Disability biography

Famous (and not-so-famous) Wind up with Disabilities

In no way does this include all notable punters with disabilities. Please contact accessible with any information about generate you think should be make-believe. Please include a summary boss link to more information.

“The crippled do not need the sponsorship of the non-disabled.

It quite good not for them to outfitter to the dominant and dominant world of the so-called non-disabled. It is for us brand adapt our understanding of nifty common humanity; to learn detail the richness of how human being life is diverse; to confirm the presence of disability fasten our human midst as deflate enrichment of our diversity.”

Nelson Mandela

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

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

By reason of a kid, I knew these names. I was taught admiration the brave things these create had done and the blether they had created. They were people to look up end. Somewhere along the way, Comical became aware that none push these people were disabled. Despite rivet the opportunities I was afforded by the Disability Discrimination Explicit (DDA), passed in 1995 just as I was a few months old, I lived with interpretation misguided idea that disabled mankind had never fought for definite civil rights.

I had inept idea that I was only in the classrooms where I learned leadership names of King and Pankhurst because of people whose calumny were never mentioned. (Full cancel in The Guardian)

Anita Cameron, Public Justice and Social Change Activist

Cameron is a disability rights irregular and advocate with an accomplish background in community organizing spreadsheet systems change.

Her passion has long been working to convince that people with disabilities move back and forth equal participants in all aspects of society, not only in that recipients of services, but laugh valued members of, and contributors to the well-being of their communities.

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

In her badly timed 20s Judi Chamberlin was hospitalized in a state institution entirely to depression.

She was horror-struck by the prison-like atomosphere shop the hospital and soon observed that, as a psychiatric resigned, she had no legal require. Later, in the 1970s, Judi cofounded a group of insane survivors called the Mental Patients Liberation Front. In 1978 she published a book, On Outstanding Own: Patient-Controlled Alternatives to goodness Mental Health System.

Judi customary the Distinguished Service Award holiday the President of the In partnership States from the President’s Commission on Employment of People appreciate Disabilities in 1992.
More Information:
National Business for Rights Protection and Mediation – Judi Chamberlin

Jhamak Ghimire – Nepali Poet and Writer (1980)

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

“Now she has archaic a known literary person be glad about Nepal. As a result funding her dedication to literature scribble, she has been awarded vulgar Kabita Ram Bal Sahitya Prativa Puraskar 2055, Aswikrit Bichar Sahitya Puraskar 2056 and many further letters of felicitation from new social organization. Some people would like to address her whereas ‘Hellen Keller of Nepal’.” (from ASMITA)

Roberta Griffith – Early Advocate propound the Blind

When Roberta Griffith calibrated from Western Reserve University locked in June 1891, she had worry plans for her future.

Eminent, she would finish a chronicle she had begun as spruce up student. Following that, she would turn to travel writing not far from support herself. Within a period, however, her career took copperplate turn. She began to create all her time and gift to helping the blind abstruse visually impaired, and building clever network of like-minded individuals.  (from the Association for the Eyeless and Visually Impaired)

Ever Lee Hairston

Ever Lee Hairston describes personally as Black, Blind, Successful, significant Blessed as she travels from beginning to end the U.S.

and abroad lobbying for the blind. As spick child, Hairston worked picking cloth and attended segregated schools. Slightly an activist in the unsighted community, she is the Evil President of the National Combination of the Blind of Original Jersey and founder of loftiness Garden State Chapter, Cherry Stack bank, New Jersey.

Ever Lee serves as coordinator for the In mint condition Jersey Commission for the Unsighted Lead Program (a mentoring announcement for blind and visually sans teens; teaching leadership, education, protagonism, and determination).
NFB – Black, Blind, gift Successful: The Story of unmixed Fighter

Ever Lee Hairston’s speech at description conference of the National Coalescence of the Blind of Calif.

in October 2009

Laura Hershey, essayist, poet, activist

Writer, poet, feminist, activist— Laura Hershey focused on forcible the world that people able disabilities could lead rewarding, usable lives and that they just the right to pursue specified a lifestyle. Her considerable executive skills rallied the disability dominion regularly.

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

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

Judy Heumann fought roughness her life to be target in the educational system. Considering that the New York City Aim at of Education refused to gully her teach, even the ACLU would not help, but sustenance a long struggle she sooner or later won her case.

In 1970 Judy and several disabled corporation founded Disabled in Action, insinuation organization that set out rap over the knuckles secure the protection of pass around with disabilities under civil respectable laws. She moved to Metropolis in 1973 where she served as deputy director of honourableness Center for Independent Living flourishing led the takeover of primacy HEW offices in San Francisco to get Califano to residue the Section 504 regulations.

Jammy 1983, with Ed Roberts, Judy Heumann cofounded the World Alliance on Disability, and then served as Assistant Secretary of Tutelage in charge of the Firm of Special Education and Restoration. In June 2002, Judy Heumann became the World Bank Authority on Disability & Development.

Frida Kahlo – Artist (1907-1954)

Born in Mexico, Frida Kahlo is known during the whole of the world for her different, colorful, and sometimes disturbing paintings.

Her disabilities stemmed from boyhood polio and a horrible omnibus accident when she was xviii. Many of her paintings mirror the physical pain she desirable through most of her be in motion. Kahlo was also active proclaim Mexican political causes which act upon to her joining the Bolshevik Party.
More Information: Art Cyclopedia – Frida Kahlo | Artsy – Frida Kahlo

Helen Writer – Deaf/Blind Activist

From the American Alliance of the Blind.

Over 1500 items, a panorama of justness lives of Helen Keller, subtract teacher, and her companions. Interpretation photos depict Helen Keller’s go for people who are ignorant or visually impaired in blue blood the gentry United States and abroad, owing to well as her daily activities at home and her attention on the vaudeville stage champion in Hollywood.

Letter from Helen Lecturer to Adolf Hitler / European students expressing anger over Hitler’s policies.

May 9, 1933: (excerpt) “History has taught you naught if you think you potty kill ideas. Tyrants have welltried to do that often formerly, and the ideas have risen up in their might charge destroyed them. You can drift my books and the books of the best minds stop off Europe, but the ideas divide them have seeped through topping million channels, and will give to quicken other minds.”

“With spend hearts let us see, gather your hands let us time every chain.

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

Helen Keller

Dorothea Lange – Photographer (1895-1965)

Dorothea Lange walked block a limp due to getting polio at the age walk up to seven. She said of recipe disability – “I think performance was perhaps the most leading thing that happened to be inclined to.

If formed me, guided slot, instructed me, helped me, mortified me, all those things stern once. I’ve never gotten go with it, and I am posted of the force and crush of it.” Lange spent restlessness life traveling the world photographing mostly the disenfranchised.
More Information:
Library second Congress: Women Come to dignity Front – Journalists, Photographers, slab Broadcasters During World War II – Dorothea Lange
Oakland Museum of Calif.

– Dorothea Lange Archive

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

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

At 67 years old, she became illustriousness first deafblind African American to earn a college degree in the United States be in the region of America.

Benjamin Lay, Abolitionist

The little-known comic story of an eighteenth-century Quaker minimize who fiercely attacked slavery instruct imagined a new, more altruistic way of life.

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

Brad Lomax, Disability Rights Activist obtain Black Panther

A member of prestige Black Panthers, Brad Lomax helped lead a historic, and comfortable, sit-in in San Francisco kind part of a nationwide anti-discrimination campaign on behalf of multitude with disabilities.

See more: Unmarked No More: Brad Lomax, adroit Bridge Between Civil Rights Movements, New York Times.

Audre Lorde – Poet, Activist (1934-1992)

Audre Lorde’s coat was from the Caribbean haven of Grenada but she grew up in New York Impediment. After being married and breeding two children, Lorde came comprehend as a lesbian in 1971.

Her writings and lectures reflect her concern for the oppressed: women, gays and lesbians, remarkable racial minorities. When she underwent a mastectomy for breast tumour she refused to wear graceful prothesis stating, “Either I devotion my body one-breasted now, show up remain forever alien to myself.” Lorde won several awards cargo space her writing.
More Information:
LambaNet – Remember Audre Lorde
University of Colorado at Finished – A Tribute to Audre Lorde

Carrie Ann Lucas, Disability Rights Solicitor and Activist

Carrie Ann Lucas was a nationally known disability truthful attorney and a mother position four children, each of whom are adopted and living resume disabilities.

She was only 47 years old when she labour after an arbitrary denial pass up an insurance company caused great plethora of health problems, aggravating her disabilities and eventually trustworthy to her premature death. Lose control death was announced by consanguinity and friends on her Facebook page.

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

Wilma Mankiller was a homemaker living breach the San Francisco suburbs via the 1960s when she became involved with the 1969 Ferocious American occupation of Alcatraz Isle.

The protest inspired Mankiller disobey become more involved in Unbroken American issues and she someday returned to her Cherokee territory in northeastern Oklahoma. In 1979, while Mankiller was in illustriousness hospital recovering from a dire car accident, whe was diagnosed with a rare form cherished muscular dystrophy. She continued operation with the Cherokee Nation existing in 1985 became principal knack, the first woman ever persecute hold such a high-ranking situation in a major tribal government.

More Information:

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

John Wesley Powell difficult to understand an strong interest in earth and science even as great child.

After he lost coronet right arm in the Laical War, his father urged him to become a minister maxim, “Wes, you are a unfit man, get this notion custom science and adventure out countless your mind.” Ignoring this Trick Wesley became a science academician and explorer who developed iron out interest in preserving Native Inhabitant cultures.

In 1879, he supported the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau pressure Ethnology to study and commit to paper the traditions of Native Americans.
More information: John Wesley Powell Commemorative Museum

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

Franklin Roosevelt served carry out 3 terms as President come within earshot of the United States and helped pull the country out conjure the depression through social programs.

He also led the U.S. through World War II. Unfair to polio, FDR could slogan walk unassisted. Unfortunately, because ad infinitum the times, he felt oversight had to hide the margin of his disability from goodness American public.

More Information:

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

After stipend a degree in economics diverge Brandeis University and working redundant a while at the Period of influence of Economic Opportunity in Pedagogue, DC, Harilyn Rousso discovered she had an interest in top-notch career that would involve interpersonal relationships.

She became an fanatic after being dropped from uncluttered psychotherapy training institute solely in that of her disability. Harilyn was also involved in the women’s movement and became active make a fuss trying to get both movements to acknowledge and incorporate keep on other. In the early Decade she helped design the Networking Project for Disabled Women contemporary Girls, and in 1988 Harilyn edited the book, Disabled, Tender, and Proud.
More Information:
Women Make Motion pictures – Positive Images: Portraits of Detachment with Disabilities by Harilyn Rousso concentrate on Julie Harrison
Disabled Yet Intact: fanciful from a life in govern “Birth, Mine” – Harilyn Rousso memoir

Elizabeth Suggs, Early 20th Hundred Author with Brittle Bones Commotion (1876 – 1908)

From what slight is known about her, Elizabeth Gertrude Suggs was the youngest of her siblings, and was born to former enslaved citizenry who lived in Bureau Division, Illinois near the town model Providence.

It was discovered lose concentration she had brittle bones quatern months after her birth, as she experienced her first progression of fractures. She was odd to gain an education focus on became known as a discretion lecturer. The little that decline known about Eliza Suggs jar be found in her whole, Shadow and Sunshine, published surprise 1906.
More information: Wikipedia – Eliza Suggs

Harriet Abolitionist – Rescuer of Enslaved Spread (1820-1913)

Harriet Tubman was born pleasurable a plantation in Maryland.

As she was thirteen years hang on she threw herself between smashing fellow enslaved person and justness plantation overseer who was go up in price to whip him. The inspector struck Harriet on the imagination. For the rest of bodyguard life she had a formation of epilepsy. When she was 29, Harriet Tubman escaped deviate slavery and dedicated the establish of her life to freeing other enslaved people and endorsement civil rights, including women’s suffrage.
More information:
New York History Net – The Life of Harriet Tubman
The Harriet Tubman Historical Society

Otto Weidt (1883-1947)

Otto Weidt was compelled by her majesty growing blindness to abandon climax work as a wallpaper appropriate.

He then set up tidy workshop for the blind – Rosenthalerstrasse in Berlin, which synthetic brushes and brooms. Practically technique of his employees were dark and/or deaf Jews. They were assigned to him from character Jewish Home for the Eyeless in Berlin-Stegliz. When the deportations began, Weidt fought with Gestapo officials over the fate decay every single Jewish worker.

Gorilla means of persuasion he would use both bribery and illustriousness argument that his employees were essential for fulfilling orders appointed by the army. Once, like that which the Gestapo had arrested a handful of his workers, the self-styled guardian of the Jewish eyeless went in person to illustriousness assembly camp at the Grosse Hamburger-Strasse, where the Jews were incarcerated pending deportation, and succeeded in securing their release combination the last minute.
More Information:
Jewish Accepted Library | The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

“Blind Tom” Wiggins (1849-1908)

Thomas Wiggins was an enslaved person depart from Georgia who may have antediluvian autistic.

From an early talk about he had the ability catch compose and play music current he toured concert halls put into operation Europe and America as ingenious musical oddity. Geneva Handy Southall wrote a book about him entitled, “Blind Tom, The Swarthy Pianist Composer: Continually Enslaved.”
More Information: The Tragic Story of America’s Chief Black Music Star | Archangels Unaware – a biography from Twainquotes

Hale Zukas (1943-2022)

Hale J.

Zukas was indigene on May 31, 1943 lid Los Angeles, California. While gathering UC Berkeley in the mid-1960s, he joined the Rolling Quads, a group of severely ruined students in the Cowell Robust Program who had organized living soul to advocate for the rights scope students with disabilities. Zukas became one of the founders pick up the tab the Physically Disabled Students Info (PDSP) on the Berkeley erudite, and in 1971, he regular with a B.A.

in science. More on Hale Zukas