If Blindness Comes: Who are the Blind Who Lead the Blind

If Blindness Comes: Who are the Blind Who Lead the Blind

Who are the Blind Who Lead the Blind
The National Federation of the Blind has become by far the
most significant force in the affairs of the blind today, and its
actions have had an impact on many other groups and programs. The
Federation's President, Marc Maurer, radiates confidence and
persuasiveness. He says, "If I can find twenty people who care
about a thing, then we can get it done. And if there are two
hundred, two thousand, or twenty thousand well, that's even
better." The National Federation of the Blind is a civil rights

President Maurer says, "You can't expect to obtain freedom by
having somebody else hand it to you. You have to do the job
yourself. The French could not have won the American Revolution for
us. That would merely have shifted the governing authority from one
colonial power to another. So, too, we the blind are the only ones
who can win freedom for the blind, which is both frightening and
reassuring. If we don't get out and do what we must, there is no
one to blame but ourselves. We have control of the essential
elements."
Although there are in the United States at the present time
many organizations and agencies for the blind, there is only one
National Federation of the blind. This organization was established
in 1940 when the blind of seven states Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and California sent
delegates to its first convention at Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Since that time progress has been rapid and steady. The Federation
is recognized by blind men and women throughout the entire country
as their primary means of joint expression; and today with active
affiliates in every state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto
Rico it is the primary voice of the nation's blind.
To explain this spectacular growth, three questions must be
asked and answered: (1) What are the conditions in the general
environment of the blind which have impelled them to organize? (2)
What are the purpose, the belief, and the philosophy of the
National Federation of the Blind? (3) Who are its leaders, and what
are their qualifications to understand and solve the problems of
blindness? Even a brief answer to these questions is instructive.
When the Federation came into being in 1940, the outlook for
the blind was certainly not bright. The nation's welfare system was
so discouraging to individual initiative that those who were forced
to accept public assistance had little hope of ever achieving
self-support again, and those who sought competitive employment in
regular industry or the professions found most of the doors barred
against them. The universal good will expressed toward the blind
was not the wholesome good will of respect felt toward equals; it
was the misguided goodwill of pity felt toward inferiors. In effect
the system said to the blind, "Sit on the sidelines of life. This
game is not for you. If you have creative talents, we are sorry,
but we cannot use them." The Federation came into being to combat
these expressions of discrimination and to promote new ways of
thought concerning blindness. Although great progress has been made
toward the achievement of these goals, much still remains to be
done.
The Federation believes that blind people are essentially
normal and that blindness in itself is not a mental or
psychological handicap. It can be reduced to the level of a mere
physical nuisance. Legal, economic, and social discrimination based
upon the false assumption that the blind are somehow different from
the sighted must be abolished, and equality of opportunity must be
made available to blind people. Because of their personal
experience with blindness, the blind themselves are best qualified
to lead the way in solving their own problems, but the general
public should be asked to participate in finding solutions. Upon
these fundamentals the National Federation of the Blind predicates
its philosophy.
As for the leadership of the organization, all of the officers
and members of the Board of Directors are blind, and all give
generously of their time and resources in promoting the work of the
Federation. The Board consists of seventeen elected members, five
of whom are the constitutional officers of the organization. These
members of the Board of Directors represent a wide cross section of
the blind population of the United States. Their backgrounds are
different, and their experiences vary widely; but they are drawn
together by the common bond of having met blindness individually
and successfully in their own lives and by their united desire to
see other blind people have the opportunity to do likewise. A
profile of the leadership of the organization shows why it is so
effective and demonstrates the progress made by blind people during
the past half century for in the story of the lives of these
leaders can be found the greatest testimonial to the soundness of
the Federation's philosophy. The cumulative record of their
individual achievements is an overwhelming proof, leading to an
inescapable conclusion.

DR. JACOBUS tenBROEK
- Author, Jurist, Professor, Founder of the National Federation of the Blind

The moving force in the founding of the National Federation of
the Blind (and its spiritual and intellectual father) was Jacobus
tenBroek. Born in 1911, young tenBroek (the son of a prairie
homesteader in Canada) lost the sight of one eye as the result of
a bow-and-arrow accident at the age of seven. His remaining
eyesight deteriorated until at the age of fourteen he was totally
blind. Shortly afterward he and his family traveled to Berkeley so
that he could attend the California School for the Blind. Within
three years he was an active part of the local organization of the
blind.
By 1934 he had joined with Dr. Newel Perry and others to form
the California Council of the Blind, which later became the
National Federation of the Blind of California. This organization
was a prototype for the nationwide federation that tenBroek would
form six years later.
Even a cursory glance at his professional career shows the
absurdity of the idea that blindness means incapacity. The same
year the Federation was founded (1940) Jacobus tenBroek received
his doctorate in jurisprudence from the University of California,
completed a year as Brandeis Research Fellow at Harvard Law School,
and was appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago Law
School.
Two years later he began his teaching career at the University
of California at Berkeley, moving steadily up through the ranks to
become full professor in 1953 and chairman of the department of
speech in 1955. In 1963 he accepted an appointment as professor of
political science.

During this period Professor tenBroek published several books and more than
fifty articles and monographs in the fields of welfare, government, and law
establishing a reputation as one of the nation's foremost scholars on matters
of constitutional law. One of his books, Prejudice, War, and the Constitution,
won the Woodrow Wilson Award of the American Political Science Association in
1955 as the best book of the year on government and democracy. Other books are
California's Dual System of Family Law (1964), Hope Deferred: Public Welfare
and the Blind (1959), The Antislavery Origins of the Fourteenth Amendment (1951)—revised
and republished in 1965 as Equal Under Law, and The Law of the Poor (edited
in 1966).
In the course of his academic career Professor tenBroek was a
fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences
at Palo Alto and was twice the recipient of fellowships from the
Guggenheim Foundation. In 1947 he earned the degree of S.J.D. from
Harvard Law School. In addition, he was awarded honorary degrees by
two institutions of higher learning.
Dr. tenBroek's lifelong companion was his devoted wife Hazel.
Together they raised three children and worked inseparably on
research, writing, and academic and Federation concerns. Mrs.
tenBroek still continues as an active member of the organized blind
movement.
In 1950 Dr. tenBroek was made a member of the California State
Board of Social Welfare by Governor Earl Warren. Later reappointed
to the board three times, he was elected its chairman in 1960 and
served in that capacity until 1963.
The brilliance of Jacobus tenBroek's career led some skeptics
to suggest that his achievements were beyond the reach of what they
called the "ordinary blind person." What tenBroek recognized in
himself was not that he was exceptional, but that he was
normal that his blindness had nothing to do with whether he could
be a successful husband and father, do scholarly research, write a
book, make a speech, guide students engaged in social action
movements and causes, or otherwise lead a productive life.
In any case, the skeptics' theory has been refuted by the
success of the thousands of blind men and women who have put this
philosophy of normality to work in their own lives during the past
fifty years.
Jacobus tenBroek died of cancer at the age of fifty-six in
1968. His successor, Kenneth Jernigan, in a memorial address, said
truly of him: "The relationship of this man to the organized blind
movement, which he brought into being in the United States and
around the world, was such that it would be equally accurate to say
that the man was the embodiment of the movement or that the
movement was the expression of the man.
"For tens of thousands of blind Americans over more than a
quarter of a century, he was leader, mentor, spokesman, and
philosopher. He gave to the organized blind movement the force of
his intellect and the shape of his dreams. He made it the symbol of
a cause barely imagined before his coming: the cause of
self-expression, self-direction, and self-sufficiency on the part
of blind people. Step by step, year by year, action by action, he
made that cause succeed."

KENNETH JERNIGAN
- Teacher, Writer, Administrator

Kenneth Jernigan has been a leader in the National Federation
of the Blind for more than thirty-five years. He was President
(with one brief interruption) from 1968 until July of 1986.
Although Jernigan is no longer President of the Federation, he
continues to be one of its principal leaders. He works closely with
the President, and he continues to be loved and respected by tens
of thousands members and non-members of the Federation, both blind
and sighted.
Born in 1926, Kenneth Jernigan grew up on a farm in central
Tennessee. He received his elementary and secondary education at
the school for the blind in Nashville. After high school Jernigan
managed a furniture shop in Beech Grove, Tennessee, making all
furniture and operating the business.
In the fall of 1945 Jernigan matriculated at Tennessee
Technological University in Cookeville. Active in campus affairs
from the outset, he was soon elected to office in his class and to
important positions in other student organizations. Jernigan
graduated with honors in 1948 with a B.S. degree in social science.
In 1949 he received a master's degree in English from Peabody
College in Nashville, where he subsequently completed additional
graduate study. While at Peabody he was a staff writer for the
school newspaper, co-founder of an independent literary magazine,
and a member of the Writers Club. In 1949 he received the Captain
Charles W. Browne Award, at that time presented annually by the
American Foundation for the Blind to the nation's outstanding blind
student.
Jernigan then spent four years as a teacher of English at the
Tennessee School for the Blind. During this period he became active
in the Tennessee Association of the Blind (now the National
Federation of the Blind of Tennessee). He was elected to the vice
presidency of the organization in 1950 and to the presidency in
1951. In that position he planned the 1952 annual convention of the
National Federation of the Blind, which was held in Nashville, and
he has been planning National Conventions for the Federation ever
since. It was in 1952 that Jernigan was first elected to the NFB
Board of Directors.
In 1953 he was appointed to the faculty of the California
Orientation Center for the Blind in Oakland, where he played a
major role in developing the best program of its kind then in
existence.
From 1958 until 1978, he served as Director of the Iowa State
Commission for the Blind. In this capacity he was responsible for
administering state programs of rehabilitation, home teaching, home
industries, an orientation and adjustment center, and library
services for the blind and physically handicapped. The improvements
made in services to the blind of Iowa under the Jernigan
administration have never before or since been equaled anywhere in
the country.
In 1960 the Federation presented Jernigan with its Newel Perry
Award for outstanding accomplishment in services for the blind. In
1968 Jernigan was given a Special Citation by the President of the
United States. Harold Russell, the chairman of the President's
Committee on Employment of the Handicapped, came to Des Moines to
present the award. He said: "If a person must be blind, it is
better to be blind in Iowa than anywhere else in the nation or in
the world. This statement," the citation went on to say, "sums up
the story of the Iowa Commission for the Blind during the Jernigan
years and more pertinently of its Director, Kenneth Jernigan. That
narrative is much more than a success story. It is the story of
high aspiration magnificently accomplished of an impossible dream
become reality."
Jernigan has received too many honors and awards to enumerate
individually, including honorary doctorates from three institutions
of higher education. He has also been asked to serve as a special
consultant to or member of numerous boards and advisory bodies. The
most notable among these are: member of the National Advisory
Committee on Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
(appointed by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare),
special consultant on Services for the Blind (appointed by the
Federal Commissioner of Rehabilitation), advisor on museum programs
for blind visitors to the Smithsonian Institution, and special
advisor to the White House Conference on Library and Information
Services (appointed by President Gerald Ford). In July of 1990
Jernigan received an award for distinguished service from the
President of the United States.
Kenneth Jernigan's writings and speeches on blindness are
better known and have touched more lives than those of any other
individual writing today. On July 23, 1975, he spoke before the
National Press Club in Washington, D.C., and his address was
broadcast live throughout the nation on National Public Radio.
Through the years he has appeared repeatedly on network radio and
television interview programs including the "Today Show," the
"Tomorrow Show," and the "Larry King Show."
In 1978 Jernigan moved to Baltimore to become Director of the
National Center for the Blind. As President of the National
Federation of the Blind at that time, he led the organization
through the most impressive period of growth in its history. The
creation and development of the National Center for the Blind and
the expansion of the NFB into the position of being the most
influential voice and force in the affairs of the blind stand as
the culmination of Kenneth Jernigan's lifework and a tribute to his
brilliance and commitment to the blind of this nation.
Jernigan's dynamic wife Mary Ellen is an active member of the
Federation. Although sighted, she works with dedication in the
movement and is known and loved by thousands of Federationists
throughout the country.
Speaking at a convention of the National Federation of the
Blind, Jernigan said of the organization and its philosophy (and
also of his own philosophy):
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 hell-raisers 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 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.

MARC MAURER
- Attorney and Executive

Born in 1951, Marc Maurer was the second in a family of six
children. His blindness was caused by overexposure to oxygen after
his premature birth, but he and his parents were determined that
this should not prevent him from living a full and normal life.
He began his education at the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving
School, where he became an avid Braille reader. In the fifth grade
he returned home to Boone, Iowa, where he attended parochial
schools. During high school (having taken all the courses in the
curriculum) he simultaneously took classes at the junior college.
Maurer ran three different businesses before finishing high
school: a paper route, a lawn care business, and an enterprise
producing and marketing maternity garter belts designed by his
mother. This last venture was so successful that his younger
brother took over the business when Maurer left home.
In the summer of 1969, after graduating from high school,
Maurer enrolled as a student at the Orientation and Adjustment
Center of the Iowa Commission for the Blind and attended his first
convention of the NFB. He was delighted to discover in both places
that blind people and what they thought mattered. This was a new
phenomenon in his experience, and it changed his life. Kenneth
Jernigan was Director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind at the
time, and Maurer soon grew to admire and respect him. When Maurer
expressed an interest in overhauling a car engine, the Commission
for the Blind purchased the necessary equipment. Maurer completed
that project and actually worked for a time as an automobile
mechanic. He believes today that mastering engine repair played an
important part in changing his attitudes about blindness.
Maurer graduated cum laude from the University of Notre Dame
in 1974. As an undergraduate he took an active part in campus life,
including election to the Honor Society. Then he enrolled at the
University of Indiana School of Law, where he received his Doctor
of Jurisprudence in 1977.
Marc Maurer was elected President of the Student Division of
the National Federation of the Blind in 1971 and re-elected in 1973
and 1975. Also in 1971 (at the age of twenty) he was elected Vice
President of the National Federation of the Blind of Indiana. He
was elected President in 1973 and re-elected in 1975.
During law school Maurer worked summers for the office of the
Secretary of State of Indiana. After graduation he moved to Toledo,
Ohio, to accept a position as the Director of the Senior Legal
Assistance Project operated by ABLE (Advocates for Basic Legal
Equality).
In 1978 Maurer moved to Washington, D.C., to become an
attorney with the Rates and Routes Division in the office of the
General Counsel of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Initially he worked
on rates cases but soon advanced to dealing with international
matters and then to doing research and writing opinions on
constitutional issues and Board action. He wrote opinions for the
Chairman and made appearances before the full Board to discuss
those opinions.
In 1981 he went into private practice in Baltimore, Maryland,
where he specialized in civil litigation and property matters. But
increasingly he concentrated on representing blind individuals and
groups in the courts. He has now become one of the most experienced
and knowledgeable attorneys in the country regarding the laws,
precedents, and administrative rulings concerning civil rights and
discrimination against the blind. He is a member of the Bar in
Indiana, Ohio, Iowa, and Maryland; and he is a member of the Bar of
the Supreme Court of the United States.
Maurer has always been active in civic and political affairs,
having run for public office in Baltimore and having been elected
to the board of directors of the Tenants Association in his
apartment complex shortly after his arrival. Later he was elected
to the board of his community association when he became a home
owner. From 1984 until 1986 he served with distinction as President
of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland.
An important companion in Maurer's activities (and a leader in
her own right) is his wife Patricia. The Maurers were married in
1973, and they have two children David Patrick, born March 10,
1984, and Dianna Marie, born July 12, 1987.

At the 1985 convention in Louisville, Kentucky, Dr. Kenneth Jernigan announced
that he would not stand for re-election as President of the National Federation
of the Blind the following year, and he recommended Marc Maurer as his successor.
In Kansas City in 1986, the convention elected Maurer by resounding acclamation,
and he has capably served as President ever since.
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Copyright © 1994 by the National Federation of the Blind All Rights Reserved.