We have received the following email from our good friend Scott Lissner, the distinguished ADA Coordinator at The Ohio State University. We thought we’d share it on POTB:
I have always felt history is important and September is a rich month of contrasts, the weather turns from summer to autumn, the academic year replaces summer break; both Elvis Presley (9/9/1956) and Star Trek (9/8/1966) broke into our national consciousness; President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (9/22/1862) and President Eisenhower ordered the National Guard to enforce racial integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas (9/24/1957)
I want to highlight two events related to disability. The culmination of state sponsored eugenics programs with the initiation of Germany’s T4 Program that began eliminating individuals with genetic disabilities to so they and their potential children would not burden the state (9/1/1939) and the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act which was the United States first step in guaranteeing civil rights for the disabled (9/26/1973). Below are summaries and resources surrounding these two events
EUGENICS & STATE SANCTIONED DISCRIMINATION
What became known as the T4 Program, and arguably the Nazi Holocaust began 72 years ago. Hitler’s euthanasia decree, dated September 1, 1939, read as follows:
“Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Brandt are charged with the responsibility for expanding the authority of physicians, to be designated by name, to the end that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].”
This effort began with the 1933 less than six months after Hitler became chancellor with the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases” This law established a policy mandating the sterilization of anyone with suffering from diseases considered hereditary including mental illness, cognitive disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. The scientific and social basis for Nazi eugenics program was largely imported from the eugenics movement in the United States where laws in twenty-nine states forced sterilizations on more than 30,000 people between 1907 and 1939.
Forced sterilization and the systematic killing of the disabled where Germany’s first steps in the Holocaust The T4 euthanasia program was both a rehearsal and justification for Nazi Germany’s subsequent genocidal policies. Extended the ideological justification for eliminating the “unfit” from society to other categories of perceived “genetic” threat to society. The gas chambers and accompanying crematorium designed for the T4 campaign where later utilized to murder Jews, Roma, Sinti and other undesirable and the architects of the T4 program became key figures at among killing centers of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
Further Informaiton:
A Teachers Guide to the Holocaust Includes a section on Handicapped: Victims of the Nazi Era, 1933-1945
The Holocaust History Project Includes the entire text of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide Robert Jay Lifton
The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies including The exhibition of the “Hospital” in Hadamar,
Crying Hands: Eugenics and Deaf People in Nazi Germany Horst Biesold
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SECTION 504 AND EMERGING RIGHTS
On September 25th of 1973 President Nixon signed Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In D.C. the Department of Health Education and Welfare began writing the regulations to ensure that the civil rights objectives of Section 504 could be enforced. Here in Columbus the Ohio State University began plans for the Office for Disability Services. Three years later the University was forging ahead to ensure access but the regulations to enforce Section 504 were stalled. On April 5, 1977, thousands of “the disabled” converged on Department of Health, Education and Welfare offices around the country to demand that the equal rights legislation Congress had passed 5 years earlier be implemented. In San Francisco they took over the HEW Office and started what became the longest sit-in occupation of a federal building in U.S. history
At 7:30 A.M. on April 28, 1977 they celebrated victory. The rules implementing Section 504 were signed by HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a civil-rights provision. It does not provide funding for any programs or activities; rather, it is a requirement that accompanies federal funding to organizations such as schools and universities. Any organization that receives federal funds – for any purpose – must comply with section 504. Section 504 laid the ground work for the American’s With Disabilities Act of 1990 which established broad civil rights protections for individuals with disabilities. The community spirit, respect and collaboration that lead to the signing of Section 504 was seen again this past year as the disability community worked with Congress to pass the ADA Amendments Act
“The San Francisco 504 sit-in did not succeed because of a brilliant strategy by a few disability leaders. It succeeded because the Deaf people set up a communication system from the 4th floor windows inside the building to the plaza down below; because the Black Panther Party brought a hot dinner to all 150 participants every single night; because people from community organizing backgrounds taught us how to make collaborative decisions; because friends came and washed our hair in the janitor’s closet sink. The people doing disability rights work in the 1970s rarely agreed on policies, or even on approaches. The successes came because people viewed each other as invaluable resources working towards a common goal.” (Corbett Joan O’Toole, Ragged Edge Online October 19, 2005)
Resources
A Look Back at ‘Section 504’: San Francisco Sit-In a Defining Moment
http://www.npr.org/programs/wesun/features/2002/504/
The 25 Day Siege That Brought Us 504
http://www.independentliving.org/docs4/ervin1986.html
The Section 504 rules: More to the story
http://www.ragged-edge-mag.com/0102/0102ft6.html
Multiple Perspectives On Access Inclusion & Disability Conference
http://ada.osu.edu/conferences/
A History: Disability at Ohio State
http://digitalunion.osu.edu/r2/summer06/kmetz/index.html
Planet of the Blind 