittish about facing the television cameras these days.

      From all of this, it is clear that despite the beautiful
spring weather which graced Washington during the first week of
May, the Federationists who assembled for this year's March had
little time to enjoy the scenery. While we had hoped to visit in
the office of every member of Congress, we fell just a little short
of this goal, hitting nearly 500, which is not too bad considering
that there are 535 in all. Of course, the work was hard, but
already the results show that it was well done and a worthwhile
investment. And speaking of investments, once again we were able to
conduct this March on Washington without draining funds from our
precious Federation reserves, for those who came realized the
necessity to finance the effort and in the end contributed nearly
$2,000, which met the inevitable expenses in sponsoring such a
gathering. This, along with the hours of dedicated labor which went
into making the 1979 March on Washington one of our best, shows the
true depth of commitment which characterizes the NFB and
distinguishes us as a movement. Often those who would like to keep
us from speaking and thinking for ourselves wonder why it is that
we continue to surmount the many obstacles they try to erect in our
path, but there is no need to wonder, for the Federation is sound
and growing in strength, numbers, and commitment every day. Let
anyone who wonders about this check the record of our 1979 March,
for therein lies the evidence of a viable and vibrant movement,
which, over the long haul and the short run is absolutely
unstoppable.

      The Spirit of '73

     For each decade in the life of the National Federation of the
Blind, there has been one year in particular that seems to
represent a hallmark, somehow capturing and symbolizing the spirit
of the age. For the seventies, although each successive year
reflected new achievements in the organized blind movement, there
was none quite like the year 1973. It was then, as we have noted,
that the annual March on Washington was initiated. It was in that
year that the national leadership seminars one of the most
significant innovations of the first Jernigan presidency got
underway. It was in 1973 that the registration of delegates at the
annual convention first went over 1,500. And it was in 1973 that
the  NAC Attack  (the demonstrations by the organized blind at
top-level NAC meetings) mustered over 1,500 picketers in New York
City.

     Moreover, it was in 1973, at the New York convention, that
President Kenneth Jernigan delivered the first in a series of three
annual banquet addresses that represented a distinct departure from
his customary style and method though not from his basic philosophy
and doctrine. Each of these interconnected speeches presented, in
its title, a pertinent and perplexing question about blindness and
the blind and then answered it, not merely thoughtfully but on the
basis of extensive research. In 1973 the banquet speech was
entitled  Blindness: Is History Against Us.  The following year the
President's address bore the title,  Blindness: Is Literature
Against Us  and in 1975 it was  Blindness: Is the Public Against
Us. 

     The distinctive tone of all of these public addresses was
established at the outset. To the question  Is history against us? 
Jernigan answered with both a yes and a no.  We all know what the
historical record tells us,  he said.  It tells us that, until only
yesterday, blind people were completely excluded from the ranks of
the normal community. Only lately, it would seem, have blind people
begun stealthily to emerge from the shadows and to move in the
direction of independence and self-sufficiency. 

     From what histories and historians have told us, said
Jernigan,  it would seem that the blind have moved through time and
the world not only sightless but faceless a people without
distinguishing features, anonymous and insignificant not so much as
rippling the stream of history.

      Nonsense!  he exclaimed.  That is not fact but fable. That is
not truth but a lie. In reality the accomplishments of blind people
through the centuries have been out of all proportion to their
numbers. There are genius, and fame, and adventure, and enormous
versatility of achievement not just once in a great while but again
and again, over and over. 

     Now, said Jernigan,  we are at a point in time when the story
of the blind (the true and real story) must be told. For too long
the blind have been (not un wept , for there has been too much of
that) but unhonored and unsung. Let us, at long last, redress the
balance and right the wrong. Let us now praise our famous men and
celebrate the exploits of blind heroes. Rediscovering our true
history, we shall, in our turn, be better able to  make  history;
for when people (seeing or blind) come to know the truth, the truth
will set them free. 

     President Jernigan went on, in this 1973 address, to relate a
history of blindness never told before in quite this way, a story
not of gloom and doom but of genuine progress and quickening
prospect although he pointed out that the history remained
unfinished and that the next chapters must be written by the blind
themselves.  Napoleon is supposed to have said that history is a
legend agreed upon. If this is true, then we the blind are in the
process of negotiating a new agreement, with a legend conforming
more nearly to the truth and the spirit of the dignity of man. 

     This Jernigan speech presented at the 1973 convention had (not
only on the banquet audience who heard it that night but on the
blind of the nation) an impact which changed lives and remained
undiminished through the years. It gave to blind people a new and
unexpected source of pride in themselves the pride that comes from
having a history and more importantly it gave them a sense of their
own capacity to make a difference: to steer their own lives and to
shape their own destiny. In the years that followed this landmark
address, more and more historical writings began to appear in the 
Braille Monitor  and other periodicals, telling of remarkable deeds
and contributions by blind persons and groups. It might indeed be
said that, in a genuine sense, the 1973 speech not only presented
a new history of blindness but opened up a new future as well.

     The text of the speech follows:

      BLINDNESS: IS HISTORY AGAINST US

      by Kenneth Jernigan

      Experts in the field, as well as members of the general
public, have differed greatly as to what the future may hold for
the blind. Some, seeking to tell it like it is, see us blundering
on forever in roles of economic dependency and second-class
citizenship. Others, more hopefully, predict a slow but steady
progress toward independence, equality, and full membership in
society. My own view is that this is not a matter for prediction at
all, but for  decision . I believe that neither of these possible
outcomes is certain or foreseeable, for the simple reason that the
choices we make and the actions we take are themselves factors in
the determination of the future. In short, we the blind (like all
people) confront  alternative  futures: one future in which we will
live our own lives, or another future in which our lives will be
lived for us.

      But if the future is open and contingent, surely the  past 
is closed and final. Whatever disputes men may have about the shape
of things to come, there can be no doubt about the shape of things
gone by the permanent record of history. Or can there? Is there
such a thing as an alternative  past ?

      We all know what the historical record tells us. It tells us
that, until only yesterday, blind people were completely excluded
from the ranks of the normal community. In early societies they
were reputedly abandoned, exterminated, or left to fend for
themselves as beggars on the lunatic fringe of the community. In
the late Middle Ages, so we are told, provision began to be made
for their care and protection in almshouses and other sheltered
institutions. Only lately, it would seem, have blind people begun
stealthily to emerge from the shadows, and to move in the direction
of independence and self-sufficiency.

      That is what history tells us or, rather, that is what
histories and the historians have told us. And the lesson commonly
derived from these histories is that the blind have always been
dependent upon the wills and the mercies of others. We have been
the people things were done  to  and, occasionally, the people
things were done  for  but never the people who  did for themselves
. In effect, according to this account, we have no history of our
own no record of active participation or adventure or
accomplishment, but only (until almost our own day) an empty and
unbroken continuum of desolation and dependency. It would seem that
the blind have moved through time and the world not only sightless
but faceless a people without distinguishing features, anonymous
and insignificant not so much as rippling the stream of history.

      Nonsense! That is not fact but fable. That is not truth but
a lie. In reality the accomplishments of blind people through the
centuries have been out of all proportion to their numbers. There
are genius, and fame, and adventure, and enormous versatility of
achievement not just once in a great while but again and again,
over and over. To be sure, there is misery also poverty and
suffering and misfortune aplenty just as there is in the general
history of mankind. But this truth is only a half-truth and,
therefore, not really a truth at all. The real truth, the whole
truth, reveals a chronicle of courage and conquest, of greatness,
and even glory on the part of blind people, which has been
suppressed and misrepresented by sighted historians not because
these historians have been people of bad faith or malicious intent
but because they have been people, with run-of-the-mill prejudice
and ordinary misunderstandings. Historians, too, are human; and
when facts violate their preconceptions, they tend to ignore those
facts.

      Now, we are at a point in time when the story of the blind
(the true and real story) must be told. For too long the blind have
been (not un wept , for there has been much too much of that) but
unhonored and unsung. Let us, at long last, redress the balance and
right the wrong. let us now praise our famous men and celebrate the
exploits of blind heroes. Rediscovering our true history, we shall,
in our turn, be better able to  make  history; for when people
(seeing or blind) come to know the truth, the truth will set them
free.

      Let us begin with Zisca: patriotic leader of Bohemia in the
early fifteenth century, one of history's military geniuses, who
defended his homeland in a brilliant campaign against invading
armies of overwhelming numerical superiority. Zisca was, in the
hour of his triumph, totally blind. The chronicle of his
magnificent military effort which preserved the political
independence and religious freedom of his country, and which led to
his being offered the crown of Bohemia is worth relating in some
detail. Need I add that this episode is not to be found, except in
barest outline, in the standard histories? Fortunately it has been
recorded by two historians of the last century James Wilson, an
Englishman writing in 1820, and William Artman, an American writing
seventy years later. What do you suppose these two historians have
in common, apart from their occupation? You are right: Both were
blind. The account of the career of Zisca which follows has been
drawn substantially from their eloquent and forceful narratives.

      The Council of Constance, which was convened by the Pope in
the year 1414 for the purpose of rooting out heresy in the Church
and which commanded John Huss and Jerome of Prague to be burned at
the stake  sent terror and consternation throughout Bohemia.  1 In
self-defense the Bohemian people took up arms against the Pope and
the emperor. They chose as their commanding general the
professional soldier John de Turcznow better known as Zisca,
meaning  one-eyed,  for he had lost the sight of an eye in the
course of earlier battles. At the head of a force of 40,000
citizen-soldiers a force not unlike the ragged army that would
follow General Washington in another patriotic struggle three
centuries later Zisca marched into combat, only to be suddenly
blinded in his remaining eye by an arrow from the enemy.

      Here is where our story properly begins. For Zisca, upon his
recovery from the injury, flatly refused to play the role of the
helpless blind man.   His friends were surprised to hear him talk
of setting out for the army, and did what was in their power to
dissuade him from it, but he continued resolute. `I have yet,' said
he, `to shed my blood for the liberties of Bohemia. She is
enslaved; her sons are deprived of their natural rights, and are
the victims of a system of spiritual tyranny as degrading to the
character of man as it is destructive of every moral principle;
therefore, Bohemia must and shall be free.'  2

      And so the blind general resumed his command, to the great
joy of his troops. When the news came to the Emperor Sigismund  he
called a convention of all the states in his empire and entreated
them, for the sake of their sovereign, for the honor of their
empire, and for the cause of their religion, to put themselves in
arms. The news came to Zisca that two large armies were in
readiness to march against him. The former was to invade Bohemia on
the west, the latter on the east; they were to meet in the center,
and as they expressed it, crush this [rebel] between them. 3

      By all the rules of warfare, by all conventional standards of
armament and power, that should have been the end of Zisca and his
rabble army.  After some delay the emperor entered Bohemia at the
head of his army, the flower of which was fifteen thousand
Hungarians, deemed at that time the best cavalry in Europe. The
infantry, which consisted of 25,000 men, were equally fine, and
well commanded. This force spread terror throughout all the east of
Bohemia. 4 The stage was set for the fateful climax the final
confrontation and certain obliteration of the upstart rebel forces. 
On the 11th of January, 1422, the two armies met on a large plain.
Zisca appeared in the center of his front line [accompanied] by a
horseman on each side, armed with a poleax. His troops, having sung
a hymn, drew their swords and waited for the signal. Zisca stood
not long in view of the enemy, and when his officers had informed
him that the ranks were well closed, waved his saber over his head,
which was the signal of battle, and never was there an onset more
mighty and irresistible. As dash a thousand waves against the
rock-bound shore, so Zisca rolled his steel-fronted legions upon
the foe. The imperial infantry hardly made a stand, and in the
space of a few minutes they were disordered beyond the possibility
of being rallied. The cavalry made a desperate effort to maintain
the field, but finding themselves unsupported, wheeled round and
fled toward Moravia. 5

      It was a total rout and an unconditional victory,  but ,
Zisca's labors were not yet ended. The emperor, exasperated by his
defeat, raised new armies, which he sent against Zisca the
following spring. But the blind general, determined that his
country should not be enslaved while he had strength to wield a
sword, gathered his brave army  and met the enemy yet again,
despite fearsome disadvantages in numbers and equipment.  An
engagement ensued, in which the [enemy] were utterly routed,
leaving no less than nine thousand of their number dead on the
field. 6

      The remaining branch of the grand imperial army, under the
command of Sigismund himself, next met a similar fate, and the
mighty emperor was compelled to sue for peace at the hands of the
blind general. Then there occurred the final magnificent gesture of
this extraordinary human being. As the historian Wilson recounts
the episode:  Our blind hero, having taken up arms only to secure
peace, was glad for an opportunity to lay them down. When his
grateful countrymen requested him to accept the crown of Bohemia,
as a reward for his eminent services, he respectfully declined. 7
And this is what Zisca said:  While you find me of service to your
designs, you may freely command both my counsels and my sword, but
I will never accept any established authority; on the contrary, my
most earnest advice to you is, when the perverseness of your
enemies allows you peace, to trust yourselves no longer in the
hands of kings, but to form yourselves into a republic, which
species of government only can secure your liberties. 8

      That is the true story of Zisca military genius, patriot,
freedom fighter, statesman, and blind man. Extraordinary as his
heroism was, it exceeds only in degree the story of yet another
blind Bohemian King John, the blind monarch who fell in the
historic Battle of Cressy, which engaged the energies and cost the
lives of many of Europe's nobility. This king had been blind for
many years. When he heard the clang of arms, he turned to his lords
and said:  I only now desire this last piece of service from you,
that you would bring me forward so near to these Englishmen that I
may deal among them one good stroke with my sword.  In order not to
be separated, the king and his attendants tied the reins of their
horses one to another, and went into battle. There this valiant old
hero had his desire, and came boldly up to the Prince of Wales, and
gave more than  one good stroke  with his sword. He fought
courageously, as did all his lords, and others about him; but they
engaged themselves so far that all were slain, and next day found
dead, their horses' bridles still tied together.

      In the country of the blind, it has foolishly been said, the
one-eyed man will inevitably be king. This, of course, is nonsense.
In fact, the very opposite has often been true. History reveals
that in the realm of the sighted it is not at all remarkable for a
blind man to be king. Thus, in 1851, George Frederick, Duke of
Cumberland, first cousin to Queen Victoria, ascended the throne of
Hanover under the royal title of George the Fifth. That this blind
king of Hanover was no incompetent, but distinctly superior to the
ordinary run of monarchs, is shown by the words of a contemporary
historian, who said:  Though laboring under the deprivation of
sight, this Prince is as efficient in his public, as he is beloved
in his private, character; a patron of the arts and sciences, and
a promoter of agricultural interests he has acquired a perfect
knowledge of six different languages. 9

      A strikingly similar account has been handed down to us of
the blind Prince Hitoyasu, who reigned as a provincial governor in
Japan over a thousand years ago and  whose influence set a pattern
for the sightless which differed from that in any other country and
saved his land from the scourge of beggary. 10 Thoroughly trained
in both Japanese and Chinese literature, Prince Hitoyasu introduced
blind people into society and the life of the court. In ninth
century Japan, when the blind led the blind, they did not fall into
a ditch, but rose out of it together.

      Let us turn now from the records of royalty to the annals of
adventure. Perhaps the most persistent and destructive myth
concerning the blind is the assumption of our relative inactivity
and immobility the image of the blind person glued to his rocking
chair and, at best, sadly dependent on others to guide or transport
him on his routine daily rounds.  Mobility,  we are led to believe,
is a modern term, which has just begun to have meaning for the
blind. To be sure, many blind persons have been cowed by the myth
of helplessness into remaining in their sheltered corners. But
there have always been others like James Holman, Esquire, a
solitary traveler of a century and a half ago, who gained the great
distinction of being labeled by the Russians as   the blind spy . 
Yes, it really happened! This intrepid Englishman, traveling alone
across the steppes of Greater Russia all the way to Siberia, was so
close an observer of all about him that he was arrested as a spy by
the Czar's police and conducted to the borders of Austria, where he
was ceremoniously expelled.

      Here is how it happened. Holman lost his sight at the age of
twenty-five, after a brief career as a lieutenant in the Royal
Navy; but his urge to travel, instead of declining, grew stronger.
He soon embarked upon a series of voyages first through France and
Italy, then (at one fell swoop) through Poland, Austria, Saxony,
Prussia, Hanover, Russia, and Siberia. His real intention, as he
later wrote, was to  make a circuit of the whole world,  entirely
on his own and unaccompanied an ambition he might well have
fulfilled had it not been for the Czar's police and the Russian spy
charges. He later published a two-volume account of his travels and
observations, and his own reflections upon his Russian adventure
are worth repeating:  My situation,  he wrote,  was now one of
extreme novelty and my feelings corresponded with its peculiarity.
I was engaged in a solitary journey of a thousand miles, through a
country, perhaps the wildest on the face of the earth, whose
inhabitants were scarcely yet accounted within the pale of
civilization, with no other attendant than a rude Tartar
postillion, to whose language my ear was wholly unaccustomed; and
yet, I was supported by a feeling of happy confidence.  11

      As Federationists know, there have been other blind travelers
in our own time quite as intrepid as James Holman. Yet Holman's
story the case of the  blind spy  is important for its
demonstration that blind people could wear such seven-league boots
almost two centuries ago before Braille or the long cane, before
residential schools or vocational rehabilitation, before even the
American Foundation for the Blind and its 239-page book on personal
management for the blind.

      But there is a more basic side to mobility, of course, than
the opportunity and capacity for long-distance traveling. There is
the simple ability to get about, to walk and run, to mount a horse
or ride a bicycle in short, to be physically independent. The
number of blind persons who have mastered these skills of travel is
countless, but no one has ever proved the point or shown the way
with more flair than a stalwart Englishman of the eighteenth
century named John Metcalf. Indeed, this brash fellow not only
defied convention, but the world. Totally blind from childhood, he
was (among other things) a successful builder of roads and bridges;
racehorse rider; bare-knuckle fighter; card shark; stagecoach
driver; and, on occasion, guide to sighted tourists through the
local countryside. Here is an account of some of his many
enterprises:

      In 1751 he commenced a new employment; he set up a stage
wagon betwixt York and Knaresborough, being the first on the road,
and drove it himself, twice a week in summer, and once in winter.
This business, with the occasional conveyance of army baggage,
employed his attention till the period of his first contracting for
the making of roads, which engagement suiting him better, he
relinquished every other pursuit. The first piece of road he made
was about three miles, and the materials for the whole were to be
produced from one gravel pit; he therefore provided deal boards,
and erected a temporary house at the pit; took a dozen horses to
the place; fixed racks and mangers, and hired a house for his men,
at Minskip. He often walked to Knaresborough in the morning, with
four or five stones of meal on his shoulders, and joined his men by
six o'clock. He completed the road much sooner than was expected,
to the entire satisfaction of the surveyor and trustees.12

      The story of  Blind Jack  Metcalf, for all its individuality,
is far from unique. Rather, it underscores what even we as
Federationists sometimes forget, and what most of the sighted have
never learned at all namely, that the blind can compete on terms of
absolute equality with others that we are really, literally, the
equals of the sighted. We have been kept down by the myths and
false beliefs about our inferiority, by the self-fulfilling
prophecies of the custodial system which has conditioned the
sighted and the blind alike to believe we are helpless, but not by
any innate lacks or losses inherent in our blindness.

      Metcalf's accomplishments in applied science were probably
matched by those of a French army officer more than a century
before. Blaise Francoise, Comte de Pagan, was blinded in the course
of military service, shortly before he was to be promoted to the
rank of field marshal. He then turned his attention to the science
of fortifications, wrote the definitive work on the subject, and
subsequently published a variety of scientific works, among which
was one entitled  An Historical and Geographical Account of the
River of the Amazons  (which included a chart drawn up by this
military genius after he became blind)!

      Like the sighted, the blind have had their share of solid
citizens, namby-pambies, strong-minded individualists, squares,
oddballs, eggheads, and eccentrics. The sixteenth-century German
scholar James Shegkins, for instance, refused to undergo an
operation which was virtually guaranteed to restore his sight:  In
order,  as he said,  not to be obliged to see many things that
might appear odious and ridiculous. 13 Shegkins, a truly
absent-minded professor, taught philosophy and medicine over many
years with great success, and left behind him influential
monographs on a dozen scientific subjects.

      The success story of Dr. Nicholas Bacon, a blind lawyer of
eighteenth century France, somewhat resembles that of our own
beloved founder, Dr. Jacobus tenBroek. Both were blinded in
childhood by bow-and-arrow accidents, and both went on to high
academic achievement in law and related studies. The strenuous
exertions which Bacon was forced to go through at each stage of his
climb are indicated by the following account:

       When he recovered his health, which had suffered from the
accident, he continued the same plan of education which he had
before commenced. But his friends treated his intention with
ridicule, and even the professors themselves were not far from the
same sentiment; for they admitted him into their schools, rather
under an impression that he might amuse them, than that they should
be able to communicate much information to him.  However, he
obtained  the first place among his fellow students. They then said
that such rapid advances might be made in the preliminary branches
of education, but not in studies of a more profound nature; and
when it became necessary to study the art of poetry, it was
declared by the general voice that all was over. But here he
likewise disproved their prejudices. He applied himself to law, and
took his degree in that science at Brussels. 14

      Years earlier in the fourth century after Christ another
blind man made an even steeper ascent to learning. He was Didymus
of Alexandria, who became one of the celebrated scholars of the
early church. He carved out of wood an alphabet of letters and
laboriously taught himself to form them into words, and shape the
words into sentences. Later, when he could afford to hire readers,
he is said to have worn them out one after another in his
insatiable quest for knowledge. He became the greatest teacher of
his age. He mastered philosophy and theology, and then went on to
geometry and astrology. He was regarded by his students, some of
whom like St. Jerome became church fathers, with  a touch of awe 
because of his vast learning and intellect.

      Didymus was not the only blind theologian to gain eminence
within the church. In the middle of the seventeenth century, at
almost the same moment Milton was composing  Paradise Lost , a
blind priest named Prospero Fagnani was writing a commentary on
church law, which was to bring him fame as one of the outstanding
theorists of the Roman faith. At the precocious age of 21, Fagnani
had already earned the degree of doctor of civil and canon law, and
in the very next year, he was appointed Secretary of the
Congregation of the Council. His celebrated  Commentary , published
in six quarto volumes, won high praise from Pope Benedict XIV and
caused its author to become identified throughout Europe by a Latin
title which in translation signifies  the blind yet farseeing
doctor. 

      These few biographical sketches plucked from the annals of
the blind are no more than samples. They are not even the most
illustrious instances I could have given. I have said nothing at
all about the best known of history's blind celebrities Homer,
Milton, and Helen Keller. There is good reason for that omission.
Not only are those resounding names well enough known already but
they have come to represent each in its own sentimentalized,
storybook form not the abilities and possibilities of people who
are blind but the exact opposite. Supposedly these giants are the
exceptions that prove the rule the rule, that is, that the blind
are incompetent. Each celebrated case is explained away to keep the
stereotype intact: Thus, Homer (we are repeatedly told) probably
never existed at all being not a man but a committee! As for
Milton, he is dismissed as a sighted poet, who happened to become
blind in later life. And Helen Keller, they say, was the peculiarly
gifted and just plain lucky beneficiary of a lot of money and a 
miracle worker  (her tutor and companion, Anne Sullivan).

      Don't you believe it! These justly famous cases of
accomplishment are not mysterious, unexplainable exceptions they
are only  remarkable . Homer, who almost certainly did exist and
who was clearly blind, accomplished just a little better what other
blind persons after him have accomplished by the thousands: that
is, he was a good writer. Milton composed great works while he was
sighted, and  greater  ones (including  Paradise Lost ) after he
became blind. His example, if it proves anything, proves only that
blindness makes no difference in ability. As for Helen Keller, her
life demonstrates dramatically what great resources of character
and will and intellect may live in a human being beyond the
faculties of sight and sound which is not to take anything at all
away from Anne Sullivan.

      In the modern world it is not the poets or the humanists, but
the scientists, who have held the center of the stage. As would be
expected, the stereotyped view has consistently been that the blind
cannot compete in these areas. How does this square with the truth?

      Consider the case of Nicholas Saunderson totally blind from
infancy who succeeded Sir Isaac Newton in the chair of mathematics
at Cambridge University, despite the fact that he had earlier been
refused admission to the same university and was never permitted to
earn a degree! It was the great Newton himself who pressed
Saunderson's appointment upon the reluctant Cambridge dons; and it
was no less a personage than Queen Anne of England who made it
possible by conferring the necessary degree upon Saunderson. Later
he received a Doctor of Laws degree from King George II, a symbol
of the renown he had gained as a mathematician. Among Saunderson's
best subjects, by the way, was the science of optics at which he
was so successful that the eminent Lord Chesterfield was led to
remark on  the miracle of a man who had not the use of his own
sight teaching others how to use theirs. 15

      For another example, consider John Gough, a blind English
biologist of the eighteenth century, who became a master at
classification of plants and animals by substituting the sense of
touch for that of sight. Or consider Leonard Euler, a great
mathematician of the same century, who (after becoming blind) won
two research prizes from the Parisian Academy of Sciences, wrote a
major work translated into every European language, and devised an
astronomical theory which  has been deemed by astronomers, in
exactness of computation, one of the most remarkable achievements
of the human intellect. 16 Or, for a final illustration, consider
Francois Huber, blind Swiss zoologist, who gained recognition as
the pre-eminent authority of the eighteenth century on the behavior
of bees. The famous writer Maurice Maeterlinck said of Huber that
he was  the master and classic of contemporary apiarian science. 17

      Even after all of this evidence, there will be many (some of
them, regrettably, our own blind Uncle Toms) who will try to deny
and explain it all away who will attempt to keep intact their
outworn notions about the helplessness of the blind as a class. So
let me nail down a couple of points: In the first place, is all of
this talk about history and the success of blind individuals really
valid? Isn't it true that most blind people throughout the ages
have lived humdrum lives, achieving neither fame nor glory, and
soon forgotten? Yes, it is true but for the sighted as well as for
the blind. For the overwhelming majority of mankind (the blind and
the sighted alike) life has been squalor and hard knocks and
anonymity from as far back as anybody knows. There were doubtless
blind peasants, blind housewives, blind shoemakers, blind
businessmen, blind thieves, blind prostitutes, and blind holy men
who performed as competently or as incompetently (and are now as
forgotten) as their sighted contemporaries.

       Even so,  the doubter may say,  I'm still not convinced.
Don't you think the track record for the blind is worse than the
track record for the sighted? Don't you think a larger percentage
of the blind have failed? 

      Again, the answer is yes just as with other minorities.
That's what it's all about. Year after year, decade after decade,
century after century, age after age we the blind were told that we
were helpless that we were inferior and we believed it and acted
accordingly. But no more! As with other minorities, we have tended
to see ourselves as others have seen us. We have accepted the
public view of our limitations, and thus have done much to make
those limitations a reality. When our true history conflicted with
popular prejudice, the truth was altered or conveniently forgotten.
We have been ashamed of our blindness and ignorant of our heritage,
but never again! We will never go back to the ward status of
second-class citizens. There is simply no way. There are blind
people aplenty and sighted allies, too (many of them in this room
tonight) who will take to the streets and fight with their bare
hands if they must before they will let it happen.

      And this, too, is history our meeting, our movement, our new
spirit of self-awareness and self-realization. In our own time and
in our own day we have found leaders as courageous as Zisca, and as
willing to go into battle to resist tyranny. But we are no longer
to be counted by ones and twos, or by handfuls or hundreds. We are
now a movement, with tens of thousands in the ranks. Napoleon is
supposed to have said that history is a legend agreed upon. If this
is true, then we the blind are in the process of negotiating a new
agreement, with a legend conforming more nearly to the truth and
the spirit of the dignity of man.

      And what do you think future historians will say of us of you
and me? What legends will they agree upon concerning the blind of
the mid-twentieth century? How will they deal with our movement
with the National Federation of the Blind? Will they record that we
fell back into the faceless anonymity of the ages, or that we met
the challenges and survived as a free people? It all depends on
what we do and how we act; for future historians will write the
record, but we will make it. Our lives will provide the raw
materials from which their legends will emerge to be agreed upon.

      And, while no man can predict the future, I feel absolute
confidence as to what the historians will say. They will tell of a
system of governmental and private agencies established to serve
the blind, which became so custodial and so repressive that
reaction was inevitable. They will tell that the blind ( their time
come round at last ) began to acquire a new self-image, along with
rising expectations, and that they determined to organize and speak
for themselves. And they will tell of Jacobus tenBroek how he, as
a young college professor, (blind and brilliant) stood forth to
lead the movement like Zisca of old.

      They will tell how the agencies first tried to ignore us,
then resented us, then feared us, and finally came to hate us with
the emotion and false logic and cruel desperation which dying
systems always feel toward the new about to replace them.

      They will tell of the growth of our movement through the
forties and fifties, and of our civil war which resulted in the
small group that splintered away to become puppets of the most
reactionary of the agencies, a company union: our counterfeit dwarf
image, the American Council of the Blind. They will tell how we
emerged from our civil war into the sixties, stronger and more
vital than we had ever been; and how more and more of the agencies
began to make common cause with us for the betterment of the blind.
They will tell of our court cases, our legislative efforts, and our
organizational struggles and they will record the sorrow and
mourning of the blind at the death of their great leader, Jacobus
tenBroek.

      They will also record the events of today of the 1970s when
the reactionaries among the agencies became even more so, and the
blind of the second generation of the NFB stood forth to meet them.
They will talk of the American Foundation for the Blind and its
attempt (through its tool, NAC) to control all work with the blind,
and our lives. They will tell how NAC and the American Foundation
and the other reactionary agencies gradually lost ground and gave
way before us. They will tell of new and better agencies rising to
work in partnership with the blind, and of harmony and progress as
the century draws to an end. They will relate how the blind passed
from second-class citizenship through a period of hostility to
equality and first-class status in society.

      But future historians will only record these events if we
make them come true. They can help us be remembered, but they
cannot help us dream. That we must do for ourselves. They can give
us acclaim, but not guts and courage. They can give us recognition
and appreciation, but not determination or compassion or good
judgment. We must either find those things for ourselves, or not
have them at all.

      We have come a long way together in this movement. Some of us
are veterans, going back to the forties; others are new recruits,
fresh to the ranks. Some are young; some are old. Some are
educated, others not. It makes no difference. In everything that
matters we are one; we are the movement; we are the blind.

      Just as in 1940, when the National Federation of the Blind
was formed, the fog rolls in through the Golden Gate. The
eucalyptus trees give forth their pungent smell, and the Berkeley
hills look down at the bay. The house still stands in those hills,
and the planes still rise from San Francisco to span the world. But
Jacobus tenBroek comes from the house no more, nor rides the planes
to carry the word.

      But the word is carried, and his spirit goes with it. He it
was who founded this movement, and he it is whose dreams are still
entwined in the depths of its being. Likewise,  our  dreams (our
hopes and our visions) are part of the fabric, going forward to the
next generation as a heritage and a challenge. History is not
against us: the past proclaims it; the present confirms it; and the
future demands it. If we falter or dishonor our heritage, we will
betray not only ourselves but those who went before us and those
who come after. But, of course, we will not fail. Whatever the
cost, we shall pay it. Whatever the sacrifice, we shall make it. We
cannot turn back, or stand still. Instead, we must go forward. We
shall prevail and history will record it. The future is ours. Come!
Join me on the barricades, and we will make it come true.

      FOOTNOTES

       1. Wilham Artman,  Beauties and Achievements of the Blind 
(Auburn: Published for the Author, 1890), p. 265.

       2. James Wilson,  Biography of the Blind  (Birmingham,
England: Printed by J.W. Showell, Fourth Edition, 1838), p. 110.

       3. Artman,  op. cit ., p. 265.

       4.  Ibid ., p. 266.

       5.  Ibid ., p. 267.

       6.  Ibid ., p. 268.

       7.  Ibid ., pp. 268-269.

       8. Wilson,  op.cit ., p. 115.

       9. Mrs. Hippolyte Van Landeghem,  Exile and Home: Advantages
of the Social Education of the Blind  (London: Printed by W. Clowes
& Sons, 1865), p. 95.

      10. Gabriel Farrell,  The Story of Blindness  (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1956), p. 7.

      11. Wilson,  op.cit. , p. 262.

      12.  Ibid. , pp. 100-101

      13. Artman,  op.cit. , p. 220.

      14. Wilson,  op.cit. , p. 243.

      15. Farrell,  op.cit. , p. 11.

      16. Artman,  op.cit. , p. 226.

      17. Farrell,  op.cit. , pp. 12-13.

     In 1974, at the Federation's convention in Chicago, Kenneth
Jernigan undertook a significant variation on the theme of his
earlier speech on history and the blind.  Last year,  he said in
his banquet address,  I examined with you the place of the blind in
history not just what we have done but what the historians have
remembered and said we have done. The two, as we found, are vastly
different. This year I would like to talk with you about the place
of the blind in literature. How have we been perceived? What has
been our role? How have the poets and novelists, the essayists and
dramatists, seen us? Have they `told it like it is,' or merely
liked it as they told it? 

     In addressing his topic question  Blindness: Is Literature
Against Us  Jernigan noted that the literary record reveals no
single theme or viewpoint regarding the blind but instead displays
a bewildering variety of images. Yet he claimed to find, upon
closer examination of the world of fiction and poetry, of myth and
fairy tale, a set of nine separate themes or motifs that recurred
again and again. These themes were summarized in a graphic list:

       blindness as compensatory or miraculous power; blindness as
total tragedy; blindness as foolishness and helplessness; blindness
as unrelieved wickedness and evil; blindness as perfect virtue;
blindness as punishment for sin; blindness as abnormality or
dehumanization; blindness as purification; and blindness as symbol
or parable. 

     Each of these recurrent themes was traced to its sources and
varied expressions in literature and each one in turn was then
exposed as false, fraudulent, or (at best)  fictitious  in the full
sense of the term. In its multitudinous parade of authors and its
array of illustrations and examples as well as in the scholarship
which lay behind the writing this 1974 address was an effective
counterpart to the previous speech on history and historiography
and, like that one, its answer to the key question was complicated.
Here is how it was summed up:

      To the question  Is literature against us? , there can be no
unqualified response. If we consider only the past, the answer is
certainly yes. We have had a bad press. If we consider the present,
the answer is mixed. There are signs of change, but the old
stereotypes and false images still predominate. If we turn to the
future, the answer is that the future in literature as in life is
not predetermined but self-determined. As we shape our lives,
singly and collectively, so will we shape our literature.

     The full text follows:

               BLINDNESS: IS LITERATURE AGAINST US
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      History, we are told, is the record of what human beings have 
done ; literature, the record of what they have  thought . Last
year I examined with you the place of the blind in history not just
what we have done but what the historians have remembered and said
we have done. The two, as we found, are vastly different.

      This year I would like to talk with you about the place of
the blind in literature. How have we been perceived? What has been
our role? How have the poets and novelists, the essayists and
dramatists seen us? Have they  told it like it is,  or merely liked
it as they've told it?

      With history there is at least a supposed foundation of fact.
Whatever the twisting or omission or misinterpretation or downright
falsehood, that foundation presumably remains a tether and a
touchstone, always subject to reexamination and new proof. Not so
with literature. The author is free to cut through facts to the
essence, to dream and soar and surmise. Going deeper than history,
the myths and feelings of a people are enshrined in its literature.
Literary culture in all its forms constitutes possibly the main
transmission belt of our society's beliefs and values more
important even than the schools, the churches, the news media, or
the family. How, then, have we fared in literature?

      The literary record reveals no single theme or unitary view
of the life of the blind. Instead, it displays a bewildering
variety of images often conflicting and contradictory, not only as
between different ages or cultures, or among the works of various
writers, but even within the pages of a single book.

      Yet, upon closer examination the principal themes and motifs
of literature and popular culture are nine in number and may be
summarized as follows:  blindness as compensatory or miraculous
power; blindness as total tragedy; blindness as foolishness and
helplessness; blindness as unrelieved wickedness and evil;
blindness as perfect virtue; blindness as punishment for sin;
blindness as abnormality or dehumanization; blindness as
purification; and blindness as symbol or parable. 

      Let us begin with blindness and compensatory powers. Suppose
one of you should ask me whether I think there is any advantage in
being blind; and suppose I should answer like this:  Not an
advantage perhaps: still it has compensations that one might not
think of. A new world to explore, new experiences, new powers
awakening; strange new perceptions; life in the fourth dimension.
1 How would you react to that? You would, I suspect, laugh me out
of the room. I doubt that a single person here would buy such
stereotyped stupidity. You and I know from firsthand experience
that there is no  fourth dimension  to blindness no miraculous new
powers awakening, no strange new perceptions, no brave new worlds
to explore. Yet, the words I have quoted are those of a blind
character in a popular novel of some time back. (I don't know
whether the term has significance, but a blind  private eye,  no
less.)

      The association of blindness with compensatory powers,
illustrated by the blind detective I have just mentioned,
represents a venerable tradition, reaching back to classical
mythology. A favorite method of punishment among the gods of
ancient Greece was blinding regarded apparently as a fate worse
than death following which, more often than not, the gods so pitied
the blinded victim that they relented and conferred upon him
extraordinary gifts, usually the power of prophecy or some other
exceptional skill. Thus, Homer was widely regarded as having been
compensated by the gift of poetry. In the same way Tiresias, who
wandered through the plays of Sophocles, received for his blindness
the gift of prophecy.

      The theme of divine compensation following divine retribution
survived the passage of the ages and the decline of the pagan
religions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (one of the most eminent
novelists of the last century, and the creator of Sherlock Holmes)
conjured up a blind character with something of Holmes' sleuthing
talents, in a book entitled  Sir Nigel . This figure is introduced
as one who has the mysterious ability to detect by hearing a hidden
tunnel, which runs beneath the besieged castle. His compensatory
powers are described in a conversation between two other people in
the novel:

       This man was once rich and of good repute [says one], but he
was beggared by this robber lord who afterwards put out his eyes,
so that he has lived for many years in darkness at the charity of
others. 

       How can he help in our enterprise if he be indeed blind? 
[asks his companion.]

       It is for that very reason, fair Lord, that he can be of
greater service than any other man. For it often happens that when
a man has lost a sense, the good God will strengthen those that
remain. Hence it is that Andreas has such ears that he can hear the
sap in the trees or the cheep of the mouse in its burrow. 2

      The great nineteenth-century novelist Victor Hugo, in  The
Man Who Laughs , reflected the view of a host of modern writers
that blindness carries with it a certain purity and ecstasy, which
somehow makes up for the loss of sight. His blind heroine, Dea, is
portrayed as  absorbed by that kind of ecstasy peculiar to the
blind, which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in
their souls and to make up to them for the light which they lack by
some strain of ideal music.  Blindness,  says Hugo,  is a cavern to
which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal. 3

      Probably it is this mystical notion of a  sixth sense 
accompanying blindness that accounts for the rash of blind
detectives and investigators in popular fiction. Max Carrados, the
man who talked of living in the  fourth dimension,  first appeared
in 1914 and went on to survive a number of superhuman escapades
through the nineteen twenties. In 1915 came another sightless
sleuth the remarkable Damon Gaunt, who  never lost a case. 4 So it
is with  Thornley Colton, Blind Detective,  the brainchild of
Clinton H. Stagg; and so it is with the most illustrious of all the
private eyes without eyes, Captain Duncan Maclain, whose special
qualities are set forth in the deathless prose of a dust jacket: 
Shooting to kill by sound, playing chess with fantastic precision,
and, of course, quickening the hearts of the opposite sex, Captain
Maclain has won the unreserved admiration of reviewers. 5

      Even the author is carried away with the genius of his hero: 
There were moments,  he writes,  when powers slightly greater than
those possessed by ordinary mortals seemed bestowed on Duncan
Maclain. Such moments worried him. 6

      They might worry us, as well; for all of this mumbo jumbo
about abnormal or supernatural powers doesn't lessen the stereotype
of the blind person as alien and different, unnatural and peculiar.
It makes it worse.

      Not only is it untrue, but it is also a profound disservice
to the blind; for it suggests that whatever a blind person may
accomplish is not due to his own ability but to some magic inherent
in blindness itself. This assumption of compensatory powers removes
the blind person at a stroke of the pen from the realm of the
normal the ordinary, everyday world of plain people and places him
in a limbo of abnormality. Whether supernormal or subnormal does
not matter he is without responsibility, without rights, and
without society. We have been conned into this view of second-class
status long enough. The play is over. We want no more of magic
powers and compensations. We want our rights as citizens and human
beings and we intend to have them!

      It is significant that, for all his supposed charm and
talent, Maclain never gets the girl or any girl. The author plainly
regards him as ineligible for such normal human relationships as
love, sex, and marriage. Max Carrados put it this way in replying
to an acquaintance who expressed great comfort in his presence: 
Blindness invites confidence,  he says.  We are out of the running
for us human rivalry ceases to exist. 7

      This notion of compensatory powers the doctrine that
blindness is its own reward is no compliment but an insult. It robs
us of all credit for our achievements and all responsibility for
our failings. It neatly relieves society of any obligation to
equalize conditions or provide opportunities or help us help
ourselves. It leaves us in the end without the capacity to lead a
regular, competitive, and participating life in the community
around us. The blind, in short, may (according to this view) be
extraordinary, but we can never be ordinary. Don't you believe it!
We are normal people neither especially blessed nor especially
cursed and the fiction to the contrary must come to an end! It is
not mumbo jumbo we want, or magical powers but our rights as free
people, our responsibilities as citizens, and our dignity as human
beings.

      Negative as it is, this image of compensatory powers is less
vicious and destructive than some others which run through the
literature of fiction and fantasy. The most damaging of all is also
the oldest and most persistent: namely, the theme of blindness as
total tragedy, the image summed up in the ancient Hebrew saying, 
The blind man is as one dead.  The Oedipus cycle of Greek tragic
plays pressed the death-in-life stereotype to its farthest extreme.
Thus, in  Oedipus Rex , in which the king puts out his own eyes,
the statement occurs:  Thou art better off dead than living blind. 
It remained, however, for an Englishman, blind himself, to write
the last word (what today would be called  the bottom line ) on
blindness as total disaster. John Milton says in  Samson Agonistes
:

      Blind among enemies,<R> O worse than chains,<R> Dungeon, or
beggary, or decrepit age! <R> Inferior to the vilest now become<R>
Of man or worm; the vilest here excel me,<R> They creep, yet see;
I, dark in light, exposed<R> To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and
wrong,<R> Within doors, or without, still as a fool,<R> In power of
others, never in my own;<R> Scarce half I seem to live,<R> Dead
more than half. a moving grave,8

      What is most striking about this epic poem is not the
presence of the disaster concept (that might have been expected)
but the fact that Milton of all people was the author. His greatest
writing (including  Paradise Lost ) was done after his blindness.
Then why did he do it? The answer is simple: We the blind tend to
see ourselves as others see us. Even when we know to the contrary,
we tend to accept the public view of our limitations. Thus, we help
make those limitations a reality. Betrayed by the forces of
literature and tradition, Milton (in his turn) betrayed himself and
all others who are blind. In fact, he actually strengthened and
reinforced the stereotype and he did it in spite of his own
personal experience to the contrary. The force of literature is
strong, indeed!

      The disaster concept of blindness did not stop with Milton. 
William Tell , the eighteenth-century play by Schiller, shows us an
old man, blinded and forced to become a beggar. His son says:

      Oh, the eye's light, of all the gifts of Heaven the dearest,
best! And he must drag on through all his days in endless darkness!
To die is nothing. But to have life, and not have sight Oh, that is
misery indeed!9

      A century later the disaster concept was as popular as ever.
In Kipling's book,  The Light That Failed , no opportunity is lost
to tell us that blindness is worse than death. The hero, Dick
Heldar, upon learning that he is to become blind, remarks:  It's
the living death. We're to be shut up in the dark and we shan't see
anybody, and we shall never have anything we want, not though we
live to be a hundred. 10 Later in the book, he rages against the
whole world  because it was alive and could see, while he, Dick,
was dead in the death of the blind, who, at the best, are only
burdens upon their associates. 11 And when this self-pitying
character finally manages to get himself killed (to the relief of
all concerned), the best Kipling can say of him is that  his luck
had held till the last, even to the crowning mercy of a kindly
bullet through his head.  12

      Joseph Conrad, in  The End of the Tether , kills off Captain
Whalley by drowning, as a fate much preferable to remaining alive
without sight. In D.H. Lawrence's  The Blind Man , there is a
war-blinded casualty named Maurice, whose total despair and misery
are unrelieved by any hint of future hope; and Rosamond Lehmann, in
her novel  Invitation to the Waltz , goes Lawrence one better or,
rather, one worse. Her war-blinded hero, although he appears to be
living a respectable life, is portrayed as if for all practical
purposes he were a walking corpse. He leads, we are told,  a
counterfeit of life bred from his murdered youth.  And when he
brings himself somehow to dance with a former sweetheart, it is a
sorry spectacle:  She danced with him,  says the author,  in love
and sorrow. He held her close to him, and he was far away from her,
far from the music, buried and indifferent. She danced with his
youth and his death.  13

      For writers such as these, the supposed tragedy of blindness
is so unbearable that only two solutions can be imagined: either
the victim must be cured or he must be killed. A typical
illustration is Susan Glaspell's  The Glory of the Conquered , of
which an unkind critic has written:  It is a rather easy solution
of the problem to make her hero die at the end of the book, but
probably the author did not know what else to do with him. 14

      Let us now leave tragedy and move to foolishness and
helplessness. The blind man as a figure of fun and the butt of
ridicule is no doubt as old as farce and slapstick. In the Middle
Ages the role was regularly acted out on festive holidays when
blind beggars were rounded up and outfitted in donkey's ears, than
made to gibber and gesticulate to the delight of country bumpkins.
Reflecting this general hilarity, Chaucer (in  The Merchant's Tale
) presents a young wife, married to an old blind man, who deceives
him by meeting her lover in a tree while taking the husband for a
walk. The Chaucerian twist is that the old man suddenly regains his
sight as the couple are making love in the branches whereupon the
quick-witted girl explains that her amorous behavior was solely for
the purpose of restoring his sight. Shakespeare is just as bad. He
makes the blinded Gloucester in  King Lear  so thoroughly confused
and helpless that he can be persuaded of anything and deceived by
any trick. Isaac, in the Old Testament, is duped by his son Jacob,
who masquerades as Esau, disguising himself in goatskins, and
substituting kid meat for the venison his father craves all without
a glimmer of recognition on the part of the old man, who must have
taken leave of the rest of his senses as well as his sense of
sight.

      An unusually harsh example of the duping of blind people is
found in the sixteenth-century play  Der Eulenspiegel mit den
Blinden . The hero meets three blind beggars and promises them a
valuable coin to pay for their food and lodging at a nearby inn;
but when they all reach out for the money, he gives it to none of
them, and each supposes that the others have received it. You can
imagine the so-called  funny ending.  After they go to the inn and
dine lavishly, the innkeeper demands his payment; and each of the
blind beggars thereupon accuses the others of lying, thievery, and
assorted crimes. The innkeeper shouting  You people defraud
everyone!  drives the three into his pigsty and locks the gate,
lamenting to his wife:  What shall we do with them, let them go
without punishment after they have eaten and drunk so much, for
nothing? But if we keep them, they will spread lice and fleas and
we will have to feed them. I wish they were on the gallows. 15 The
play has a  happy ending,  but what an image persists of the
character of those who are blind: criminal and corrupt, contagious
and contaminated, confounded and confused, wandering homeless and
helpless in an alien landscape. Their book of life might well be
called  Gullible's Travels. 

      The helpless blind man is a universal stereotype. In
Maeterlinck's play,  The Blind , all of the characters are
portrayed as sightless in order to make a philosophical point; but
what emerges on the stage is a ridiculous tableau of groping,
groaning, and grasping at the air.

      One of the very worst offenders against the truth about
blindness is the eminent French author of our own day, Andre Gide,
in  La Symphonie Pastorale . A blind reviewer of the novel has
described it well:  The girl Gertrude at fifteen, before the pastor
begins to educate her, has all the signs of an outright idiot. This
is explained simply as the result of her blindness. [Gide] asserts
that without physical sight one cannot really know the truth.
Gertrude lives happily in the good, pure world the pastor creates
for her. Gertrude knows next to nothing about the evil and pain in
the actual world. As a sightless person she cannot consciously know
sin, is blissfully ignorant, like Adam and Eve before eating of the
forbidden fruit. Only when her sight is restored does she really
know evil for what it is and recognize sin. Then, on account of the
sinning she has done with the pastor without knowing it was
sinning, she is miserable and commits suicide. 16

      In literature not only is blindness depicted as stupidity but
also as wickedness, the very incarnation of pure evil. The
best-known model is the old pirate  Blind Pew,  in Stevenson's 
Treasure Island . When the young hero, Jim Hawkins, first
encounters Pew, he feels that he  never saw a more dreadful figure 
than this  horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature ; and when Pew
gets the boy in his clutches, Jim observes that he  never heard a
voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's. 17

      A much earlier version of the wicked blind man theme is seen
in the picaresque romance of the sixteenth century,  Lazarillo de -
Tormes . Lazarillo is apprenticed as a guide to an old blind man,
who is the very personification of evil.  When the blind man told
the boy to put his ear to a statue and listen for a peculiar noise,
Lazarillo obeyed. Then the old man knocked the boy's head sharply
against the stone, so his ears rang for three days.  18

      Throughout the ages the connection between blindness and
meanness has been very nearly irresistible to authors, and it has
struck a responsive note with audiences audiences already
conditioned through folklore and fable to believe that blindness
brings out the worst in people. Given the casual cruelty with which
the blind have generally been treated, such villainous caricatures
have also provided a convenient excuse and justification. After
all, if the blind are rascals and rapscallions, they should be
handled accordingly and no pity wasted.

      Alternating with the theme of blindness as perfect evil is
its exact reverse: the theme of blindness as perfect virtue. On the
surface these two popular stereotypes appear to be contradictory;
but it takes no great psychological insight to recognize them as
opposite sides of the same counterfeit coin. What they have in
common is the notion that blindness is a  transforming  event,
entirely removing the victim from the ordinary dimensions of life
and humanity.

      Blindness must either be the product of sin and the devil or
of angels and halos. Of the latter type is Melody, in Laura
Richards' novel of the same name:  The Blind Child,  we are told, 
touched life with her hand, and knew it. She knew every tree of the
forest by its bark; knew when it blossomed, and how. Not a cat or
dog in the village but would leave his own master or mistress at a
single call from Melody. 19 She is not merely virtuous; she is
magical. She rescues a baby from a burning building, cures the sick
by her singing, and redeems alcoholics from the curse of drink.

      It is passing strange, and what is strangest of all is that
this absurd creature is the invention of Laura Richards, the
daughter of Samuel Gridley Howe, a pioneer educator of the blind.
Like Milton, Mrs. Richards knew better. She was betrayed by the
forces of tradition and custom, of folklore and literature. In turn
she betrayed herself and the blind, and gave reinforcement to the
stereotype. Worst of all, she doubtless never knew what she had
done, and thought of herself as a benefactor of the blind and a
champion of their cause. Ignorance is truly the greatest of all
tragedies.

      The sickest of all the romantic illusions is the pious
opinion that blindness is only a blessing in disguise. In  The
Blind Girl of Wittenberg , by John G. Morris, a young man says to
the heroine:  God has deprived you of sight but only that your
heart might be illuminated with more brilliant light.  Every blind
girl I know would have slapped his face for such insulting drivel;
but the reply of this fictional female is worse than the original
remark:  Do you not think, sir,  she says,  that we blind people
have a world within us which is perhaps more beautiful than yours,
and that we have a light within us which shines more brilliantly
than your sun? 20

      So it goes with the saccharine sweet that has robbed us of
humanity and made the legend and hurt our cause. There is Caleb,
the  little blind seer  of James Ludlow's awful novel,  Deborah .
There is Bertha, Dickens's ineffably sweet and noble blind heroine
of  The Cricket on the Hearth , who comes off almost as an
imbecile. There is the self-sacrificing Nydia, in  The Last Days of
Pompeii ; and there is Naomi, in Hall Caine's novel,  Scapegoat .
But enough! It is sweetness without light, and literature without
enlightenment.

      One of the oldest and cruelest themes in the archives of
fiction is the notion of blindness as a punishment for sin. Thus,
Oedipus was blinded as a punishment for incest, and Shakespeare's
Gloucester for adultery. The theme often goes hand in hand with the
stereotype of blindness as a kind of purification rite an act which
wipes the slate clean and transforms human character into purity
and goodness. So Amyas Leigh, in Kingsley's  Westward Ho , having
been blinded by a stroke of lightning, is instantly converted from
a crook to a saint.

      Running like an ugly stain through many of these master plots
and, perhaps, in a subtle way underlying all of them is the image
of blindness as  dehumanization , a kind of banishment from the
world of normal life and relationships. Neither Dickens's blind
Bertha, nor Bulwer-Lytton's Nydia, when they find themselves in
love, have the slightest idea that anybody could ever love them
back nor does the reader; nor, for that matter, do the other
characters in the novels. Kipling, in a story entitled  They, 
tells of a charming and apparently competent blind woman, Miss
Florence, who loves children but  of course  cannot have any of her
own. Kipling doesn't say why she can't, but it's plain that she is
unable to imagine a blind person either married or raising
children. Miss Florence, however, is magically compensated. She is
surrounded on her estate by the ghosts of little children who have
died in the neighborhood and have thereupon rushed to her in
spirit. We are not meant to infer that she is as crazy as a hoot
owl only that she is  blind , and therefore entitled to her spooky
fantasies.

      The last of the popular literary themes is that which deals
with blindness not literally but symbolically, for purposes of
satire or parable. From folklore to film the image recurs of
blindness as a form of death or damnation, or as a symbol of other
kinds of unseeing (as in the maxim,  where there is no vision, the
people perish).  In this category would come H.G. Well's classic 
The Country of the Blind ; also,  The Planet of the Blind , by Paul
Corey; and Maeterlinck's  The Blind . In the short story by Conrad
Aiken,  Silent Snow, Secret Snow,  blindness becomes a metaphor for
schizophrenia.

      In virtually all of these symbolic treatments, there is an
implied acceptance of blindness as a state of ignorance and
confusion, of the inversion of normal perceptions and values, and
of a condition equal to if not worse than death. The havoc wrought
upon the lives of blind people in ages past by these literary
traditions is done, and it cannot be undone; but the future is yet
to be determined. And that future, shaped by the instrument of
truth, will be determined by us. Self-aware and self-reliant
neither unreasonably belligerent nor unduly self-effacing we must,
in a matter-of-fact way, take up the challenge of determining our
own destiny. We know who we are; we know what we can do; and we
know how to act in concert.

      And what can we learn from this study of literature? What
does it all mean? For one thing, it places in totally new
perspective the pronouncements and writings of many of the
so-called  experts  who today hold forth in the field of work with
the blind. They tell us (these would-be  professionals,  these
hirelings of the American Foundation for the Blind and HEW, these
pseudoscientists with their government grants and lofty titles and
impressive papers) that blindness is not just the loss of sight,
but a total transformation of the person. They tell us that
blindness is not merely a loss to the eyes, but to the personality
as well that it is a death, a blow to the very being of the
individual. They tell us that the eye is a sex symbol, and that the
blind person cannot be a  whole man  or, for that matter,
presumably a whole woman either. They tell us that we have multiple 
lacks and losses. 21

      The American Foundation for the Blind devises a 239-page
guidebook22 for our  personal management,  with sixteen steps to
help us take a bath, and specific techniques for clapping our hands
and shaking our heads. We are given detailed instructions for
buttering our bread, tying our shoes, and even understanding the
meaning of the words  up and down.  And all of this is done with
federal grants, and much insistence that it is new discovery and
modern thought.

      But our study of literature gives it the lie. These are not
new concepts. They are as unenlightened as the Middle Ages. They
are as old as Oedipus Rex. As for science, they have about as much
of it as man's ancient fear of the dark. They are not fact, but
fiction; not new truths, but medieval witchcraft, decked out in
modern garb computerized mythology. What we have bought with our
federal tax dollars and our technology and our numerous government
grants is only a restatement of the tired old fables of primitive
astrology and dread of the night.

      And let us not forget NAC (The National Accreditation Council
for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped). When the
members of NAC and its accredited minions try to act as our
custodians and wardens, they are only behaving in the time honored
way of the Elizabethan  keepers of the poor.  When they seek to
deck us out in donkey's ears and try to make us gibber and
gesticulate, they are only attempting what the country bumpkins of
600 years ago did with better grace and more efficiency.

      We have repudiated these false myths of our inferiority and
helplessness. We have rejected the notion of magical powers and
special innocence and naivete. Those who would try to compel us to
live in the past would do well to look to their going. Once people
have tasted freedom, they cannot go back. We will never again
return to the ward status and second-class citizenship of the old
custodialism. There are many of us (sighted and blind alike) who
will take to the streets and fight with our bare hands if we must
before we will let it happen.

      And we must never forget the power of literature. Revolutions
do not begin in the streets, but in the libraries and the
classrooms. It has been so throughout history. In the terrible
battles of the American Civil War, for example, the writers and
poets fought, too. When the Southern armies came to Bull Run, they
brought with them Sir Walter Scott and the image of life he had
taught them to believe. Ivanhoe and brave King Richard stood in the
lines with Stonewall Jackson to hurl the Yankees back. The War
would have ended sooner except for the dreams of the poets. And
when the Northern troops went down to Richmond, through the bloody
miles that barred the way, they carried with them  The Battle Hymn
of the Republic  and Harriet Beecher Stowe. It was Uncle Tom and
little Eliza who fired the shots and led the charges that broke the
Southern lines. Never mind that neither Scott nor Stowe told it
exactly as it was. What they said was believed, and believing made
it come true.

      To the question  Is literature against us?  there can be no
unqualified response. If we consider only the past, the answer is
certainly yes. We have had a bad press. Conventional fiction, like
conventional history, has told it like it isn't. Although there
have been notable exceptions,23 the story has been monotonously and
negatively the same.

      If we consider the present, the answer is mixed. There are
signs of change, but the old stereotypes and the false images still
predominate and they are reinforced and given weight by the
writings and beliefs of many of the  experts  in our own field of
work with the blind.

      If we turn to the future, the answer is that the future in
literature as in life is not predetermined but self-determined. As
we shape our lives, singly and collectively, so will we shape our
literature. Blindness will be a tragedy only if we see ourselves as
authors see us. The contents of the page, in the last analysis,
reflect the conscience of the age. The structure of literature is
but a hall of mirrors, giving us back (in images slightly larger or
smaller than life) exactly what we put in. The challenge for us is
to help our age raise its consciousness and reform its conscience.
We must rid our fiction of fantasy and imbue it with fact. Then we
shall have a literature to match reality, and a popular image of
blindness to match the truth, and our image of ourselves.

      Poetry is the song of the spirit and the language of the
soul. In the drama of our struggle to be free in the story of our
movement and the fight to rid the blind of old custodialism and
man's ancient fear of the dark there are epics which cry to be
written, and songs which ask to be sung. The poets and novelists
can write the words, but we must create the music.

      We stand at a critical time in the history of the blind. If
we falter or turn back, the tragedy of blindness will be great,
indeed. But, of course, we will not falter, and we will not turn
back. Instead, we will go forward with joy in our hearts and a song
of gladness on our lips. The future is ours, and the novelists and
the poets will record it. Come! Join me on the barricades, and we
will make it come true!

      FOOTNOTES

       1. Ernest Bramah,  Best Max Carrados Detective Stories , p.
          6.

       2. Arthur Conan Doyle,  Sir Nigel , p. 102.

       3. Victor Hugo,  The Man Who Laughs , p. 316.

       4. Isabel Ostrander,  At One-Thirty: A Mystery , p. 6.

       5. Baynard Kendrick,  Make Mine Maclain , dust jacket.

       6.  Ibid. , p. 43.

       7. Bramah,  op. cit. , p. 7.

       8. John Milton,  The Portable Milton , pp. 615-616.

       9. Friedrich Schiller, Complete Works of Friedrich Schiller,
          p. 447.

      10. Rudyard Kipling,  Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard -
          Kipling , p. 131.

      11. Ibid. , p. 156.

      12. Ibid. , p. 185.

      13. Rosamond Lehmann,  Invitation to the Waltz , p. 48,
          quoted in Jacob Twersky,  Blindness in Literature .

      14. Jessica L. Langworthy,  Blindness in Fiction: A Study of
          the Attitude of Authors Towards Their Blind Characters, 
          Journal of Applied Psychology , 14:282, 1930.

      15. Twersky,  op. cit. , p. 15.

      16. Ibid. , p. 47

      17. Robert Louis Stevenson,  Treasure Island , p. 36.

      18. The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes , summarized in 
          Magill's Masterplots , p. 2573.

      19. Laura E. Richards,  Melody , pp. 47-48.

      20. John G. Morris,  The Blind Girl of Wittenberg , p. 103.

      21. Reverend Thomas J. Carroll,  Blindness: What It Is, What
          It Does, and How to Live With It . This entire book deals
          with the concept of blindness as a  dying,  and with the
          multiple lacks and losses  of blindness.

      22. American Foundation for the Blind, Inc.,   A Step-by-Step
          Guide to Personal Management for Blind People . This
          entire book is taken up with lists of so-called  how to 
          details about the routines of daily living for blind
          persons.

      23. There is a  tenth  theme to be found here and there on
          the shelves of literature a rare and fugitive image that
          stands out in the literary gloom like a light at the end
          of a tunnel. This image of truth is at least as old as
          Charles Lamb's tale of  Rosamund Gray , which presents an
          elderly blind woman who is not only normally competent
          but normally cantankerous. The image is prominent in two
          of Sir Walter Scott's novels,  Old Mortality  and  The
          Bride of Lammamoor , in both of which blind persons are
          depicted realistically and unsentimentally. It is evident
          again, to the extent at least of the author's knowledge
          and ability, in Wilkie Collins's  Poor Miss Finch ,
          written after Collins had made a serious study of
          Diderot's  Letter on the Blind  (a scientific treatise
          not without its errors but remarkable for its
          understanding). The image is manifest in Charles D.
          Stewart's  Valley Waters , in which there is an important
          character who is blind and yet there is about him no aura
          of miracle nor even of mystery, no brooding or mischief,
          no special powers, nothing in fact but naturalness and
          normality. Similarly, in a novel entitled  Far in the
          Forest , H. Weir Mitchell has drawn from life (so he
          tells us) a formidable but entirely recognizable
          character named Philetus Richmond  who had lost his sight
          at the age of fifty but could still swing an axe with the
          best of the woodsmen. 

      BIBLIOGRAPHY

      American Foundation for the Blind, Inc.,  A Step-by-Step
Guide to Personal Management for Blind People , New York, 1970.

      Barreyre, Gene,  The Blind Ship , New York, Dial, 1926.

      Bramah, Ernest,  Best Max Carrados Detective Stories , New
York, Dover, 1972.

      Bronte, Charlotte,  Jane Eyre , New York, Dutton, 1963.

      Caine, Hall,  The Scapegoat , New York, D. Appleton and
Company, 1879.

      Carroll, Reverend Thomas J.,  Blindness: What It Is, What It
Does, and How To Live With It , Boston, Toronto, Little, Brown and
Company, 1961.

      Chaucer, Geoffrey,  Canterbury Tales , Garden City,
translated by J.U. Nicolson, 1936.

      Collins, Wilkie,  Poor Miss Finch , New York, Harper and
Brothers, 1902.

      Conrad, Joseph,  The End of the Tether , Garden City,
Doubleday, 1951.

      Corey, Paul,  The Planet of the Blind , New York, Paperback
Library, 1969.

      Craig, Dinah Mulock,  John Halifax, Gentleman , New York,
A.L. Burt, nd.

      Davis, William Sterns,  Falaise of the Blessed Voice , New
York, The Macmillan Company, 1904.

      Dickens, Charles,  Barnaby Rudge , New York, Oxford
University Press, 1968.

      Dickens, Charles,  Cricket On the Hearth , London, Oxford
University Press, 1956.

      Diderot, Denis,  Lettre sur les Aveugles , Geneva, E. Droz,
1951.

      Doyle, Arthur Conan,  Sir Nigel , New York, McClure, Philips
and Company, 1906.

      Gide, Andre,  La Symphonie Pastorale , Paris, Gallimard,
1966.

      Glaspell, Susan,  The Glory of the Conquered , New York,
Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1909.

      Hugo, Victor,  The Man Who Laughs , New York, Grosset and
Dunlap, nd.

      Kendrick, Baynard,  Make Mine Maclain , New York, Morrow,
1947.

      Kipling, Rudyard,  Selected Prose and Poetry of Rudyard
Kipling , Garden City, Garden City Publishing Company, 1937.

      Kingsley, Charles,  Westward Ho! , New York, J.F. Taylor and
Company, 1899.

      Lamb, Charles,  The Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind
Margaret , London, 1798.

      Langworthy, Jessica L.,  Blindness in Fiction: A Study of the
Attitude of Authors Toward their Blind Characters,   Journal of
Applied Psychology,  14:282, 1930.

      Lawrence, D.H.,  England, My England and Other Short Stories
, New York, T. Seltzer, 1922.

      Lehmann, Rosamond,  Invitation to the Waltz , New York, 1933.

       Life of Lazarillo de Tormes , 1553, summarized in Magill,
Frank Nathen,  Magill's Masterplots , New York, Salem Press, 1964.

      London, Jack,  The Sea Wolf , New York, Grosset and Dunlap,
1904.

      Ludlow, James M.,  Deborah, A Tale of the Times of Judas
Maccabaeus , New York, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1901.

      Lytton, Bulwer,  The Last Days of Pompeii , Garden City,
International Collectors Library, 1946.

      Maeterlinck, Maurice,  The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck ,
translated by Richard Hovey, New York, Duffield, 1908.

      Marryat, Frederick,  The Little Savage , New York, E.P.
Dutton and Company, 1907.

      Milton, John,  Paradise Lost , New York, Heritage Press,
1940.

      Milton, John,  The Portable Milton , New York, Viking Press,
1949.

      Mitchell, H. Weir,  Far in the Forest , New York, Century
Company, 1899.

      Morris, John G.,  The Blind Girl of Wittenberg ,
Philadelphia,

      Ostrander, Isabel,  At One-Thirty: A Mystery , New York, W.J.
Watt, 1915.

      Richards, Laura E.,  Melody , Boston, Estes and Lauriat,
1897.

      Sachs, Hans,  Der Eulenspiegel mit den Blinden .

      Schiller, Friedrich,  William Tell , translated by Robert
Waller Deering, Boston, Heath, 1961.

      Schiller, Friedrich,  Don Carlos, Infant of Spain ,
translated by Charles E. Passage, New York, Ungar Publishing
Company, 1959.

      Scott, Sir Walter,  Old Mortality , London, Oxford University
Press, 1925.

      Scott, Sir Walter,  The Bride of Lammamoor , London, Oxford
University Press, 1925.

      Shakespeare, William,  King Lear , New Haven, Yale University
Press, 1947.

      Sophocles,  Oedipus Rex , translated by Robert Fitzgerald and
Dudley Fitts, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.

      Sophocles,  Oedipus at Colonnus , translated by Charles R.
Walker, Garden City, Anchor Books, 1966.

      Stagg, Clinton H.,  Thornley Colton, Blind Detective , New
York, G. Howard Watt, 1925.

      Stevenson, Robert Louis,  Treasure Island , Keith Jennison
large-type edition, New York, Watt, nd.

      Stevenson, Robert Louis,  Kidnapped , New York, A.L. Burt,
1883.

      Stewart, Charles D.,  Valley Waters , New York, E.P. Dutton
and Company, 1922.

      Twersky, Jacob,  Blindness in Literature , New York, American
Foundation for the Blind, 1955.

      Wells, H.G.  The Country of the Blind,   Strand Magazine ,
London, 1904.

      West, V. Sackville,  The Dragon in Shallow Waters , New York,
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.

      Kenneth Jernigan's more or less  extra-curricular  talents as
a scholar of history and a critic of culture notably displayed in
the successive banquet speeches dealing with blindness in history
and in literature became increasingly familiar to Federationists
and other readers of the  Braille Monitor  during the seventies
through the publication of a number of informal essays addressed
not to the day-to-day problems of the movement but to more
theoretical, and occasionally playful, matters of thought and
learning. One such essay, which appeared in the  Braille Monitor 
in 1973, was entitled  A Left-Handed Dissertation.  Its satirical
use of analogy served the purpose of underlining the status of the
blind as a minority group, subject to much the same differential
treatment and suspicious regard as other minorities. The analogy of
blindness with left-handedness was on the order of a parable or
cautionary fable, pointing a moral which did not lose its cogency
with the passing of the years.

   A LEFT-HANDED DISSERTATION: OPEN LETTER TO A FEDERATIONIST
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      DEAR COLLEAGUE: You have asked me to comment on a seeming
contradiction in the philosophy of the National Federation of the
Blind. You tell me that, on the one hand, we say the ordinary blind
person can compete on terms of equality with the ordinary sighted
person if he gets proper training and opportunity. You call to my
attention our statement that the average blind person can do the
average job in the average place of business, and do it as well as
his sighted neighbor. You remind me that we tell the world (with
great insistence) that the blind person can be as happy and lead as
full a life as anybody else.

      You tell me that, on the other hand, we say blindness need
not be the great tragedy it has always been considered but that it
can be reduced to the level of a mere physical nuisance. You say
these two propositions seem contradictory and that, if you are to
buy the one, you do not see how you can buy the other. You tell me
you are prepared to accept the fact that the blind can compete and,
therefore, that you are not prepared (unless I can trot out valid
reasons to the contrary) to concede that blindness is a nuisance at
all that is, any more than any other characteristic is a nuisance
to any other person in normal living.

      Let me begin by saying that you have put me in an unusual
position. Ordinarily people want to argue the other way. Most of
them say that it is ridiculous to pretend that blindness can be
reduced to the level of a nuisance since it is obviously a major
tragedy, involving severe problems and extreme limitations, not to
mention emotional distress and psychological disturbance. You,
however, deny that it is even a nuisance and ask me to come up to
the line and prove that it is. Fair enough. I shall try. The very
fact that you can seriously raise such a question shows how much
progress we have made. I doubt that anybody could have done it,
even as recently as twenty years ago.

      To begin with, even if we were to concede (and I don't
concede it, as I will shortly indicate) that there is absolutely
nothing which can be done with sight which cannot be done just as
easily and just as well without it, blindness would still be a
nuisance, as the world is now constituted. Why? Because the world
is planned and structured for the sighted. This does not mean that
blindness need be a terrible tragedy or that the blind are inferior
or that they cannot compete on terms of equality with the sighted.

      For an exact analogy, consider the situation of those who are
left-handed. The world is planned and structured for the
right-handed. Thus, left-handedness is a nuisance and is recognized
as such, especially by the left-handed. Even so, the left-handed
can compete on terms of equality with the right-handed since their
handicap can be reduced to the level of a mere physical nuisance.

      If you are not left-handed (I am not. I am a  normal. ), you
may not have thought of the problems. A left-handed person
ordinarily wears his wristwatch on his right arm. Not to do so is
awkward and causes problems. But the watch is made for the
right-handed. Therefore, when it is worn on the right arm, the stem
is toward the elbow, not the fingers. The watch is inconvenient to
wind, a veritable nuisance.

      Then there are butter knives. Many of them are so constructed
that the left-handed must either spread the butter with the back of
the knife, awkwardly use the right hand, or turn the wrist in a
most uncomfortable way nuisances all. But not of the sort to ruin
one's psyche or cause nightmares, just annoying. The garden variety
can opener (the one you grip in your left hand and turn with your
right that is, if you are  normal ) is made for  normals.  If you
hold it in your right hand and turn it with your left (as any
respectable left-hander is tempted to do), you must either clumsily
reach across it to get at the handle or turn it upside down so that
the handle is conveniently located, in which case it won't work at
all. Likewise, steak knives are usually serrated to favor the
right-handed. Scissors, egg beaters, ice cream dippers, and other
utensils are also made for the same group.

      So are ordinary school desk classroom chairs. How many have
you seen with the arms on the left side? Of course, a few
enlightened schools and colleges (with proper, present-day concern
for the well-being of minorities) have two or three left-handed
chairs in each of their classrooms, but this is the exception
rather than the rule. It succeeds only in earning the ill will of
chauvinist right-handers, who must use the desks when the room is
full and the left-handed are absent. Of course, these occasional
left-handed desks are the most blatant form of tokenism, the
groveling gratitude of occasional left-handed Uncle Toms to the
contrary notwithstanding.

      In at least one case, it would seem, the problem of the
left-handed is not just a side effect of the fact that the world is
constructed for the right-handed but a real, inherent weakness.
When the left-handed person writes with ink (the ballpoint pen was
a blessing, indeed), his hand tends to smear the ink as it drags
over what he has written. Of course, he can hold his hand up as he
writes, but this is an inferior technique, not to mention being
tiresome. Upon closer examination even this apparently inherent
weakness is not really inherent at all but simply another problem
created by society in its catering to the right-handed. There is no
real reason why it is better to begin reading or writing at the
left side of the page and move to the right, except that it is more
efficient and comfortable for the majority, the right-handed. In
fact, it would be just as easy to read or write from the right to
the left (more so for the left-handed), and thus the shoe would be
on the other foot or, more precisely, the pen would be in the other
hand.

      The left-handed have always been considered inferior by the
right-handed. Formerly (in primitive times twenty or thirty years
ago) parents tried to make their left-handed children behave
normally that is, use their right hands. Thereby, they often
created trauma and psychiatric problems causing complexes,
psychoses, and emotional disturbances. Today (in the age of
enlightenment) while parents do not exactly say,  left is
beautiful,  they recognize the rights of minorities and leave their
left-handed progeny to do their own thing.

      (Parenthetically, I might say here that those who work with
the blind are not always so progressive. Parents and especially
educators still try to make the blind child with a little sight
read large type, even when Braille would serve him better and be
more efficient. They put great stress on reading in the  normal 
manner and not being  conspicuous.  They make him ashamed of his
blindness and often cause permanent damage.)

      But back to the left-handed. Regardless of the enlightenment
of parents and teachers, the ancient myth of the inferiority of the
left-handed still lingers to bedevil the lives of that unfortunate
minority. To say that someone has given you a  left-handed
compliment  is not a compliment to the left-handed. It is usually
the left hand that doesn't know what the right hand is doing,
rarely the other way around; and it is the right hand that is
raised, or placed on the Bible, to take an oath. Salutes and the
Pledge of Allegiance are given with the right hand. Divine
Scripture tells us that the good and the evil shall be divided and
that, at the day of judgment, the sheep shall be on the right hand
and the goats on the left, from whence they shall be cast into
outer darkness forever and ever. The guest of honor sits on the
right hand of the host, and in an argument one always wants to be
right. No one ever wants to be left behind. Whether these uses of
the words  left  and  right  are subtleties of language reinforcing
the stereotype and bespeaking deeply ingrained, subconscious
prejudice or whether they are accidental, as the  normals  allege,
who can say? It may simply be that the left-handed are
supersensitive, wearing chips on their shoulders and looking for
insult where none is intended.

      It is hard to make this case, however, when one considers the
word  gauche . The 1971 edition of  Webster's Third New
International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged ,
says:  gauche left, on the left, French lacking in social graces or
ease, tact, and familiarity with polite usage; likely or inclined
to commit social blunders especially from lack of experience or
training lacking finish or exhibiting crudity as in of style, form
or technique) being or designed for use with the left hand:
LEFT-HAND. Synonym see AWKWARD; gauchely adverb : in a gauche
manner AWKWARDLY, CLUMSILY, CRUDELY. 

      Whatever else may be said, there is nothing subtle about all
of that; nor is there anything subtle about the term  bar sinister, 
which comes from the Latin  sinistral , meaning  left-handed.  The
1971 edition of  Webster's Third New International Dictionary of
the English Language, Unabridged , says:  bar sinister the fact or
condition of being of illegitimate birth an enduring stigma, stain,
or reproach (as of improper conduct or irregular status). 
Supersensitive? Quibbling? Not on your life. Left-handers, arise!
You have nothing to lose but your chains. They probably don't fit
you anyway, being made for the right-handed. Look for the new
slogans any day:  Left is lovely,  and  Get righty! 

      As with other oppressed minorities, the subtleties of
language and prejudice carry over into the job market. I know of a
woman, for instance, who lives in Kansas and who sought employment
in a factory in that state. She was interviewed and passed every
test with flying colors. The prospective employer terminated the
interview by telling her,  You are in every way qualified for the
job, and I would hire you immediately, except for your handicap. 
In outrage and indignation she demanded to know what he meant. 
Why,  he said,  it's obvious! You are left-handed. The machines on
our assembly line are made for the right-handed. You would slow
down the entire operation.  This is not fantasy but fact. The
company makes greeting cards. The woman did not get the job.

      If, in truth and in fact, the left-handed woman would have
slowed the assembly line, it is hard to see how the action of the
employer can be called discriminatory. He could not be expected to
buy new machinery simply to give her a job, nor could he be
expected to redesign the entire factory. The  normal  person is
right-handed, and it is reasonable for the factory to be designed
accordingly.

      Or does all of this miss the whole point? Is this not exactly
the way employers and the general public think and talk about the
blind? How did he know she was less efficient? Perhaps she had
alternative techniques. Perhaps, in fact, she could have done the
job better than most of the other people he had on the line. He
decided (based on what he doubtless called  obvious  and  common
sense  reasons) that she couldn't do the work. Accordingly, she was
never even given the opportunity to try. Beware the  obvious,  and
look very carefully at so-called  common sense. 

      Do you still say there is no discrimination against the
left-handed? Probably you do unless you begin to think about it,
until you get the facts and even then, some people will say you are
quibbling, that you are exaggerating. How very like the case of the
blind. How easy to make quick judgments and have all of the
answers, especially when you are not confronted with the problem or
compelled to look at reality.

      From all of this, you can see that the life of the
left-hander is not easy. Nevertheless, his infirmity can be reduced
to the level of a mere nuisance. It need not mean helplessness or
inferiority. It does not necessarily cripple him psychologically.
With reasonable opportunity he can compete on terms of equality
with his right-handed neighbor. The average left-hander can do the
average job in the average place of business and do it as well as
the average right-hander. So far as I can tell, there is no
inherent weakness in left-handedness at all. The problems arise
from the fact that society is structured for the right-handed. But
these problems (annoying though they be) do not keep the
left-handed from leading normal lives or competing with others.
They are at the nuisance level.

      Therefore, even if blindness (like left-handedness) had no
inherent problems, it would still be a nuisance since society is
structured and planned for the sighted sometimes when it could be
arranged more efficiently otherwise. For instance, most windows in
modern buildings are not there for ventilation. They are sealed.
They are there only so that the sighted may look out of them. The
building loses heat in winter and coolness in summer, but the
sighted (the majority) will have their windows.

      I think, however, that blindness is not exactly like
left-handedness. I think there are some things that are inherently
easier to do with sight than without it. For instance, you can
glance down the street and see who is coming. You can look across
a crowded room and tell who is there.

      But here, it seems to me, most people go astray. They assume
that, because you cannot look across the room and see who is there
or enjoy the sunset or look down the street and recognize a friend,
you are confronted with a major tragedy that you are
psychologically crippled, sociologically inferior, and economically
unable to compete. Regardless of the words they use, they feel
(deep down at the gut level) that the blind are necessarily less
fortunate than the sighted. They think that blindness means lack of
ability. Such views are held not only by most of the sighted but by
many of the blind as well. They are also held by many, if not most,
of the professionals in the field of work with the blind. In the 
Journal of Rehabilitation  for January-February, 1966, an article
appeared entitled:  Social Isolation of the Blind: An Underrated
Aspect of Disability and Dependency.  This article was written by
none other than Dr. D. C. MacFarland, Chief of the Office for the
Blind, Social and Rehabilitation Service, Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare. Dr. MacFarland says:

      Let me repeat a statement which I violently oppose. There is
a slowly evolving fiction which can be summed up in the
generalization,  Blindness is a mere inconvenience.  I do not agree
with this, and I do not know what to call such exaggeration in
reverse. I think it has done its share of harm, throwing some very
well-intentioned people off the track about what blindness really
amounts to in people's lives.

      It seems to me that Dr. MacFarland is as far off the track as
the people who contend that blindness is not even important enough
to be considered a nuisance. I think it would be pleasant to look
at a sunset. I think it would be helpful to look across a room and
see who is there, or glance down the street and recognize a friend.
But I know that these things are peripheral to the major concerns
of life. It is true that it is sometimes a nuisance to devise
alternative techniques to get the same results I could have without
effort if I were sighted, but it is just that (a nuisance), not a
tragedy or a psychological crisis or an international incident.

      It seems to me that many of the problems which are regarded
as inherent in blindness are more like those of the left-handed in
other words, created as a natural side effect of the structuring of
society for the sighted. It seems to me that the remaining problems
(those that are truly indigenous to blindness) are usually vastly
overrated and overdramatized.

      Blindness can, indeed, be a tragedy and a veritable hell, but
this is not because of the blindness or anything inherent in it. It
is because of what people have thought about blindness and because
of the deprivations and the denials which result. It is because of
the destructive myths which have existed from the time of the
caveman myths which have equated eyesight with ability, and light
with intelligence and purity. It is because the blind, being part
of the general culture, have tended to accept the public attitudes
and thus have done much to make those attitudes reality.

      As far as I am concerned, all that I have been saying is tied
up with the why and wherefore of the National Federation of the
Blind. If our principal problem is the physical fact of blindness,
I think there is little purpose in organizing. However, the real
problem is not the blindness but the mistaken attitudes about it.
These attitudes can be changed, and we are changing them. The
sighted can also change. They can be shown that we are in no way
inferior to them and that the old ideas were wrong that we are able
to compete with the sighted, play with the sighted, work with the
sighted, and live with the sighted on terms of complete equality.
We the blind can also come to recognize these truths, and we can
live by them.

      For all these reasons I say to you that the blind are able to
compete on terms of absolute equality with the sighted, but I go on
to say that blindness (even when properly dealt with) is still a
physical nuisance. We must avoid the sin and the fallacy of either
extreme. Blindness need not be a tragic hell. It cannot be a total
nullity, lacking all inconvenience. It can, as we of the National
Federation of the Blind say at every opportunity, be reduced to the
level of a mere annoyance. Right on! And let us neither cop out by
selling ourselves short with self-pity and myths of tragic
deprivation, nor lie to ourselves by denying the existence of a
problem. There is no place in our movement for the philosophy of
the self-effacing Uncle Tom, but there is also no place for
unreasonable and unrealistic belligerence. We are not out to  get
sighty. 

     The 1975 convention of the National Federation of the Blind
was again held in Chicago, where the 1972 and 1974 conventions had
been so dynamic and successful. The mood of the delegates was
confident, enthusiastic, and upbeat as President Jernigan reflected
that mood in his banquet address,  Blindness: Is the Public Against
Us. 

      Despite the exclusions and denials,  he said,  we are better
off now than we have ever been. It is not that conditions are worse
today than they were ten or twenty years ago, but only that we are
more aware of them. In the past we wouldn't have known of their
existence, and even if we had, we wouldn't have been able to do
anything about it. Today we are organized, and actively in the
field. The sound in the land is the march of the blind to freedom.
The song is a song of gladness. 

     The situation of the blind, Jernigan said, had to be viewed in
perspective and the behavior of the blind must be flexible enough
to meet the need.  We must use both love and a club,  he said,  and
we must have sense enough to know when to do which long on
compassion, short on hatred; and, above all, not using our
philosophy as a cop out for cowardice or inaction or
rationalization. 

     As to the question posed in the title of his speech, Jernigan
gave a resounding answer of affirmation and buoyant belief in the
future.  The public is not against us,  he said.  Our determination
proclaims it; our gains confirm it; our humanity demands it. 

     This address received a great deal of attention from the media
throughout the nation and led to an invitation to Jernigan to speak
at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington. The luncheon
occurred shortly after the convention, and Jernigan's Press Club
speech (which was a variant of the banquet address) was carried
nationwide on National Public Radio. The complete text of the
banquet address follows:

      BLINDNESS: IS THE PUBLIC AGAINST US

      by Kenneth Jernigan

      When the orange-billed seagull scares from my shadow and
flees from my pass, I look up and see the sun laughing a smile on
the water.

      When mothers and fathers shout and hit their children for
discipline, I look up and see the sun lure transient clouds to
cover her face.

      And when the blind man, dogless, loses his homeward path, I
have seen the stranger straighten his solo way while the sun sets.

      I have wondered: Is there a land where the birds are
unafraid, where the little children are uncried, and the blind
people see 

      Where the sun won't laugh at the seagulls and hide from the
children and leave when the blind man is lonely.

      That poem which appears on the wall of a California coffee
house portrays to a remarkable degree (even if only in microcosm)
both the best and the worst traits of humanity: compassion,
bigotry, sensitivity, obtuseness, concern, arrogance, perceptive
awareness, and a total lack of understanding. Certainly with
respect to blindness it exemplifies every misconception of the
darkest Middle Ages. When the blind man (dogless or otherwise) is
lonelier than others when he has it so bad that the sun itself must
flee from his plight, it is not the blindness which should be
mourned but the social attitudes and the cultural heritage the root
causes of the broken spirit and the blighted soul. Second-class
status and deep despair come not from lack of sight but from lack
of opportunity, lack of acceptance, lack of equal treatment under
the law, and (above all) lack of understanding.

      Not only does the coffee house poet speak about blindness but
also (doubtless without knowing it) he speaks about our reason for
organizing; for if the principal problem we face is the blindness
itself (the physical loss of sight and its alleged inherent
limitations) there is little purpose in collective action. If, as
the poem puts it, the only solution is,  a land where the birds are
unafraid, where the little children are uncried, and the blind
people see,  we had better pack it in and leave it to the experts.
And even then, there will be no real solution; for, (with present
knowledge and foreseeable technology) most of us who are blind
today are going to stay that way, and that is that. If this is
truly the way of it, let us take such comfort as we can from the
doctor, the preacher, and the psychiatrist and let us square our
shoulders and take it alone, not seeking the company of others with
similar affliction, who (at the very best) can only remind us of
what we are not, and what we can never become.

      But, of course, this is not the way of it not at all.
Everything in us rejects it. All of our experience denies it. We
know that with training and opportunity we can compete on terms of
absolute equality with the sighted, and we also know that the
sighted (with education and correct information) can come to accept
us for what we are ordinary human beings, neither especially
blessed nor especially cursed able to make our own way and pay our
own tab.

      This is why the National Federation of the Blind came into
being. In 1940 a small band of blind people from seven states met
at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to begin the movement. At first it
was mostly faith and dreams, but that was over a generation ago.
Today (with more than 50,000 members) we are a nationwide crusade
with local chapters in every state and the District of Columbia. At
an accelerating pace we have become aware of our needs, our
potential, and our identity. An increasing number of the sighted
have also become aware and now march with us; but the mass of the
public, a majority of the media, and most of the social service
agencies still think in pre-Federation terms.

      Deep down (at the gut level) they regard us as inferior,
incompetent, unable to lead an everyday life of joy and sorrow, and
necessarily less fortunate than they. In the past we have tended to
see ourselves as others have seen us. We have accepted the public
view of our limitations and, thus, have done much to make those
limitations a reality. But no more! That day is at an end.

      Our problem is so different from what most people imagine,
that it is hard for them even to comprehend its existence. It is
not the blindness, nor is it that we have lacked sympathy or
goodwill or widespread charity and kindness. We have had plenty of
that too much, in fact.

      Rather, it is that we have not (in present day parlance) been
perceived as a minority. Yet, that is exactly what we are a
minority, with all that the term implies.

      Do I exaggerate? In the summer of 1972 the National
Federation of the Blind held its convention in Chicago. A local
television station sent a black reporter to do coverage. She went
directly to the exhibit room and used most of her film on various
mechanical aids and gadgets. To round out her story, she came to me
and asked that I comment on the value and benefit of it all.

      I responded obliquely, asking her how she would feel if she
were at a national meeting of the NAACP or the Urban League and a
reporter came and said he was there to film the shoe shining and
the watermelon eating contest. She said she wouldn't like it. 
Well,  I said,  suppose the reporter took another tack. Suppose he
wanted to spend all of his time and film on an exhibit of gadgets
and devices incidentally on display as a sidelight of the meeting,
ignoring the real problems which brought the group together in the
first place.  She said she wouldn't like that either. In fact, she
said, it would be worse since the question about the shoe shining
and the watermelons could be easily discredited, while the other
approach was just as bad but far less apparent and, therefore,
probably more restrictive.

      I then told her about a reporter who came to one of our
meetings and said,  I'd like to get pictures of blind persons
bowling and of some of the members with their dogs.  I tried to
explain to him that such a story would be a distortion that we were
there to discuss refusal by employers to let us work, refusal by
airlines to let us ride, refusal by hotels to let us stay, refusal
by society to let us in, and refusal by social service agencies to
let us out. He said he was glad I had told him and that it had been
very helpful and enlightening. Then he added,  Now, could I see the
dogs and the bowlers? I am in quite a rush. 

      As I told this story, the black reporter was obviously
uncomfortable. She seemed truly to understand, but when I asked her
if she still intended to feature the exhibits and the gadgets, she
stuck to her guns.  In the first place,  she said,  I've already
used all of my film. In the second place my editor told me to do
it, so that's the way it has to be.  The television coverage
appeared on schedule usual image, usual distortion. There is
nothing wrong with bowling or dogs or canes or exhibits, but it was
a bad scene.

      A year later (in June of 1973) the blind were again in
Chicago this time for a different reason. The National
Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually
Handicapped (NAC) was meeting, and the blind were demonstrating and
picketing. Formed in the mid-1960s by the American Foundation for
the Blind, NAC symbolized (as it still does) everything odious and
repulsive in our long and painful tradition custodialism by
governmental and private social service agencies, ward status,
vested interest, intimidation, exclusion, and second-class
citizenship. Our attempts to gain representation on NAC's Board
were answered by double-talk and tokenism, by Uncle Toms
representing nobody but themselves and their masters, and by
threats and reprisals. Finally, we had had enough.

      So when (without warning and in violation of its own bylaws
and policies) NAC tried to hide from us by changing its meeting
from Cleveland, Ohio, to an out-of-the-way motel in Chicago (a
motel in the midst of construction and remodeling), we came to
confront them. And not just a few of us, but the blind of the
nation. It was short notice and difficult doing, but we came
hundreds of us, from all over the country: California, New England,
the deep South, and the Midwest.

      It was a day of dramatic importance. It was the first time in
history that the blind as a people (not just a local group or a
given segment but the blind as a people) had mobilized to take to
the streets for collective action. There were state delegations,
placards and signs, marches in downtown Chicago, and a rally at
Civic Center Plaza. Was it newsworthy? By every test known to
journalism, the answer would have to be yes.

      Yet, the  Chicago Tribune  for Thursday, June 21, 1973,
carried not a single line about the demonstrations. It was not that
the  Tribune  forgot us. Far from it. There was not just one, but
two stories about the blind. And what were these stories that were
of such importance as to be more newsworthy than the first national
demonstration by the blind in history? One was headlined  Busy
blind man finds time to help children.  The other was captioned 
Blind, he directs music in city school. 

      What a commentary! It was all there. The blind are especially
talented in music. They are also burdened and deprived. Therefore,
when one of them (instead of just doing the normal thing and
receiving) turns it around and gives to others (particularly,
children), it has human interest and news value. What would have
happened if Martin Luther King had been leading the first black
demonstrations in Chicago and the papers had ignored it printing,
instead,  Busy black man finds time to help children  and  Black,
he directs music in city school ? I think you know what would have
happened, and so do I. There would have been a furor of massive
proportions. Yet, the incidents I have related passed without
notice or ripple, almost as a matter of routine.

      What I have said must be seen in perspective. The  Tribune 
writers and the other members of the Chicago press were not trying
to put us down or conspire against us. They were calling it as they
saw it, writing what tradition had taught them to write. Like any
other cross section of society, they doubtless were (and are)
people of integrity and goodwill. It was not a matter of morals or
motives, but of comprehension. It was all tied up with their
notions about blindness. Pathos, compensatory talents, musical
ability, inspiration, bravery against odds, world of darkness,
heartrending tragedy these they (and even their editors) could
understand: run-of-the-mill, good human interest, no sweat. But the
blind as a minority? Discrimination? Marches? Confrontation with
the social service agencies, the very people who were trying to
help the blind? Ridiculous! The reporters couldn't understand it,
and (at least, at the emotional level) they didn't believe it. So
how could they write it? And even if they did, how could their
editors approve it, or the public buy it? Forget it. Don't think
about it. Let it alone.

      Of course, the attitudes of the press are representative of
the broader society, and the situation is certainly not unique. It
is exactly the way the blacks were treated 50 years ago. They were
lumped together and seen as a single caricature good natured,
irresponsible, rhythmic, shiftless, and a mite dishonest,
second-class all the way. A black person was never shown in a
straight role on the stage or in the movies but only as a
foot-shuffling, jolly simpleton. It was Amos and Andy and Uncle
Remus and Aunt Jemima; and not only the blacks but all of us will
bear the scars for generations to come because of the failure to
understand, the lack of concern to care, and the absence of the
courage to act. Fifty years ago it was the blacks. Today it is the
blind. But we are organized, and we are on the move. We want no
strife or confrontation, but we will do what we have to do. We are
simply no longer willing to be second-class citizens. They tell us
that there is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority.
But we know who we are, and we will never go back.

      Lest you think I am picking on Chicago, let me say that New
York was about the same. In July of 1973 (only a month after the
NAC demonstration in Chicago) the largest group of blind people
ever to assemble anywhere in the world up to that time met in New
York. For almost a week we discussed our hopes and our problems
planned and dreamed. Some 2,000 of us marched on NAC headquarters.
There was a considerable amount of local radio and television
coverage, and a little in the papers. Nationally there was hardly
a ripple. I can only explain it as before.

      It was not conspiracy or deliberate put-down. In some ways it
was worse, for an individual can be made ashamed of prejudice and
repression but rarely of charity and kindness. They didn't
understand it; they didn't believe it; and (above all) they didn't
know how to write it. It didn't fit the image and the
preconception.

      Sometime back a local student chapter of the National
Federation of the Blind undertook to analyze advertisements
mentioning blindness. An ad to help people stop smoking came to
their attention and resulted in the following correspondence:

CAMPANA CORPORATION 
Division of Purex Corporation Limited 
Batavia, Illinois

      Dear Sir:

      At our April meeting, we read part of an advertisement from
your  University Plan to Help People Stop Smoking . The reading
states in part:  Try smoking with your eyes closed and see how much
of smoking is visual. Blind people rarely smoke, not only because
of fire danger, but because they are not influenced by these visual
aspects of smoking.  Since blind people do smoke as much and as
often as their sighted friends, and since blind and sighted alike
have little conscious concern for the fire hazard involved, we
found your advertisement of BANTRON both inaccurate and annoying.

      We hope that you will reread your information concerning
BANTRON, and see the misconceptions about blindness in it so they
may be corrected.

      Thank you very much.

      A courteous letter not unreasonable or belligerent or full of
recrimination. Back came the reply, loud and clear saying, perhaps,
more than its author intended or realized:

      Thank you for your letter of April 29. Your comments about
the sweeping generalizations of blind people not smoking are
well-taken, and did indeed cause me to study the package directions
for Bantron. Although I have yet to know a blind person who did
smoke, I will concede the point on the basis that (a) you are more
expert on the subject than anyone here, and (b) any such
generalization such as blind people fearing fire, left-handed
people being awkward, black people being shiftless, Italians
gangsters, Jews cunning, Germans warlike, or Iowans as corngrowers
is by nature indefensible and inaccurate.

      Unfortunately, Bantron is not a high-volume product and it
may be some time before package directions are next redesigned, and
some time after that before the new directions achieve
distribution. In fact, it may be years before your suggestions bear
tangible fruit. But they have been considered and will be acted
upon when the time finally arrives.

      A casual (one might almost say a cavalier) response. A rather
glib admission that the statements about blindness in the ad were
probably false and that nobody around the office had any real
information on the subject or, for that matter, cared to have any,
one way or another. No recognition that lives might have been
damaged or opportunities lost. Only the godlike statement that   it
may be years before your suggestions bear tangible fruit. But they
have been considered and will be acted upon when the time finally
arrives.  What insensitivity! What contempt! What arrogance!

      What irrefutable proof of the absolute necessity for the
National Federation of the Blind! Yet, they tell us that there is
no discrimination that we are not a minority. But we know who we
are, and we will never go back.

      Not only must we deal with the ad writers and the working
press but also with Mr. Magoo lovable Mr. Magoo. Because he is
almost blind he bumbles and blunders through a series of bloopers
walking into telephone poles and apologizing to them because he
thinks they are people, patting the tops of fire plugs and speaking
to them as children, and walking up half-finished sky-scrapers to
the brink of disaster and ruin. It's funny because he can't see and
makes such stupid goof-ups. Never mind that blindness isn't like
that and that no blind person in the world is so incompetent or
stupid as to hit a telephone pole and believe it's a human or think
the top of a fire plug feels like the head of a child or wander up
the girders of an open building. It fits the stereotype, so it's
hilariously comical.

      But what does it do to blind people to our public image and
our private lives? A few weeks back I received a call from a blind
woman in Indianapolis. She said,  The other day I was at the home
of a friend, who is also blind, and her four-year-old son was
watching Mr. Magoo on television. He turned to his mother in hurt
and bewilderment and said, `Mother, why are they making fun of
you?'  My caller went on to tell me that later that same week she
was walking down the street when a small child spit on her and
said,  You're old Mr. Magoo.  She was so shaken by the two
incidents coming together that she called to ask what the
Federation could do about it.

      Of course, this negative behavior is not surprising from
small children, or even from the public at large; but surely we
have the right to expect better from the social service agencies,
the very people who are supposedly knowledgeable and established to
help us. Yet, an outfit in Seattle calling itself Community
Services for the Blind (ultrarespectable and approved by the United
Way) decided this spring to make Mr. Magoo the principal focus of
its pubic relations and funding. The leaders of our Washington
affiliate protested, but to no avail. A blind man on the Community
Services board (Uncle Toms are, indeed, pathetic; and we have our
full quota) thought it was funny, and even constructive. But the
board's sighted president put it all in perspective:

      The advertising message [he said in a letter to one of our
members] is especially directed at people who are  responsible  for
the blind not the blind themselves. We don't feel the blind person
will tend to identify himself with Mr. Magoo, necessarily; in fact,
many may not even know who he is. If there is any kind of a
negative aspect in the fact that Mr. Magoo has poor eyesight, it is
all the more effective, just as a crippled child on a muscular
dystrophy poster is more effective than a normal child. [Emphasis
added.]

      What a damning self-indictment! What an ironic commentary on
the end of an era and the death of a system. Yet, they tell us that
there is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority. But
we know who we are, and we will never go back.

      To round out the picture of the public mind, consider the
following recent examples: A man wrote to me a few months ago
saying that he would like to buy a cat or dog for every blind
person in Colorado Springs.  I saw a young blind boy,  he said, 
with a white cane and a puppy dog. He seemed so happy. If you think
it would help I would be glad to see every blind person in Colorado
Springs has a pet. Cat or dog. 

      A dental hygiene student wrote to me from Fresno, California: 
I am working on a research paper,  she said,  concerning the
special needs of visually handicapped or blind people with regard
to dental care. I hope to determine: (1) how the dental procedure
needs to be altered to accommodate them, and (2) special dental
problems of these patients. 

      Recently a blind woman was in the hospital for gall bladder
surgery. A tape on the foot of her bed was inscribed in large
letters:  Patient is blind but self-sufficient.  It's all tied up
in the word   but .  Am I quibbling? Not really. Is it subtle? Not
very.

      An expert on penology and social reform wrote to me to say
that, in his opinion, the blind (regardless of their misdeeds)
should not be put in the penitentiary.  If the seriousness of their
offense merits incarceration,  he said,  they should be dealt with
in a special manner.  In other words, even in the  big house  we
should be second-class and segregated.

      The author of a book on the teaching of medical transcribing
wanted her work put into Braille.  I wrote you,  she said,  because
I have watched the teaching of this subject to the blind over a
period of years and it is unnecessarily painful and lengthy. They
do make first-rate transcribers and always seem so pathetically
grateful for a chance to learn. 

      A religious organization circulates a card called  Courtesies
of Gentleness for the Sighted in Contacts with the Blind.  It says:

      A handshake to a blind person is like a smile to a sighted
person. So shake hands on greeting and on leaving your blind
acquaintance. Never fill to the brim a cup given to a blind person;
it is too hard to keep on an even keel. Give him a refill instead.
Don't express sympathy for a blind person in front of him. In
motoring, guard against slamming the car door on the blind person's
hands. Also see that he doesn't extend his arm or hand outside the
car. Never force an approaching blind person to give you the
right-of-way, for every time he has to deviate from his course, he
loses his bearings. 

      In other words the blind can't plan or do for themselves. Do
it  for  them, and think for them, too. And don't express pity for
them at least, not to their faces. Gentle and courteous all of the
way.

      Incidentally, the Federationist who sent me this card said: 
I find it demeaning and offensive. 

      A doctor at the Mayo Clinic wrote:  I am sorry to say she is
blind and cannot be helped. Anything you can do to make her life
easier would he greatly appreciated. 

      From Pennsylvania comes this:

      Today I was advised by the Department of Labor Inspections
Division that under the new life safety measures, which will
emanate from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, it
will not be possible to allow a blind person to live on the second
floor of a boarding house having more than three guests unless the
building totally conforms with the federal specifications and -
standards.

      Southern College, located in Orlando, Florida, announces: 
Tuition for all students is basically $417 per quarter. There is an
additional quarterly fee of $125 for visually-impaired students. 

      In 1972, James Reston, the well-known syndicated columnist,
commented on Senator Eagleton's forced withdrawal from the
Democratic vice-presidential nomination:  This is not primarily
Eagleton's fault,  Reston said,  but the system's. That system is
very compassionate to human beings whose age and health interfere
with the efficient execution of their work. It tolerates Supreme
Court justices who are in serious ill health or who are even almost
blind. 1

      The key word (as I am sure I don't have to tell you) is  even
. That  even  is at the center of our problem as blind people. It
takes for granted (as an obvious commonplace, needing no argument)
that the blind are unable to perform competently as Supreme Court
justices; in fact, that it is ridiculous even to assume that they
might; and that any system which tolerates such manifest
irrationality can only be explained on the basis of compassion.

      Compassion, indeed! The compassion is often misplaced.
Recently, for instance, we held a luncheon for employers so that
they could get acquainted with blind job applicants, and the East
Moline, Illinois, Metal Products Company saw no reason to come.

       Because of the type of business we are in,  their letter
said,  metal stampings and weldments involving punch presses,
shears, brakes, and welders, we feel that we have nothing to offer
the blind inasmuch as we have nothing in a counting or packaging
type of work. 

      The irony is that one of the people attending the luncheon
(totally blind from childhood) works every day shearing steel and
operating presses. He has done it for 15 years and is considered
the best in the plant.

      In Michigan in 1970 Tom Munn (a blind man) took a State Civil
Service examination for the position of mechanic. He passed with a
score of 96, and his name was placed on the register. He was not
offered employment; others (with lower scores) were hired. In 1972
the Civil Service Commission created a separate list for the
handicapped. Munn's name was transferred from the open register to
the separate list, and his score was reduced from 96 to 70 which
(regardless of performance) was the grade to be given to all
so-called  successful  future blind applicants. Munn requested that
his performance be evaluated. The request was refused. In 1974
(acting on his own) he secured a work trial evaluation with the
Motor Transport Division of the Department of Management and
Budget. He did the job without difficulty. The results were
ignored. In 1975 (his patience finally exhausted) he contemplated
a lawsuit. Officials of the state agency for the blind (the very
people charged by law with the duty to help him) allegedly tried to
coerce him into silence. Tom Munn and the National Federation of
the Blind have now brought action in the federal courts against
both the state agency and the Civil Service Commission. Yet, they
call it compassion and say we are incompetent. They tell us that
there is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority. But
we know who we are, and we will never go back.

      Surely all of this is sufficient, but it is only
illustrative. Southern Illinois University plans to make a study of
the dating and mating selection patterns of the blind; the
Minnesota Braille and Sight Saving School plans a course in sex
education and wants specialized materials and techniques; and the 
National Enquirer  puts it all together in a November 11, 1973,
article entitled  Finds Blindness Upsets Sexual Functioning. 

      The sex drives of the blind, [the article says] are upset by
their inability to see light, states a West German researcher. Dr.
H. J. von Schumann, of Dusseldorfs, said he found that irregular
menstrual cycles in blind women and loss of sexual ability in blind
men seem related to their inability to see light. The
hormone-producing system controlled by the pituitary gland appears
to need stimulation by light if sex hormones it produces are to be
kept at adequate levels.

      Hardened as I am to ignorance and superstition, I still find
it difficult to know exactly what to do with that one. I confess
that I was reluctant even to bring it to you at all for fear some
of the sighted (lacking firsthand experience) might be tempted to
believe it. The demands of modesty and the wish to be seemly would
seem to rule out any attempted refutation by personal laboratory
performance, and the customs and laws of the day make it
inadvisable to stage mass exhibitions to place the matter in
perspective. So I guess the best I can do is this: Pick any random
hundred of us, and put them alongside any random hundred of them;
and I believe we will acquit ourselves with credit and pleasure
probably with volunteers to spare. Ask the sighted with the
background to know.

      What a dreary picture! We are dogless and lonely; we can't
enjoy smoking; we are Mr. Magoo; we need pets to keep us company;
we have different dental needs; we must be segregated, even in the
penitentiary; we should be pitied, but not to our faces; we cannot
live on the second floor of a boarding house; our college tuition
is higher; we cannot shear steel or operate presses; we cannot
compete in the Civil Service but must be content with a separate
list and a score of 70; and, finally, we are even inadequate for
the joys of sex. It would seem that all that is left is to pack it
in; and even that is taken care of in an article on the right to
death by choice appearing in the January, 1974,   Atlantic :  I do
not wish,  the author says,  to survive any accident or disease
resulting in vision too impaired to see or read. A world without
beauty seen is no world for me. A life without freedom and movement
is no life for me. If age and illness deny me these, I choose
death. 2

      So where does all of this leave us? In the first place it
leaves us with the need for perspective; for as the saying goes, we
have never had it so good. Despite the exclusions and the denials,
we are better off now than we have ever been. It is not that
conditions are worse today than they were ten or twenty years ago,
but only that we are more aware of them. In the past we wouldn't
have known of their existence, and even if we had, we wouldn't have
been able to do anything about it.

      Today we are organized, and actively in the field. The sound
in the land is the march of the blind to freedom. The song is a
song of gladness. Yes, there are discriminations and
misconceptions; but there are also joy and promise. The old is
dying, and the new is at hand.

      It is true that not all sighted people have goodwill toward
us, but most do. As we begin to move toward first-class citizenship
(especially, as we insist upon our rights), we will inevitably
provoke hostility; but we will also inspire understanding and
respect.

      If we simply go forth with chips on our shoulders and
bitterness in our hearts, we will lose. We must have greater
flexibility and more positive belief in ourselves than that. There
is a time to fight and a time to refrain from fighting; a time to
persuade; a time to take legal action; a time to make speeches; a
time to educate; a time to be humble; a time to examine ourselves
to root out arrogance, self-deception, and phony excuses for
failure; a time to comfort our fellow blind; and a time to stand
unflinchingly and uncompromisingly with the fury of hell against
impossible odds. Above all, we must understand ourselves and have
compassion in our hearts, for the sighted as well as for our fellow
blind and, yes, even for ourselves. We must have perspective and
patience and the long view; and we must have the ability and the
willingness to make sacrifice, and the courage to refuse to wait.

      We must destroy a system which has kept us in bondage, but we
must not have hatred in our souls for that system or that bondage
for the bitterness will destroy, not our enemies but us. We must
recognize that the system was an indispensable element in making us
what we are, and, therefore, that its chains (properly seen) are
part of our emerging freedom not to be hated or despised but to be
put aside as outdated and no longer to be borne.

      As we look ahead, the world holds more hope than gloom for us
and, best of all, the future is in our own hands. For the first
time in history we can be our own masters and do with our lives
what we will; and the sighted (as they learn who we are and what we
are) can and will work with us as equals and partners. In other
words we are capable of full membership in society, and the sighted
are capable of accepting us as such and, for the most part, they
want to.

      We want no Uncle Toms no sellouts, no apologists, no
rationalizers; but we also want no militant hellraisers or
unbudging radicals. One will hurt our cause as much as the other.
We must win true equality in society, but we must not dehumanize
ourselves in the process; and we must not forget the graces and
amenities, the compassions and courtesies which comprise
civilization itself and distinguish people from animals and life
from existence.

      Let people call us what they will and say what they please
about our motives and our movement. There is only one way for the
blind to achieve first-class citizenship and true equality. It must
be done through collective action and concerted effort; and that
means the National Federation of the Blind. There is no other way,
and those who say otherwise are either uninformed or unwilling to
face the facts. We are the strongest force in the affairs of the
blind today, and we are only at the threshold. We must operate from
a base of power yes; but we must also recognize the
responsibilities of power and the fact that we must build a world
that is worth living in when the war is over and, for that matter,
while we are fighting it. In short, we must use both love and a
club, and we must have sense enough to know when to do which long
on compassion, short on hatred; and, above all, not using our
philosophy as a cop out for cowardice or inaction or
rationalization. We know who we are and what we must do and we will
never go back. The public is not against us. Our determination
proclaims it; our gains confirm it; our humanity demands it. My
brothers and my sisters, the future is ours. Come! Join me on the
barricades, and we will make it come true.

      FOOTNOTES

      1. Reston, James,  System at Fault in Eagleton Case,   The
Kansas City Star , Kansas City (Mo.), July 31, 1972.

      2. Maguire, Daniel C.,  Death by Chance, Death by Choice,  
Atlantic , Boston (Mass.), Jan., 1974.

     When the delegates assembled in Los Angeles for the 1976
National Federation of the Blind convention, they had much to
celebrate. Andrew Adams, the commissioner of the Rehabilitation
Services Administration, had responded affirmatively to their
request that federal funds no longer be used to support the
regressive National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving the
Blind and Visually Handicapped (NAC); the Federation's radio and
television announcements were blanketing the nation; all fifty
states and the District of Columbia were now represented in the
organization; and Federation influence and prestige had never been
greater. It was in this context and setting that the Federation's
President delivered one of his most stirring banquet addresses, 
Blindness: Of Visions and Vultures. 

     He began with a parable concerning a vulture sitting in the
branches of a dead tree, and there were many in the audience who
thought it referred to some of the more custodial agencies in the
blindness system. Repeatedly during the speech President Jernigan
returned to a central theme.  We know who we are,  he said,  and we
will never go back. The vulture sits in the branches of a dead
tree, and we see where the wings join the body. 

     Again in 1976 (as he had done in 1975) Jernigan sounded a note
of optimism and hope.  It is not,  he said,  that our situation is
worse or our problems greater today than in former times. Far from
it. It is only that we have become aware and that our level of
expectation has risen. In other days we would hardly have noticed,
and even if we had, we would not have been organized to communicate
or prepared to resist. We have it better now than we have ever had
it before, and tomorrow is bright with promise. 

     The text of the 1976 banquet address follows:

               BLINDNESS: OF VISIONS AND VULTURES
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      Behold a king took forth his three sons to judge their
fitness to govern the kingdom, and they stopped by a field, where
a vulture sat in the branches of a dead tree. And the king said to
the oldest son,  Shoot but first tell me what you see. 

      And the son replied:  I see the earth and the grass and the
sky.  

      And the king said,  Stop! Enough!  and he said to the next
son,  Shoot but first tell me what you see. 

      And the son replied,  I see the ground and a dead tree with
a vulture sitting in the branches.  

      And the king said,  Stop! Enough!  and he said to his
youngest son,  Shoot but first tell me what you see. 

      And the young man replied, his gaze never wavering,  I see
the place where the wings join the body.  And the shaft went
straight and the vulture fell.

      Yes, a fable. But also a moral a reminder a commitment.

      Last year on July first (ironically, the very day of the
opening of our convention) the news commentator Paul Harvey made a
national radio broadcast. Entitled  Not All Equal,  it said:

      When are we going to stop deluding ourselves about  equality
? A pitiful problem has developed where our Federal and state
governments try to enforce equal job opportunities for the
handicapped. Of course it can't be done. Frequently the handicapped
are turned down for jobs without being told why. The why may
involve higher insurance rates, or installation of special signals
for the deaf or blind.

      Let me confide, he continued, that politicians and the news
media where a concern is humanitarian rarely dare speak out against
the poor, the deprived, the unlovely, or the imperfect. However
impractical the pretense, these thought leaders must continue to
pretend that we are all equal. When, in fact, of course, no two of
us are.

      Harvey rested his case with a quotation from the British
author C. S. Lewis:

      No man who says,  I'm as good as you are  believes it. He
wouldn't say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy
dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum,
nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality is made
only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What
it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness
of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

      So declared Paul Harvey, and the network carried his message
to millions. If the problem we confront comes not from
misconceptions and discrimination but from the very nature of our
condition from our blindness then we should not fight it but face
it. It will do us no good to complain or whimper, nor will it help
to be bitter. Facts are facts, and they should be dealt with as
such straightforward and to the point.

      If the Harvey thesis is right, we have made a tragic mistake
in organizing at all. From a handful in 1940, the National
Federation of the Blind has grown to its present size of more than
fifty thousand members. The reason for the growth is simple. It is
our philosophy, and what that philosophy promises. The Federation
is based on the proposition that the principal problem of blindness
is not the blindness itself, but the mistaken notions and ideas
about blindness which are held by the general public. We of the
Federation believe that the blind (being part of the broader
culture) tend to see themselves as others see them. Accepting the
mistaken public attitudes, we help those attitudes become reality.
Moreover, we believe that the governmental and private service
agencies are also victims of the same misconceptions and
stereotypes and that they make their voluminous studies, plan their
programs, and custodialize their clients, not (as they claim) from
professional expertise and knowledge but from ignorance and
prejudice, absorbed from general culture. Finally, we believe that
when we as blind people accept the second-class role assigned to us
by the agencies and the public, we do it because of social
conditioning, not because of correct information or necessity. We
do it because of fable, not fact.

      This is what the National Federation of the Blind is all
about. It is why we organized. It is why we continue. It explains
our actions and our behavior why we intend to speak for ourselves,
why we demand a voice in the programs affecting us, and why we
insist that only persons chosen by us presume to speak for us.
Others cannot do it even if they are employees or administrators of
agencies, even if they claim to be professional experts, and (for
that matter) even if they are blind. We speak for ourselves; we do
it with our own voice; and we will permit no one else to do it for
us. We have always said (and we say today) that we are able to work
with the sighted, play with the sighted, and live with the sighted
on terms of full equality; and the sighted are capable of accepting
us as equals and partners.

      Yet, if the Paul Harvey thesis is true, our whole philosophy
is a lie. The National Federation of the Blind is not only useless
it is downright destructive; for it promises a future which is
impossible to realize and beckons with a dream which can never come
true. If the Harvey thesis  tells it like it is,  let us repent of
our folly, disband our movement, and apologize for the trouble we
have caused. Let us take whatever charity and kindness society
offers. Let us go our way in acceptance and resignation and let us
do it alone; for there will be no need for concerted action, no
purpose in pretending we are equals.

      But, of course, the Paul Harvey thesis is not true.
Everything in us rejects it. All of our experience denies it. The
facts refute it. It is the very kind of blatant ignorance which
called the Federation into being in the first place and which still
continues to poison the public mind. We want no strife or
confrontation, but we will do what we have to do. We are simply no
longer willing to be second-class citizens. They tell us that there
is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority. But we know
who we are, and we will never go back. The vulture sits in the
branches of a dead tree, and we see where the wings join the body.

      As has always been the case, our principal problem is still
lack of understanding on the part of the public. Some of the
misconceptions we confront are overt; some are subtle. Some are
deadly; others simply ridiculous. Several months ago I received a
letter from a man in Missouri:

       Dear Sir,  he said.  There is a case of a blind girl around
twenty years of age who has been awfully mistreated. I am only a
friend to her and her mother. I couldn't be yellow dog enough to
make love to a Blind and then try to lie out of it and blame
somebody else. 

      Beneath the crudity, that letter speaks with terrible
eloquence, calling up the anguish of the centuries. It spotlights
the problem which we the blind must face. That problem is not, as
Paul Harvey seems to think, centered in questions such as our need
for special signals or the inability of employers to hire us
because their insurance rates might go up. Rather, it deals with
such basics as the refusal to let us compete (with no favors asked)
for jobs we are perfectly well able to fill, denial of our right to
equal treatment under the law, arbitrary rejection (without reason)
of the notion that we can function as competent human beings, and
abridgment of our dignity as persons.

      The discriminations against us are not imaginary, but real
not exceptional but commonplace. The proof is overwhelming and
irrefutable. It is illustrated, for instance, in two recent court
cases. In one a mother was threatened with the loss of her child,
on the grounds that, as the judge put it, she is  industrially
blind, and does not have the ability to care for the child.  In the
other case a married couple was declared unfit to adopt a male
child because, in the words of the husband, it was  felt that a boy
could not relate to me because of my blindness.  It need only be
added that hundreds of blind mothers are successfully caring for
their offspring every day and that adoption of children by blind
parents has occurred repeatedly with no problem. In fact, when the
adoption case in question was successfully concluded (after
considerable conflict with the judge), the boy had no trouble at
all relating to his blind father. Yet, they tell us that the
problem is in us, not society that there is no discrimination and
that the blind are not a minority. But we know who we are, and we
will never go back. The vulture sits in the branches of a dead
tree, and we see where the wings join the body.

      Last year the American Legion Auxiliary of Oregon prohibited
a blind girl (Donna Bell by name) from taking her place as a duly
elected delegate to the annual Oregon Girls State observance. The
rejection was made on grounds that (as a blind girl) she could not
be  physically fit.  This arbitrary ruling was subsequently
reversed at the insistence of Governor Tom McCall, who said of
Donna that  her leadership, character, honesty, scholarship,
cooperativeness,  and her physical fitness  qualify her to be here. 
She attended; she was accepted by her peers; and she performed
without problem or incident.

      In September of 1975 the New Orleans  Times Picayune 
featured the headline:  Blind Children Hate Food, Must Be Force
Fed.  The article which followed quoted a staff member of a
Louisiana institution for the blind and handicapped as saying:  A
blind child would starve to death if you didn't force him to eat
they hate food.  Those of you attending this banquet can judge that
one for yourselves. It has been my experience that we who are blind
stow away about as much food with about as much gusto as anybody
else. But Paul Harvey would probably tell us that our objection to
such ignorance about our eating habits, only proves that we are 
patients,  expressing the  itching, smarting, writhing awareness of
our inferiority which we refuse to accept.  Yet, they tell us that
there is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority. But
we know who we are, and we will never go back. The vulture sits in
the branches of a dead tree, and we see where the wings join the
body.

      The exclusions and discriminations are, of course, not
limited to any geographic area, any age group, or any particular
type of situation. They occur anywhere and everywhere. Witness the
episode of the drugstore proprietor in Matawan, New Jersey, who
informed the blind customer that he should use the back door since
the front of the building is mostly glass. When the customer
persisted in entering through the front door like any other
first-class citizen, he was bluntly ordered to go around to the
back door or never come to the store again. In other words knuckle
under or stay out.

      To be sure this is an extreme case. We are not so often
thrown out as put down. Recently I received a letter from Junerose
Killian, one of our leaders from Connecticut, in which she related
the following:

      The other day, when I was picked up for my class in
Transactional Analysis, the priest whom we also picked up inquired
of the minister who was driving the car:  What clinic are we taking
her to?  Of course, he automatically assumed that I must be a
charity case, and he was astonished to find that I was one of his
colleagues in the class.

      This letter from Connecticut (this drama in microcosm)
symbolizes the attitude of the ages. It refutes Paul Harvey. It
says in graphic and unequivocal terms who we are, why we have
organized, what we must accomplish, what the public-at-large must
learn, and what those who knowingly and deliberately obstruct our
path are invited to do and where they can go. It is a sermon in
miniature, a blueprint for Federationism.

      Shortly after our convention last year Patti Jacobson, who is
one of the Federation's student leaders, responded to a want ad
which appeared in the Lakewood, Colorado,  Sentinel . She tells it
this way:

      I called to inquire about the job and was told to come on
Tuesday for an interview. The ad indicated that the job was for
telephone ticket sales, but no other information was given. I
arrived at the office and was told to speak with Joe Chapman. Upon
noticing that I was blind, he immediately said that I could not
take this job because there were cards with names and addresses on
them, which I could not read. I offered to get the cards Brailled.
I offered to have a reader come and read the cards. Each suggestion
I made was either ignored, or answered rudely. When he began to see
that my suggestions were valid, he started making irrelevant
excuses such as:  Many times these businessmen make excuses, and
you have to know what to say to them,  and  I give directions at
the beginning of each day. and you would have to digest them.  I
ask you, what does blindness or sight have to do with following
directions using one's ears and mind to listen and think? He later
said that he didn't have time to spend with me individually. He
never did say what he would have to do for me that he does not have
to do for the other employees. When I asked him what he does for
the others (I was going to point out that he would do just the same
for me, no more, no less), he rudely said,  That isn't any of your
business. 

      He was even further demeaning by saying,  Believe me, I
understand; I've been down and out, too.  He still clings to the
old notion that all blind persons are down and out. After some
discussion (I was trying to find out more about the job, explain my
qualifications and capabilities, and make suggestions, and Mr.
Chapman was interrupting), he finally told me to leave. When I
would not, because I still had not been interviewed, he threatened
to call the police. I had come down there for an interview, and he
would not grant me that right.

      That is what happened to Patti Jacobson not in another
century or another decade but less than a year ago. It was
occurring in the same month that Paul Harvey was making his
broadcast. Did her demand for equal treatment prove, as Harvey
would apparently contend, that she was inferior and knew it that
she was only feeling the  itching, smarting, writhing awareness  of
second-class status which she (the patient) refused to accept? Or
did her demand prove the exact opposite? She was not asking for
special equipment or special concessions. She was only asking for
the opportunity to try, the chance to fail or succeed on her own
merit: equal treatment, no favors asked. Yet, they tell us that
there is no discrimination that the blind are not a minority. But
we know who we are, and we will never go back. The vulture sits in
the branches of a dead tree, and we see where the wings join the
body.

      It is bad enough when the uncomprehending public believes we
are children or patients, but it is pitifully worse when we believe
it ourselves conditioned by the old assumptions and brainwashed by
the ancient myths. Listen to this self-description by a blind man
in Japan, taken from a Japanese book entitled  How Can I Make What
I Cannot See? 

       If you lose something as big as your eyes,  he says,  then
you're not so greedy about the rest of the world anymore. If you're
not greedy, if you have very few desires, then don't you think that
in the end you have become much richer? Since I've lost my
eyesight, I have found I want very little. My wife guides me around
hand in hand. I don't spend much money. I hear lots of music I
never heard before, and I don't have to witness horrible incidents.
Thus, I have great peace of mind. Doesn't my life sound richer? 

       This,  he concludes,  is what we call the blind man's
heaven.  The worst of it is that these remarks were made in the
course of a lecture to young blind students on what the speaker
called the  positive virtues of blindness. 

      He is, indeed, a cripple; and he will probably bring his
students to the same condition not because of blindness but because
of society and what it has taught him to believe and become. The
tragedy cries out for justice. Yet, Paul Harvey tells us (and the
network carries his message) that the problem is not in society,
but in us.

      Barbara Pierce is one of the leaders of our movement in Ohio.
She is in this audience tonight. She is an attractive, capable,
busy, normal woman married to a college professor, raising a
family, and minding her own business. She works to change
misconceptions where she finds them and recognizes the value of
united action on the part of the blind.

      A few months ago the Public Relations Committee of the
National Federation of the Blind held a seminar, and Barbara
attended.

       The PR seminar was very useful.  she said,  and raised the
level of Federation spirit in the group. I thought you would be
interested in a little piece of public education I managed during
a cab ride on Sunday. Inspired by the conference, I decided to
engage in some spreading of the word. I learned to my consternation
that the cab driver had always assumed that blind girls, as he put
it, `got fixed by doctors so that they would have nothing to worry
about in that way.' I didn't feel equal to inquiring whether the
problem was that blind girls couldn't handle the emotion or the
children. I set him straight, but I learned that you never know
when you will meet extraordinary ideas. 

      As President of the Federation I receive many letters. Some
are brief, and some are long. They cover the entire spectrum of
human experience tragedy, humor, love, hate, joy, sorrow, pathos,
and fear. Through the years I have shared many of these letters
with you in articles, releases, and speeches. Yet, I have never
received a communication which touched me more deeply or spoke more
eloquently than the one I am about to read to you. It says it all
and  tells it like it is.  For obvious reasons I have changed the
names. It was written at the time of last year's convention. Here
it is:

      Dear Mr. Jernigan:

      I am a fully sighted woman, age 23, who is dating a blind
man, age 23. You may know him his name is Jim Smith.

      When I first joined NFB, I did so because I wanted to better
understand the concerns and problems that Jim had. I knew there
were problems and discriminations, but I never knew they were so
overt until just recently.

      Both of us are college educated and now hold very good jobs.
Jim works for the Social Security Commission and I teach blind
children. My philosophy in teaching is that they are just children
and need the same things that all children do. I believe that in
order to teach them, I must look at them first as children and
second as children who need special training in certain areas. If
I can't do this, the only thing I'll teach them is how to be
physically handicapped and blind. Because of my job, I had begun to
understand why Jim was so angry with public attitudes. I, too, have
experienced anger toward people who (when they see my children)
shake their heads and say,  Poor pitiful little thing,  and then
say,  But he's so happy  as if the only thing he's capable of doing
is being pleasant. My children are happy. They also are smart,
sweet, cranky, mean, irritable, etc. They're all the things all
children are. They get discipline when they need it and praise when
they earn it. They are  not  told how wonderful and brave they are.
They are praised for accomplishments and praised for trying as
well. I tell my children that I will never ask them to do anything
that I don't think they can do. I expect them to achieve and they
expect achievement, too. I think this is the only way a blind child
can grow up to be a worthwhile adult. I don't want my children to
think that every little achievement is earth-shattering. All my
children are proud of their accomplishments and they should be they
worked hard for them; but I think it's insulting to the child to go
on and on about how wonderful he is. To me it implies that you
think the child is stupid to begin with and you never had enough
faith in him to think he could do it in the first place. I am
learning Braille now, and Jim is helping me. He praises and
encourages, but he doesn't act as if I've done something out of the
ordinary. I think that is much more of a compliment. I feel as if
he knew I could do it. If he made a big deal out of it, I would
think that he thinks I am somewhat feeble-minded and that it really
is something for such dimwit as me to learn Braille.

      I feel anger toward parents who baby their children and never
permit them or make them do anything. All children fall down, fall
out of swings, bump their heads, etc., and the children I teach
have a right to fall down, too. I know it's hard for some of these
children to do certain things, but they have to try. When you get
these children in a classroom they're almost impossible to teach.
They have been made to feel that they don't have to do anything,
and they'll grow up into adults who think the world owes them a
favor. Another group of parents I detest are the ones who are
ashamed of their children. These children are also hard to teach.
They feel that they're ugly and unloved. They stay angry and hurt
all the time because they have been made to dislike themselves. I
believe that you have to learn to like and accept yourself first
before you can expect anyone else to. I love my children, and I've
known anger and hurt because of various reactions to them. The
reaction has never been cruel pitying and sickening, yes but not
cruel.

      But this weekend I saw discrimination and cruelty, and for
the first time I fully understood just how important NFB really is.
In my experience I have come in contact with the pitying reaction. 
Poor pitiful little thing. It must be awful to go through life like
that ; the  brave and wonderful syndrome  everything the child does
is somehow beyond the realm of human expectations:  My aren't you
smart!  The child is always described as  special  and  brave ;
nobody expects him to be able to do anything. and when he does,
praise is grossly out of proportion.  Rejection : the child is
ignored or avoided.

      Jim and I have experienced a mixture of all these. Friday
night, Jim and I had some people over for a cookout. I was in the
kitchen fixing baked beans and deviled eggs. Jim came in and asked
if there was something he could do. I asked him to slice the
tomatoes. (I never meant to start a riot. I only wanted the stupid
tomatoes cut up.) One of the other men came in the kitchen and
said,  But, he might cut his finger.  Jim told him that he had cut
tomatoes before and was sure he could do it again. He did so and
soon had a nice plateful. The other man, who stayed to watch, then
took Jim by one arm and the plate of tomatoes in the other to show
everybody what he had done. (A cerebral palsied child who has just
learned to walk doesn't get that much praise.)

      Jim then proceeded to walk out back and light the charcoal.
The same man said,  Are you going to let him do that?  I shrugged
and said,  Why not?  The man jumped up and ran out back. When he
came back, all he could talk about was how remarkable Jim was.

      Everyone calmed down, and we began to eat. Then it started to
rain. Jim got up and said to me,  Are the car windows down?  They
were, so Jim proceeded to run outside to roll them up without his
cane. The other man jumped up and grabbed Jim's cane. He said, 
Does Jim need this?  I said,  No. Don't worry so about him. He's
fine.  Jim came back and we started to eat again. Jim wanted some
more beans, so he went to the stove and got them. The comment then
was,  That is just wonderful.  What is so wonderful about dipping
beans? Jim told me later (after they left) that he felt like taking
a bow after everything he had done. I don't think he did anything
out of the ordinary, and neither does he. The whole night he felt
as if he were on exhibit, and I was experiencing a strong desire to
stand up and scream,  He's not stupid, and he's not a child. He's
not doing anything terrific, so shut up! 

      It didn't end there. Later on that night, Jim and I made a
trip to the hospital emergency room. He had got into some poison
ivy, and it had spread to his eyes. The nurse on duty was horrible.
She didn't think he was remarkable she thought him to be blind,
deaf, mute, stupid, and incapable of doing anything. She asked me, 
What is his name? Where does he live? Do his eyes itch?  I was
offended and said,  I think he can answer his own questions.  Jim
calmly told her what she wanted to know, but I could tell he was
mad.

      When he went in for treatment, a man came over to me and
said,  You are so wonderful to be kind to that poor man.  I tried
to explain that I felt lucky to have a man like Jim. (And I am.
He's the best thing that ever happened to me. When we're together,
I feel happy and secure and protected. I love him.) After I
finished trying to explain to this man our relationship, he said, 
You mean you're dating him? Why would a pretty little thing like
you want him? He's blind.  Then I said something I should not have
said.  Yes, he is blind, but he's more of a man than you'll ever
be.  Jim came out of treatment then, and we left.

      Saturday afternoon some more friends came over, and we all
went roller skating. It was fun and we all had a good time. When we
got back to Jim's apartment, one of the girls said to me,  You
really are good to Jim. He needs somebody like you.  I told her
that I needed him, too. She then asked me if when we were alone was
he able to do all the things that other men do. You can imagine my
shock at such a question. I assured her that he was.

      By Sunday, I was so overwhelmed with all that had happened I
couldn't even think. Jim knew something was wrong. I told him that
I was okay. He had some cans that needed to be labeled, so I
started doing that on his Brailler. I was putting a label on a can
of pineapple juice. I spelled it wrong. Jim said he had never seen
it written that way. So I cried. He looked utterly shocked that I
was crying over pineapple juice. So he said,  I'm going to ask you
one time what's wrong, and if you don't want to tell me that's
okay, but I'd like to be able to help you with it.  So I told him.

      I told him that I didn't think it was fair, and that I loved
him too much to watch him put up with all that mess. Jim is a
sweet, loving, compassionate, intelligent, sexy, desirable man; and
I love him, and it hurts for everybody else to treat him like some
kind of freak. He's got such a good self-image. And I don't want
that changed. He said,  Honey, take it easy. You'll get used to it. 
No, I won't. I am not going to get used to seeing him insulted.

      I just can't understand what difference it makes whether he
sees or not. One of our friends recently said to me,  You really
are an exceptional person that you can accept Jim.  I said that I
really wasn't, and that I just didn't think about it. She said, 
Oh, it must be hard to forget a thing like that.  I told her that
I didn't try to forget it, I just didn't think about it the same as
you don't think about the fact that someone has brown hair. It
really makes very little difference what color his hair is, and
it's the same way with Jim. I know he can't see, and I don't try to
forget about it, but I don't really think about it. She couldn't
understand. She said,  But it is so obvious.  I told her that she
stopped looking when she saw the glasses and that she couldn't see
the man behind them, and that she was  blinder  than Jim is. One
friend gone.

      The real killer comes when people find out that I'm a special
education teacher. I don't think I need to tell you what they say,
then.

      Jim stayed with me half of the night. He talked to me and
listened to me cry. I hope you understand that I wasn't crying
because I feel sorry for him but because I love him, and it hurts
me when people do such horrible things.

      If you have any suggestions as to what to say to these
people, I would appreciate hearing them.

      Sincerely yours,

      How could I respond to such a letter! Its poignant feeling
and depth of understanding left nothing to be added no room for
elaboration. It said all there was to say. I called the writer and
told her she had strengthened my faith in humanity. I told her the
Federation would never quit until the put-downs and denials were
finished. I said I felt honored to walk by her side in the march to
freedom.

      That march has been long, and the end is not yet in sight.
The road stretches on for decades ahead, and it stretches backward
to the nightmare past of slavery and pain. Yes, I say slavery, and
I mean exactly what I say. I use the word deliberately, for no
black was ever forced with more absolute finality to the sweat of
the cane fields or driven with more terrible rigor to the heat of
the cotton rows than we have been forced to the broom shops and
backwaters and driven to the rocking chairs and asylums. Never mind
that the custody was kindly meant and that more often than not the
lash was pity instead of a whip. It was still a lash, and it still
broke the heart and bruised the spirit. It shriveled the soul and
killed the hope and destroyed the dream. Make no mistake! It was
slavery cruel, degrading, unmitigated slavery. It cut as deep as
the overseer's whip and ground as hard as the owner's boot.

      But that was the past another time and another era. This is
a new day. It is true that the vestiges of slavery still linger.
The drugstore owner still sends us to the back door, and the courts
still tell our women that they cannot keep their children and our
men that they cannot be suitable fathers. We are told that we hate
food, that we cannot go to Girls State, and that we cannot be
interviewed for a job. It is automatically assumed that we are
headed for the clinic instead of the classroom; the cab driver
thinks that all blind girls must be  fixed ; and the sighted woman
weeps for the pain and humiliation of the man she loves. Some of
our own people grovel and simper about  the positive virtues of
blindness,  and Paul Harvey sums it up by telling us that our claim
to equality is simply the  itching, smarting, writhing awareness 
of the inferiority which we (as patients) know we have but refuse
to accept. Doubtless there is not one of us (sighted or blind) who
has totally escaped unscarred from the conditioning. We must wait
until at least the next generation for that. Many of the blind have
not yet fully understood and have, thus, not joined the movement.
Some of our local affiliates are chapters in name only, waiting for
the touch of a leader and the sound of the call to awaken. Much of
our work is still ahead yearning, challenging, needing, and waiting
to be done.

      All of this is true, but we must see it in perspective. It is
not that our situation is worse or our problems greater today than
in former times. Far from it. It is only that we have become aware
and that our level of expectation has risen. In other days we would
hardly have noticed, and even if we had, we would not have been
organized to communicate or prepared to resist. We have it better
now than we have ever had it before, and tomorrow is bright with
promise.

      As we make our advance and set our daily skirmish lines we
come to the fight with gladness not with cringing or fear. We come
with a song on our lips and joy in our hearts, for we have seen the
vision of hope and felt the power of concerted action and
self-belief. In the conflict ahead we will take casualties. We know
it, and we are prepared for it. Whatever the price, we will pay it.
Whatever the cost, we will bear it. The stakes are too high and the
promise too certain to let it be otherwise. We are organized and
moving forward. We will be free and the sighted will accept us as
partners and equals. We know who we are, and we will never go back.
The vulture sits in the branches of a dead tree, and we see where
the wings join the body. Our gaze will not waver. Our shaft will go
straight to the mark, and the vulture will fall. My brothers and my
sisters, the future is ours. Come! Join me on the barricades, and
we will make it come true!

     The termination of the nine-year tenure in office which would
come to be known as the First Jernigan Presidency came with
shocking abruptness in New Orleans in 1977 through the unexpected
resignation of the movement's leader for reasons of health.
Jernigan's resignation, announced at the end of his annual
presidential report to the National Convention, left the delegates
no choice but to agree on a successor to the highest office. They
selected the Federation's Second Vice President, Ralph Sanders, to
fill the vacancy; but, as the  Braille Monitor  was to report, the
voting was unenthusiastic and reluctant. Here is part of what the 
Monitor  had to say about the event:

      When President Jernigan announced his resignation at the
conclusion of the first day of the convention, the room was filled
with cries of  No!  expressing the unwillingness of Federationists
to hear and accept what was being said. As President Jernigan went
on to say that were his health to improve he might one day again
seek the presidency, he was interrupted once more, this time by a
prolonged and tumultuous ovation. This was the first of many
outpourings of the intense affection and loyalty to this man felt
by the members of the Federation. Both responses recalled the
events of a decade earlier when the movement lost the leadership of
another giant in the affairs of the blind.

     Thus ended the period of unparalleled peace and prosperity
within the organized blind movement a period already coming to be
known as the  democratic decade  which had begun with the arrival
of Kenneth Jernigan in the presidency and was closing with his
unsought and unwanted departure. There was one thing more for him
to do before he took his leave: to rise before the largest banquet
audience in Federation history (well over 1,700) and deliver what
was then regarded as his valedictory address. He made the most of
the occasion, as everyone there knew he would taking as his text
the Biblical passage which proclaims  To everything there is a
season.  President Jernigan began by observing:  There was a time
for me to be President of this organization. That time is no more.
A new President now comes to the stage; a new era now begins in the
movement. 

     He went on:  What, then, (at this final banquet on this last
night of my presidency) shall I say to you what that we have not
already jointly discussed and collectively experienced during the
past quarter of a century? In articles and speeches, in public
pronouncements, and in literally thousands of letters I have set
forth my beliefs and declared my faith in the capacity of the blind
and the need for collective action. 

      As President of the Federation, I have always tried to see
our movement in broad context attempting to ease the losses and
temper the victories with a sense of perspective. So, on this
night, let us talk of history and look to the future assessing
where we are by where we have been and where we are going. 

     The attentive audiences at convention banquets through the
democratic decade had often been touched by the eloquence of their
President; but on this warm New Orleans evening, sharing an
historic moment and dreading its inevitable end, they were moved as
rarely before on these significant annual occasions. For they knew,
every man and woman in the throng of Federationists, that they were
not just talking of history here with their leader and mentor they
were making it. This is the speech they heard:

                 TO EVERY THING THERE IS A SEASON
                       by Kenneth Jernigan

      To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose
under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to
plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to
kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build
up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a
time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather
stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from
embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and
a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to
keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to
hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

      Thus it is written in the Scriptures, and thus also it is
written in the experience of our daily lives. To every thing there
is a season. There was a time for me to be President of this
organization. That time is no more. A new President now comes to
the stage; a new era now begins in the movement. It remains for me
to help with the transition and then assume my new role in the
organization.

      What, then, (at this final banquet on this last night of my
Presidency) shall I say to you what that we have not already
jointly discussed and collectively experienced during the past
quarter of a century? In articles and speeches, in public
pronouncements, and in literally thousands of letters I have set
forth my beliefs and declared my faith in the capacity of the blind
and the need for collective action. I have said that what we must
have is not pity but understanding, not custody but opportunity,
not care but acceptance. I say it still and this, too: I have tried
as best I could to match deeds to words to be not merely an
armchair strategist but a frontline soldier as well. There are
scars to prove it; enemies to resent it; and friends to confirm it.
Nothing I can say tonight will change the record. In the words of
the poet:

      The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all
your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor
all your tears wash out a word of it.

      As President of the Federation I have always tried to see our
movement in broad context attempting to ease the losses and temper
the victories with a sense of perspective. So, on this night, let
us talk of history, and look to the future assessing where we are
by where we have been and where we are going.

      In 1940, when the blind came to organize, the situation was
as bleak as it could possibly be. It was bright enough to create
hope and dark enough to make that hope seem impossible. Barely a
handful from seven states met on that day in Wilkes-Barre, -
Pennsylvania, to establish the National Federation of the Blind. In
the climate of growing agency control and custodialism they felt
that freedom would not wait that they must either act then
(regardless of their numbers) or risk losing the opportunity
forever. The majority they sought (the powerful movement of the
organized blind) might never come unless they had the courage to
create it and the dream to believe it. They had that courage they
created that dream and thirty-seven years later we meet here
tonight in our thousands, the strongest force in the affairs of the
blind in the nation.

      It is only when we look back that we realize how far we have
come. In 1940 there was virtually nothing by today's standards: no
rehabilitation, no libraries, no opportunity for higher education,
no rights for sheltered shop employees, no training for the newly
blinded, no money for the elderly, no help for the needy, no jobs
in Federal Civil Service, no chance in business, no hope in the
professions, no state or federal civil rights protection, no
encouragement to venture, and no recognition of dignity or worth.
There were only the put-downs and exclusions, which made of the
blind virtually a subhuman species. It was an atmosphere which
broke the spirit and quenched the hope and killed the dream. But
that was another time, another generation. Whatever else the
National Federation of the Blind may have done, one thing is
certain: It has helped us understand and made us believe in
ourselves, in each other, and in our collective strength. It has
also taught us to fight. In short, it has brought us to see that we
are (in every modern sense of the word) a minority.

      Through painful experience we have learned that our problems
come not from our blindness but from the misconceptions and
misunderstandings of society, not from inferiority but public
attitudes, attitudes which we ourselves still too often unwittingly
accept and thus do much to make reality. With equally painful
experience we have learned that the  professionals  in the very
public and private agencies established to aid us frequently
(instead of helping solve our difficulties) contribute to them. If
(and, of course, there has been much more) the Federation had done
nothing else but give us these understandings, it would have more
than justified its promise. We are now organized, informed, and on
the move. We want no strife or confrontation, but we will do what
we have to do. We are simply no longer willing to be second-class
citizens. They tell us that there is no discrimination that the
blind are not a minority. But we know who we are, and we will never
go back.

      With all our advances, we still face serious problems. Let
anyone who doubts it look at the Gallup Poll taken in January of
1976. It shows that, next to cancer, blindness is the most feared
of all human ailments more than deafness, more than heart disease,
more than mental illness, more than any other possible problem.
This contrasts sharply with our personal experience. We know that,
with training and opportunity, we can reduce blindness to the level
of a mere inconvenience; but we also know that custodialism,
discrimination, denial of opportunity, and put-downs can make of
our blindness a veritable hell as terrible as it has ever been
thought to be. This is why we have organized. It is why the
National Federation of the Blind exists to eliminate the fears,
disseminate the truth, and bring new hope: to the sighted and the
blind alike.

      With the expanding hoard of  professionals  in the field who
must write papers, think up additional services, and find something
to do to occupy their time so as to keep their jobs, enhance their
prestige, and raise their salaries it is not surprising that
traditional fears and misconceptions are reinforced. The ancient
myths and prejudices are absorbed by the  professionals  from the
public and then fed back again in the name of science and expertise
bolstered by computers, sanctified by technology, and financed by
government grants. It is a formidable array, but it is the same old
lie it has always been. We are not inferiors, and we prove it every
day through our personal lives and individual experience.

      The public attitudes about blindness manifest themselves in
every facet of daily existence. Consider, for instance, an item as
simple as a mail-order catalogue. Such a catalogue (called 
Mail-Order USA ) recently came to me with this cover letter:

      I am sure that your members would appreciate learning more
about this book which will help make shopping less of an ordeal.
The families of a blind person can send for catalogues of articles
the person needs, and in the leisure and quiet of his home decide
what he wants to buy no more being stampeded by impatient sales
clerks.

      A lot of food for thought is packed into that brief
statement. Are the blind so frail that they are more likely than
others to find shopping an  ordeal  or be  stampeded  by
salesclerks? And observe that it is not the blind person who is
expected to order the catalogue but his family, who will decide for
him what he wants to buy, and you will notice, in restful
circumstances:  in the quiet of his home. 

      When it comes to cooking and matters related to the kitchen,
both the public and the professionals have a field day. An article
entitled  Arizona Volunteers and Blind Homemakers  in  Food and
Home Notes , a publication issued by the United States Department
of Agriculture, says:  Ever wondered what it's like to be blind?
How would you boil water safely?  Where, one might ask, did the
Agriculture Department get such ideas? We are not left in doubt.
The article goes on to say:  Arrangements worked out through the
American Foundation for the Blind provided expert trainees. Every
trainee practiced skills both as a blind learner and as a teacher. 

      The Arizona episode is not the only experience of the
American Foundation for the Blind with kitchens. The January 24,
1973,  Miami Herald  reported that the Foundation would sponsor six
workshops  for sighted rehabilitation personnel, public health
nurses, and county home demonstration agents to teach homemaking
techniques to blind persons.  Presumably these Foundation-taught
personnel would then go into the homes of the blind to teach skills
and proper attitudes about blindness. Judge for yourself the level
of expectation, the image of blindness, and the probable results
from the following statement by Evelyn Berger, home economist, who
(according to the article)  introduced local women rehabilitation
workers to the challenge of darkness :

       A blind person's kitchen should be simplified as much as
possible,  she said.  High storage areas should be avoided. Pans
used most frequently should be at an accessible level. If the
teacher must leave the room for a minute, leave the person with his
hand on something, such as a chair back, for security. When you
return, announce your arrival with a `Hi, I'm back.' 

      Yes, of course, pans should be at an  accessible level,  and 
high storage areas should be avoided  but no more for the blind
than for anybody else. As for the talk about putting the hand of
the blind person on the back of the chair for security and
cheerfully announcing the teacher's return, that is pure drivel the
sort of thing that makes sensational newspaper reading, perpetuates
public misconceptions, and creates high-paying jobs for dull-witted
custodians.

      Under the circumstances is it any wonder that the following
passage appears in the standard advertising literature for the
Mirro-Matic pressure cooker:

      Braille books for use by sightless people are available
through Mirro. These books include the cooking charts,
instructions, and 32 recipes. Cooking procedure is not given and
must be taught by a sighted person.

      Yet, they tell us that there is no discrimination that the
blind are not a minority. But we know who we are, and we will never
go back.

      Kitchens, with their supposed dangers, seem to hold a special
fascination for those concerned with our welfare. Graduate students
at the Illinois Institute of Technology recently designed a special
kitchen for the blind to (as they put it) help  the sightless
achieve greater independence in a vital area of day-to-day living. 
The September 16, 1976,  Los Angeles Times  quoted the designers as
follows:

      Using the ordinary kitchen can be a disaster for a blind
person. All unnecessary kitchen and outside noise [should] be
eliminated or reduced through soundproofing since blind people use
sound to judge their cooking. The ventilation system [should] be
designed to provide sounds necessary for a blind person's awareness
and control. The kitchen design [should] allow the user's hands to
be as independent of each other as possible to allow better
preparation for emergencies. A rest area [should] be provided to
combat fatigue. The telephone, doorbell, and radio [should] be
located in one area of the kitchen. Work areas [should] have
different textures and raised edges to provide clues for
identification of reference points. Floors [should] have varied
textural surfaces to give blind people awareness of location.
Varied shaped or textured handles [should] be used for ease of
identification. Sinks [should] have a raised edge with small
counter area in front. In addition, the sink might have different
depths and/or shapes helpful in food preparation and washing.
Burners [should] be placed at rear of [the] stove to provide a safe
distance between the user and the heating surface. Storage units
[should] be made vertically mobile eliminating bending and
stretching. Electrical outlets [should] be placed at waist level
with large metal plates for ease of locating. The blind person
should be encouraged to maintain close body contact with his work
area to provide an additional clue to his location.

      What a kitchen! It would be ludicrously funny if it were not
so miserably pathetic and if it had not been seen by millions of
readers to confirm and reinforce their notions of our helplessness.
And where do you suppose it all came from! Where do you think these
graduate students from the Illinois Institute of Technology got
their ideas about blindness? How did they learn what we need, what
we can do, and who we are? Did they come to the blind themselves
(to the largest organization of blind people in the country) to the
National Federation of the Blind with its more than 50,000 members?
No. As the newspaper tells us, they went to the Chicago Lighthouse
for the Blind and the Illinois Institute for the Visually
Handicapped. Yet, these institutions (the Chicago Lighthouse and
its like) sometimes express surprise that the blind resent them and
seek to reform them.

      We stand at the gates and demand to be heard. The hour is
late, and we will not be turned away. We will speak, and they will
listen in peace if we can, in war if we must. We are simply no
longer willing to be second-class citizens. We know who we are, and
we will never go back.

      Not only are the blind thought to need specially designed
kitchens but special apartments as well. Earlier this year, the 
New York Times  carried the headline  Apartment Building for the
Blind Is Planned for Site in Manhattan.  The article said:

      The first apartment building in New York City designed for
the exclusive use of the blind will be built on a vacant site on
West Twenty-third Street, officials of the Associated Blind, Inc.,
said yesterday. 

      The nonprofit group is planning a 12-story structure with 205
apartments. It will include textured doorknobs so that each
resident will know which room he is entering, an emergency call
system in each apartment connected to a central security office,
and specially designed kitchens and bathrooms. 

      New York City is taking the lead in accommodations specially
designed and equipped for the blind, said the chairman of the City
Planning Commission. 

      The apartments will be designed in accordance with new
national HUD standards for the blind and handicapped.

      To add insult to injury all of this mumbo jumbo and
segregation is done in the name of independence and
self-expression. The article ends with a quote from the head of the
agency involved:  We believe blind people should have the right to
express themselves,  he said.

      Yes, we reply, but what does self-expression have to do with
segregated housing? That is the very ghetto from which we are
trying to escape.

      As with other minorities segregation of the blind, once
begun, does not end with housing. Tom Bozikis recently wrote me as
follows:

      In the city of Hammond where I reside, we have what is
reported to be the world's largest Sunday School. What disturbs me
is that this church, the First Baptist Church of Hammond,
segregates those with physical and mental limitations from the rest
of the parishioners.

      There is a Sunday School class for the blind, the deaf, the
crippled, and the mentally retarded. They also have a separate area
in church for the blind, deaf, etc. For example, the blind have a
special section where they sit which is clearly marked and no one
else is allowed to sit there. Even in the area of religion we are
second-class citizens. Does this mean that the blind will be placed
in a special area before the judgment seat?

      Whatever the answer to Tom's question may be, at least one
person believes the blind are especially blessed:  Dear Sir,  a
teacher wrote me a few months ago,  I can find no criminal
statistics in the Annual Uniform Crime Report in which blind people
are a part. I have assumed for 25 years that blind people cannot
become criminals due to this sight limitation.

       I teach a course in the correction and prevention of
delinquency and crime. 

       A 26-year investigation of criminal phenomena has confirmed
the Bible's statement that `if ye were blind ye should have no sin
(crime):. (John 9:41)'. 

       If you have any statistics relative to either delinquent or
criminal behavior among the blind, I shall greatly appreciate a
review of it. 

      By way of answer I sent him a newspaper headlined  Blind Man
Kills Landlady.  I don't know what his reaction was.

      Speaking of crime, I recently received the following letter:

      Reasonably healthy and handsome and sterile caucasian widower
and prison inmate with at least three more years to serve before
parole and who is five feet, ten inches tall and who weighs 150
pounds and who was born on 7 November 1934 would like to make the
acquaintance of a blind lady of virtually any age who has never
been divorced and who is reasonably secure financially. Objects:
matrimony and the mutual happiness of two losers.

      If I cannot please you, blind lady, no man can. The need for
your being reasonably secure financially is in line with my
intention of having a full-time job keeping you happy. We can teach
each other much. My sanity and intelligence are matters of public
record. What have we to lose?

      With a different twist I received a letter from India not
long ago:

      Dear Sir:

      I inquired here through the United States International
Services that your Federation deals with blind females in the
U.S.A. Please send me some details and photos of the blind females
which are unmarried and between age 15 and 25. If some unmarried
blind females want to marry with the young Indians (not blind) then
I can help them. Some few young Indians want to marry with the
blind American ladies. They want to settle themselves in the United
States after their marriage. 

      To be sure, not all of the attitudes about the blind are bad,
but the incidents I have mentioned are not isolated exceptions.
They occur with monotonous frequency. Consider the following
examples:

      Mala Rubinstein (of the famous cosmetics Firm) after working
with the American Foundation for the Blind to (as she put it) 
teach unsighted women how to use a simple collection of cosmetics
to heighten their self-sense of beauty and psychic security  said:

      Nature compensates the blind by giving them a highly
developed sense of touch, knowledge of the contours and planes of
their faces, and a supremely sensitive sense of smell that easily
distinguishes between delicate nuances of fragrance.

      A release from the Division for the Blind and Physically
Handicapped of the Library of Congress last fall said:

      Surely no one would dispute the idea that the one music
library in the nation serving the entire blind and physically
handicapped community should be as good as the best music libraries
serving everyone else. There is even some justification for saying
that this library should provide  better  music library services
than that available to others. It is a well-recognized fact that
music tends to have a greater importance to the blind than to the
sighted.

      When asked by the newspapers why he found it necessary to
make demeaning rules for blind vending stand operators. 
stipulating that they bathe twice daily, obtain dental care at
least twice a year, eat a balanced diet, and shampoo frequently, 
Cleo Dolan (the much-publicized head of the Cleveland Society for
the Blind) defended himself by saying:  A blind person has to be
almost overly cautious, so we set these guidelines.  Mr. Dolan's
rules covered everything from when the blind should change their
underwear to the requirement that they give eight percent of their
monthly gross sales to his agency. The federal courts thought so
little of the civil rights of the blind that they refused to take
jurisdiction. The case (with National Federation of the Blind
backing) is now on appeal.

      Rowe International, Inc., (a company that sells vending
machines) apparently saw no impropriety in the following language
in one of its brochures:

      Rowe International, Inc., and our network of over 40
distributor service centers across the country can provide 

      (1) Guidance in developing a profitable vending program.

      (2) Training of nonhandicapped supervisors in administering
the program.

      (3) Training of the blind operators to serve and maintain the
equipment (by specialists in training the blind). 

      Not long ago I received the following inquiry from a student:

      Dear Sir: I am doing a research paper for a class. I would
like to know, how many or what percentage of the blind marry and if
any steps are taken to prepare them for this part of life. Also
what might be the difficulties or advantages of these marriages?

      I received the following letter from a blind woman in
Connecticut:

      I am tired of feeling like a second-class citizen! My most
recent frustration occurred when I visited a U.S. Post Office to
apply for a passport. I produced my birth certificate, passport
pictures, and completed application. Then the crushing blow: 
Please put your driver's license number on this line.  I replied, 
I'm, sorry, I don't have one; I am legally blind. 

      Though I had numerous credit cards, professional
organizations, a Social Security card as well as bank
identification card with my picture on it, none would suffice.
Finally, my friend, who had accompanied me, was asked to fill out
an affidavit swearing to my identity which required her name,
driver's license, and passport information.

      An article1 published by the American Foundation for the
Blind discusses what is called a severity rating scale for multiply
impaired children, in which different conditions are given a
numerical value according to their severity. Light perception,
total blindness, or blindness before age three is given a severity
rating of ten. Mental disorders and retardation are regarded as
less severe. In the language of the chart:

      An IQ of 49 or below, observed functioning at a level of one
half or less of chronological age, trainable, not educable add
eight. Psychotic. Extreme disorder resulting in a loss of contact
with reality. Common symptoms are hallucinations and distorted
behavior add eight.

      In other words it is 25 percent worse to be blind than to
have an IQ of 49 or be psychotic not to mention that we have a
keener sense of touch and smell than others, that music is more
important to us, that we must be told when to change our underwear,
that we must have nonhandicapped people to supervise us, that our
marriage habits are so peculiar as to warrant special study, and
that we must have a driver's license or do without a passport. Yet,
because of our protests, some people call us militant. In the face
of such prejudice, ignorance, discrimination, gross insensitivity,
and what can only be called downright insanity the wonder is that
we have behaved with such restraint as we have. In the
circumstances our conduct has been mild to a fault, and a model of
propriety but let them wait; we are learning.

      Not all misconceptions and discriminations are as overt as
the ones I have just mentioned. In fact, the majority cloak
themselves in glib generalities about how independent and capable
we are. Al Fisher, one of our members who runs a center for the
blind in Spokane, recently sent me a perfect example:

      We were asked [he said] to speak to a high school class on
child development here. Very early in our discussion we asked how
they felt about blindness and what they thought blind people could
do. Their reaction was that blind people were no different from
anybody else and that a blind person could do about anything he
wanted. Then we started getting into specifics and they were
skeptical about a number of areas. I asked them if they would be
willing to hire a blind person as a babysitter. Not one, including
the teacher, said they would. I'm wondering if they aren't
expressing what they think is a popular position, something with
form but no substance.

      I would say Mr. Fisher sizes it up pretty well. Deep down at
the gut level (at the place where people feel and live) most of the 
professionals  and the general public still believe we are
helpless. It is that simple and that compelling. Some of them don't
know it; most would deny it; and a few just plain don't care and
don't want to be bothered. But the feeling is there, and it is our
biggest problem. Change is occurring, but it is occurring slowly;
and it does not happen by itself. It happens only if we make it
happen, and that is exactly what we are doing, making it happen
often to the anger and consternation of the professionals, and
sometimes to the confusion and bewilderment of the public. But we
are doing it. Regardless of the consequences, we are doing it and
we are going to keep on doing it. That is what the National
Federation of the Blind is all about. There was a time when we did
not know our identity, when we settled for second-class
citizenship, but that time is finished. Never again! There are
blind people in this room (and sighted allies, too) who will take
to the streets and fight with their bare hands if they must to
prevent it. We know who we are, and we will never go back.

      On this last night of my Presidency, as I recall the past and
look to the future, I think of a letter which symbolizes the spirit
of what we are as a movement and speaks to the special relationship
we have developed through the years. It was 1974, and we were going
to Cincinnati to demonstrate against NAC. Some of the Kentuckians
were troubled about the thought of picketing and wrote to ask
exactly what they would be expected to do. I wrote to them as
follows:

      You say that there  seems to be somewhat of a reaction to the
word: demonstration.  As you know, I grew up in the hills of
Tennessee, where the waters ran clear and the loyalties deep. I
doubt that any member of the Federation (either in Kentucky or
anywhere else) had a more conservative upbringing than I.
Picketing, demonstrating, and everything associated with those
words were foreign to me. As I said in Chicago in 1972, I had never
participated in a demonstration in my life never, that is, before
NAC.

      For that matter, I still regard myself as a conservative
citizen, but I cannot stand by and do nothing while NAC remains
unreformed and while I have life and strength. NAC represents
tyranny to the blind. That means tyranny to the blind of Kentucky,
as well as to the blind of other places. It is that simple, and we
cannot avoid our responsibility by telling ourselves it does not
exist.

      In the days of the youth of our nation a man named Andrew
Jackson went down the Mississippi to fight the British at New
Orleans. The backbone of his army consisted of Kentucky riflemen
straight from the edge of the frontier. They were not radicals or
irresponsible hell-raisers, but they would die and be double damned
before they would give up their freedom to the British. I am not
Andrew Jackson, and today's Kentuckians are not the frontiersmen of
the 1800s; but if we meekly bow to NAC, we deserve the second-class
status we will surely get.

      You ask me what is expected of those attending the NAC
demonstration, and I reply that we need every man, woman, and child
we can get to go to the Barkley Americana May 30 to serve as a
visible reminder to the NAC board members that we are free people
and not inferiors that we are not indifferent, not unconcerned, and
not afraid to stand up for our rights. This is what is needed, but
I would not want a single person to go to that meeting who is
unwilling in his heart to go. We need front-line soldiers; but the
army we need must be an army of volunteers, not draftees. We want
no person there in body only, he must bring his heart with him, or
stay at home.

      You ask what is expected of Kentucky, and I answer that I
want you to come as your fathers came with the spirit that crossed
the mountains, settled the wilderness, and fought the British. Do
it, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against us.

      The Kentuckians came to that demonstration, and so did
hundreds of others from throughout the country. So it has been over
the years, and so it will continue to be until we achieve our
goals. When NAC arrives in Portland this summer and in Phoenix this
fall, we will be there to meet them. We will also be wherever else
there is injustice and discrimination against the blind or an
opportunity to make new achievements in the halls of Congress, in
the state capitol buildings, in the television studios, in the
newspaper offices, in the board rooms of the agencies, in the
establishments of commerce, in the classrooms of the universities,
in the luncheons of the civic groups, and on the streets and
sidewalks. We are the blind speaking for ourselves, and no force on
earth will stay our progress.

      And now I come to the hardest part of all, to my final words
as President. For 25 years I have held office in the Federation.
Tomorrow night that comes to an end. I believe the new President we
have elected will lead strongly and with purpose.

      As I leave the Presidency, I go with the knowledge that our
future is bright. It is true that there are problems to be solved
and challenges to be met that the public must be enlightened and
the agencies reformed; but we are on the road, and we have already
come far on the journey. We must see it in perspective. As I said
last year, it is not that our situation is worse or our problems
greater today than in former times. Far from it. It is only that we
have become aware and that our level of expectation has risen. In
other days we would hardly have noticed, and even if we had, we
would not have been organized to communicate or prepared to resist.
We have it better now than we have ever had it before, and tomorrow
yearns with promise.

      As we make our advance and set our daily skirmish lines, we
come to the fight with gladness not with cringing or fear. We come
with a song on our lips and joy in our hearts, for we have seen the
vision of hope and felt the power of Federationism and self-belief.
We are organized and moving forward. We will be free and the
sighted will accept us as partners and equals.

      On this note I leave the Presidency. You have supported and
comforted and loved me in a way that few people have ever
experienced, and, in turn, I have loved you and have sought with
all the wisdom and capacity I possess to lead wisely and well.
Together we have built dreams and marched to the battlefield.
Together we have constructed a mighty movement and brought better
lives to the blind. My brothers and my sisters, the future is ours.
Come! Let us join our new President on the barricades, and we will
make it all come true!

      FOOTNOTE

      1. Graham, Milton D.,  Multiply Impaired Children: An
Experimental Rating Scale,  The New Outlook , March, 1968, pp.
73-81.

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