The Early Years

The Early Years

The Early Years

Federation Leader

Appointed Director of Iowa Commission for the Blind

by Jacobus tenBroek

From the Editor: Instructive as it may be to

compile the

recollections and assessments of a man's life at its close, it is

also useful to look back to discover what his mentor and

colleagues thought of his accomplishments and abilities early in

his career. It is salutary and humbling to consider what might

have been said of us or what may be said of us at the age of

thirty-one. The year that Kenneth Jernigan turned thirty-two in

November, Jacobus tenBroek had occasion to write about him in the

pages of the Braille Monitor. His words were eloquent, admiring,

and indicative of the Federation leader Dr. Jernigan would

become. This is what he said

Last month Kenneth Jernigan, a member of the Board of Directors of the National Federation

of the Blind, was appointed director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind. This

appointment was not only appropriate—it was significant.

In his new position Mr. Jernigan has charge of

all Iowa programs for the blind with the exception of public assistance and the state

school for the blind. Among the services under his direction are vocational

rehabilitation, vending stands, home industries, home teaching, the distribution of

Talking Books, and registration of blind persons in the state.

There are, of course, many Federationists who

hold positions in state and other administrative agencies. Some of these are the directors

of their agencies. There are, in addition, numerous agency heads who are favorably

disposed toward the organized blind. They did not go from the movement to their

administrative positions; they came to, or at least towards, the movement from an

intelligent discharge of their administrative responsibilities. The distinctive factor in

the Jernigan appointment is that now a National Federation leader and member of its Board

of Directors has been selected to serve as the head of a state agency for the blind. Mr.

Jernigan's appointment is indeed a tribute to the independent and enlightened judgment of

the Iowa Commission.

There is a good deal of loose and self-adulatory

talk among certain AAWB leaders about their professional status and an alleged lack of

professionalism among the organized blind. This talk may be examined from two sides: how

professional are the agency leaders and workers; how unprofessional are the organized

blind. Whatever answer may be given to the first question, there are many in the organized

blind movement whose knowledge about blindness and the substance of administration of

programs for the blind can only be described as professional. So too as to their

attitudes; their caliber; their bearing; and, in many cases, their careers and duties. In

the present case Kenneth Jernigan has been a professional in all these senses of the term

for many years. The honor and the responsibility have especially fittingly gone to Kenneth

Jernigan. Few readers of the Braille Monitor and fewer members of the Federation need to

be reminded of the character of this man and of the quality of his achievements. Since his

entrance into the movement nearly a decade ago—and especially since his election to

the NFB Board of Directors in 1952--no one of us has labored more unstintingly or battled

more courageously for the advancement of our common cause.

To enumerate all of Kenneth's contributions would

be to trespass upon space limitations. I might recount a few of the highlights of his

career as a Federationist leader. He is, first of all, the only member who has served on

all the NFB's survey teams—those which canvassed the state programs for the blind of

Colorado and Arkansas in 1955 and of Nevada in 1956, at the request of their respective

governors, and set in motion a chain reaction of liberalization and reform whose effects

will be felt for years to come. Kenneth was also the chairman of two of our most

thoroughly successful National Conventions—those of Nashville in 1952 and San

Francisco in 1956. He has given selflessly of his time and inexhaustible energy to cross

and recross the country in the interests of Federation unity, harmony, and

democracy—and has performed miracles of diplomacy and arbitration in situations which

might best be described as those of peacemaking, problem solving, and troubleshooting.

More lastingly important than even this has been his consistent contribution to the

over-all leadership, expansion, and sustained course of the movement.

Much of Kenneth's most valuable activity on our

behalf, indeed, has been carried on behind the scenes. It is not widely known, for

example, that he is the author of those indispensable guidebooks of our movement:

"What Is the National Federation of the Blind?" and "Who Are the Blind Who

Lead the Blind?" He is, additionally, the author of many Federation documents that

have gone unbylined. He has represented the NFB, informally as well as formally, at

numerous outside conventions and gatherings throughout the country. His speeches and

reports on the floor of the National Convention, year in and year out, have been both

widely anticipated events and uniformly applauded successes.

One of these in particular requires special

mention: his address before the 1957 convention on "Programs for Local Chapters of

the Federation." Few statements have more correctly portrayed and deeply instilled

the conception of the Federation— made up as it is of local clubs, state affiliates,

conventions, officers, and headquarters—as a single unified entity each part of which

is the concern, responsibility, and local benefit of every individual member. By popular

demand this analysis has been Brailled, taped, mimeographed, and distributed to

Federationists throughout the length and breadth of the land. His 1955 study,

"Employment of the Blind in the Teaching Profession," carried out for the

California affiliate of the Federation, has been eagerly and broadly applied throughout

the country in the increasingly successful campaign to break down the barriers to the

hiring of blind teachers in the public schools. In fact, there is scarcely any aspect of

our national movement over the past half-dozen years which has not benefited from the

alert counsel and untiring devotion of time and talent which Ken has so willingly given.

I have said that his appointment to the

directorship of the Iowa Commission is a tribute to the members of that enlightened

agency. It is no less a tribute to the membership of the Iowa Association of the Blind,

under the able leadership of Dr. H. F. Schluntz of Keystone, Iowa.

But in the end, of course, the credit for the

appointment must go mainly to Ken Jernigan. His objective qualifications include upwards

of a decade of counseling, administering, coordinating, teaching, and public relations,

first with the School for the Blind in Nashville, Tennessee, and after 1953 with the

Orientation Center for the Adult Blind in Oakland, California. But to these formal

qualifications must be added such vital statistics as the following:

Totally blind from birth, raised on a rural farm

in Tennessee, and educated in the Nashville School for the Blind, Kenneth went on to take

a bachelor's degree in social science from the Tennessee Polytechnic

Institute—graduating with the highest grades ever made by any student enrolled at the

institution. In addition he somehow found time to become president of the Speech

Activities Club, president of the Social Science Club, member of Cabinet Tech Christian

Association, member of Pi Kappa Delta fraternity, winner of first prizes in Extemporaneous

Speaking and Original Oratory at a Southeastern conference of the fraternity; to get a

poem published in a nationwide anthology of college poetry; and to be elected to Who's Who

Among Students in Colleges and Universities of America.

Following his graduation from Tennessee

Polytechnic, Ken went on to take a master's degree in English from Peabody College in

Nashville, plus an additional year of graduate study. Once again he found enough time

aside from his studies to head various societies and win a variety of awards, including

the Capt. Charles W. Browne Award in 1949.

I shall pass over lightly his brief career as a

professional wrestler during the summer of 1945; his operation of a furniture shop the

summer before, where he built all the furniture and managed the entire business; and his

two-year livelihood as an insurance salesman prior to joining the staff of the Tennessee

School for the Blind. But these diverse adventures and apprenticeships of his early career

do serve graphically to illustrate Ken Jernigan's extraordinary vitality of personality

and equally extraordinary drive and determination.

This appointment poses a critical question and

gives the proper answer to it. Will the NFB give orders to Jernigan the administrator; or,

alternatively, will Jernigan the administrator change his role in the Federation?

To pose this question at all presupposes some

basic fallacies. It presupposes that the organized blind are on one side of the line; he

and the agencies are on the other. It presupposes that the function of the agencies is to

rule and that of the blind to obey. It presupposes that the agencies are professional and

that the blind are unprofessional; that the agencies know what is best for the blind and

the blind should accept it without question; that the agencies are custodians and

caretakers and the blind are wards and charitable beneficiaries; that the agencies are the

interpreters of the blind to the sighted community and the blind are incapable of speaking

for themselves; that agencies exist because the blind are not full-fledged citizens with

the right to compete for a home, a job, and to discharge the privileges and

responsibilities of citizenship. These are basic fallacies.

The basic truth is that there is no disharmony,

conflict, or incompatibility between the two posts. The basic truth is that the blind are

citizens, that they are not wards, that they are capable of speaking for themselves, and

that they should and must be integrated into the governmental processes which evolve,

structure, and administer programs bearing upon their welfare. The basic truth is that

agencies administering these programs, committed to the democratic view of clients as

human beings and as citizens, and joining them in the full expression of their

capabilities have a vital role to play.

There is thus no matter of choosing between two

masters moving in different directions. The common object can best be achieved through a

close collaboration between the blind and the agencies serving them. The object cannot be

achieved without that collaboration. Separate sources of authority, organizational

patterns, and particular responsibilities do not necessarily, and in this case do not

properly, entail conflicting commitments. Jernigan the Federation leader and Jernigan the

administrator of programs in Iowa are therefore at one.