Growth, Harmony, and the Fight to Organize

Growth, Harmony, and the Fight to Organize

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Growth, Harmony, and the Fight to Organize
The decade of the 1950s was, for the
organized blind movement in the United States, almost to the end a period of
sustained development, of internal harmony and cooperation, and of broad new
visions expressed in campaigns of unprecedented daring. Measured in terms of
growth alone, the principle of self-organization by the blind was thoroughly
vindicated in this decade and the National Federation of the Blind proven to
be successful beyond question even by its foes. The 1949 convention had been
held in Denver, the 1950 convention in Chicago, and the 1951 convention in Oklahoma
City. During these years the Federation continued to expand and mature.
By 1952 some 150 delegates from 31 states
were in attendance at the Nashville convention which was organized, as it happened,
by a young Tennessee state president named Kenneth Jernigan, attending his first
National Convention. At the San Francisco convention four years later, the total
climbed to 42 state affiliates with more than 700 delegates. When the National
Federation of the Blind convened in Miami for its twentieth anniversary convention
in 1960, no fewer than 47 states
sent a total of 900 delegates to the scene.
The fifties were also a decade of successive
precedents and breakthroughs on a variety of fronts. The 1952 convention featured
the first address by a state governor as well as the National Federation of
the Blind's first nationwide broadcast (a fifteen-minute address by President
tenBroek carried live on NBC). The year 1953, when the convention met in Milwaukee,
witnessed the inauguration of the Federation's first substantial fund-raising
campaign (which would bear mixed fruit in subsequent years with results both
economically productive and internally disruptive). In 1954 at Louisville the
first copies appeared of Who Are the Blind Who Lead the Blind and What is the
National Federation of the Blind both of them written by Kenneth Jernigan (the
first is reprinted in updated form in Appendix B to this volume). The next year
saw the first of many National Federation of the Blind surveys of state programs
for the blind carried out at gubernatorial request those of Colorado and Arkansas, authored jointly by Jernigan and First Vice President George Card. In 1953 as
well, the Newel Perry Award for distinguished service to the blind was presented
for the first time; it went to Governor Ed Johnson of Colorado for his courage
in inviting the blind into his state to perform the unheard-of function of judging
the agency for the blind. Another precedent of much greater significance which
was achieved in the course of the decade was the breakthrough in Civil Service
employment a slow and arduous process of persistent challenges to the entrance
tests in all categories of the Civil Service. The first limited victory came
in 1953 when the Civil Service Commission capitulated to mounting pressure and
opened just one of its examinations, at that time known as the Junior Management
Assistant Examination (reputedly the toughest of the lot), to blind candidates.
The result was one of triumph and vindication; across the country, spurred by
the National Federation of the Blind, twice as many blind applicants proportionally
passed the examination as those possessing sight. (Some six percent of the blind,
as opposed to three percent of the sighted, passed the examination.) By the
early sixties, as a chastened Commission began to work cooperatively with the
Federation, most of the civil service barriers came tumbling down, with the
result that today blind men and women are at work for the federal government
in ever-increasing numbers as attorneys, chemists, switchboard operators, transcribers,
skilled workers, and much more.
Of all the campaigns of reform launched
by the National Federation of the Blind during the dynamic decade of the fifties,
none was more sweeping in ambition or momentous in significance than the struggle
for the right to organize, which centered around embattled legislation known
then and ever since as the Kennedy Bill after its co-sponsor, Senator (and future
President) John F. Kennedy. The need for such legislation, protecting the right
of blind organizations to exist without harassment from hostile agencies, became
urgent early in the decade as the remarkable success of the Federation in recruiting
blind persons to its cause and carrying out independent surveys of state programs
began to draw alarmed resistance and opposition from major elements of what
was to become known as the Blindness System. As the word of Federationism was
carried to the cities and towns of America, new and independent associations
of blind people sprang up while old organizations that had grown dormant were
given a new lease on life. In state after state these local groups formed themselves
into statewide bodies, which in turn sought affiliation with the National Federation
of the Blind. Each level of organization gained strength and confidence from
the other and together they exerted mounting
pressure upon the public agencies.

The response of the agencies to this
independent activity and spirit was not wholly negative, to be sure. In some
states the organized blind were regarded not as a threat to existing policies
but as an invaluable source of information and advice in the mutual effort to
improve state programs and services. In these cooperative relationships the
National Federation of the Blind typically lent a hand in such areas as public
relations, funding, and the pursuit of progressive legislation. But if many
public and voluntary agencies greeted the rise of the organized blind movement
in a spirit of cooperation, there were as many others both within the states
and nationally which reacted with bitter hostility. Their opposition had various
causes, of course, among them the simple disbelief that blind persons might
be capable of managing their own lives
and exercising the normal rights of other citizens.

But there was a more immediate and practical
not to say vengeful motive behind the opposition of numerous elements in the
blindness system; it was the perceived threat to various of their programs and
institutions, notably the sheltered workshops and the blind-oriented federal
vending stand program, which represented a formidable stake in the continued
dependency of the blind. Managerial groups tended not unnaturally to look upon
independent organizations of their blind workers as trade unions seeking to
improve their rights and working conditions; and indeed the two were related,
as the National Federation of the Blind state affiliates pressed for a variety
of reforms in the agency programs and supported the affiliation of shop workers
with actual labor unions.

By the time of the NFB's 1956 convention
in San Francisco, the agency attacks upon the organized blind movement were
no longer merely scattered but concerted and orchestrated; and not merely critical
but bitterly hostile and frequently vicious. In a classic convention address,
Within the Grace of God, which combined satirical humor with moral urgency,
President Jacobus tenBroek undertook to counter these attacks and to answer
the questions they were raising: Whence come these attacks? What is the motivation
behind them? Is such conflict unavoidable? To what degree is reconciliation
possible? The full text of his memorable speech follows:

WITHIN THE GRACE OF GOD
by Jacobus tenBroek

It is a privilege of a very special order,
and one to which I have long looked forward, to address you here tonight in
the unique and wonderful city of San Francisco. For all of us who are native
Californians (which means as you know that we have moved at least six months
ago from Iowa or Oklahoma) this occasion marks the fulfillment of a cherished
ambition; and we feel something of the pardonable pride of hosts who know that
their hospitality has been as graciously
accepted as it has been warmly given.

But there is something else that is special
about the present occasion. Our city and our state are blessed in this year
of grace with not one but two history-making conventions, each of which is appearing
on the local stage for the first time: our own and that of the Republican Party.
There can be no question, of course, which is the more important and far-reaching
in its consequences but let us
admit that the Republicans too have an objective of some scope.

During our regular convention sessions
today we have had a fairly full review of the work of the National Federation
of the Blind. We have seen the accelerated growth of the organizatio marked
by the accession of nine state affiliates in the year since our last National
Convention, lifting us from a beginning of seven states in 1940 to a grand total
of forty-two states today and with a clear view of affiliates in forty-eight
states in the foreseeable future. We have seen an organization with purposes
as irrepressible as the aspiration of men to be free, with far-flung activities
and accomplishments, with the solid adherence and participation of rank and
file members, and with the selfless devotion of an ever-increasing array of
able and distinguished leaders. We have seen the action and the forces of action.
We have also seen the reaction and the forces of reaction. There is perhaps
no stronger testimony to our developing prestige and influence as the nationwide
movement and organization of the blind than the scope and intensity of the attacks
upon us. These attacks are not new. They have persisted from the very beginning.
They have ranged from unspeakable, whispering campaigns against the character
and integrity of the leaders of the Federation to public disparagement of its
goals and structure. Now, however, the attacks have taken on a new bitterness
and violence. They include open avowals of a determination to wipe several of
our affiliates out of existence and every step possible has been taken to bring
about this result.

Whence come these attacks? What is the
motivation behind them? Are they personal? Are they institutional? Are they
based on policy differences as to ends as well as to means? What is the pattern
of action and reaction for the future? Is such conflict unavoidable? To what
degree is reconciliation possible?

It is to an analysis of these problems
and to an answer to these questions that I should like to direct your attention
tonight. Let me begin by giving you a purely hypothetical and very fanciful
situation. Imagine that somewhere in the world there exists a civilization in
which the people without hair that is the bald are looked down upon and rigidly
set apart from everyone else by virtue of their distinguishing physical characteristic.
If you can accept this fantasy for a moment, it is clear that at least two kinds
of organization would come into being dedicated to serve the interests of these
unfortunate folk. First, I suggest, there would appear a group of non-bald persons
drawn together out of sympathy for the sorry condition of this rejected minority:
in short, a benevolent society with a charitable purpose and a protective role.
At first, all of the members of this society would be volunteers, doing the
work on their free time and out of the goodness of their hearts. Later, paid
employees would be added who would earn their livelihood out of the work and
who would gradually assume a position of dominance. This society would, I believe,
have the field pretty much to itself for a rather long time. In the course of
years, it would virtually eliminate cruel and unusual punishment of the bald,
furnish them many services, and finally create enclaves and retreats within
which the hairless might escape embarrassing contact with normal society and
even find a measure of satisfaction and spiritual reward in the performance
of simple tasks not seriously competitive with the ordinary pursuits of the
larger community.

The consequence of this good work would,
I venture to say, be a regular flow of contributions by the community, an acceptance
by the community of the charitable foundation as the authentic interpreter of
the needs of those unfortunate and inarticulate souls afflicted with baldness,
an increasing veneration for the charitable foundation, and a general endorsement
of its principles, and gradually but irresistibly the growth of a humanitarian
awareness that the bald suffer their condition through no fault of their own
and accordingly that they should be sponsored, protected, tolerated, and permitted
to practice, under suitable supervision and control, what few uncomplicated
trades patient training may reveal
them able to perform.

Eventually, a great number of charitable
organizations would be established in the field of work for the bald. They or
some of them would join together in a common association which might well be
entitled the American Association of Workers for the Bald. Step by step, upon
the published Proceedings of their annual meetings, carefully edited to eliminate
the views of the outspoken bald, they would aspire to climb to professional
status. As a part of their self-assigned roles as interpreters and protectors
of the bald, they or some of them, would sooner or later undertake to lay down
criteria and standards for all service programs for the bald to be a manual
of guidance for those responsible for operating the programs.

These, then, would be the assumptions
and the ends to which the charitable organizations for the bald would tirelessly
and successfully exert themselves. They would petition the community through
both public and private enterprise to support these purposes, and their appeals
would dramatize them through a subtle invocation of the sympathetic and compassionate
traits of human nature. Sooner or later, some of them in order to drive competitors
out of business, garner favor with the public, and give color of legitimacy
to their own methods would issue what they would unabashedly call a code of
fund-raising ethics.
All this presumably would take much
time; but before too many generations had passed I expect that most if not all
of these objectives would have come to fruition, and there would appear to be
an end to the problem of the bald.

Unfortunately, however, there seem always
to be those who persist in questioning established institutions and revered
traditions; and in my improbable fable, at some point well along in the story,
there would appear a small band of irascible individuals a little group of willful
men bent on exposing and tearing down the whole laborious and impressive structure
of humanitarianism and progress. Incredibly and ironically, these malcontents
would emerge from the very ranks of the bald themselves. At first I suspect
that they would pass unheard and almost unnoticed; but eventually their numbers
would increase and their dissent become too insistent to be easily ignored.
What they would be saying, as I make it out, is something like this:

You have said that we are different because
we are bald, and that this difference marks us as inferior. But we do not agree
with certain Biblical parables that possession of hair is an index of strength,
certainly not that it is a measure either of virtue or of ability. Owing to
your prejudice and perhaps your guilt because you do not like to look upon us
you have barred us from the normal affairs of the community and shunted us aside
as if we were pariahs. But we carry no contagion and present no danger, except
as you define our condition as unclean and make of our physical defect a stigma.
In your misguided benevolence you have taken us off the streets and provided
shelters where we might avoid the pitiless gaze of the non-bald and the embarrassment
of their contact. But what we wish chiefly is to be back on the streets, with
access to all the avenues of ordinary commerce and activity. We do not want
your pity, since there need be no occasion for it; and it is not we who suffer
embarrassment in company with those whom we deem our fellows and our equals.
You have been kind to us, and if we were animals we should perhaps be content
with that; but our road to hell has been paved with your good intentions.

One of the leaders of the bald doubtless
would rise to say:

We do not want compassion, we want understanding;
we do not want tolerance, we want acceptance; we do not want charity, we want
opportunity; we do not want dependency, we want independence. You have given
us much, but you have withheld more; you have withheld those values which we
prize above all else, exactly as you do: personal liberty, dignity, privacy,
opportunity, and most of all equality. But if it is not in your power, or consistent
with your premises, to see these things as our goals, be assured that it is
within our power and consistent with our self-knowledge to demand them and to
press for their attainment. For we know by hard experience what you do not know,
or have not wished to recognize: that given the opportunity we are your equals;
that as a group we are no better and no worse than you being in fact a random
sample of yourselves. We are your doubles, whether the yardstick be intellectual
or physical or psychological or occupational. Our goals, in short, are these:
we wish to be liberated, not out of society but into it; we covet independence,
not in order to be distinct but in order to be equal. We are aware that these
goals, like the humane objectives you have labored so long to accomplish, will
require much time and effort and wisdom to bring into being. But the painful
truth must be proclaimed that your purposes are not our purposes; we do not
share your cherished assumptions of the nature of baldness, and will not endure
the handicap you have placed upon it.

And so we have formed our own organization,
in order to speak for ourselves from the experience which we alone have known
and can interpret. We bear no malice and seek no special favors, beyond the
right and opportunity to join society as equal partners and members in good
standing of the great enterprise that is our nation and our common cause.
End of quotation end of fable. Is this
fable simply a fanciful story or is it a parable? Some will say, I have no doubt,
that I have not presented the case of the blind that there is no parallel and
therefore no parable. For one thing, is it not surely ridiculous to imagine
that any civilized society could so baldly misinterpret the character of those
who are not blessed with hair on their heads? It may be! But civilized society
has always so misinterpreted the character of those who lack sight in their
eyes; and on a basis of that misinterpretation has created the handicap of blindness.
You and I know that blind people are simply people who cannot see; society believes
that they are people shorn of the capacity to live normal, useful, productive
lives, and that belief has largely tended to make them so.

For another thing, did the fable accurately
portray the attitudes of at least some of the agencies for the blind? Are their
goals really so different from the goals of the blind themselves? Do they actually
arrogate to themselves the roles of interpreter and protector, ascribing to
their clients characteristics of abnormality and dependency? To answer these
questions and to demonstrate the bona fides of the parable, I shall let some
agency leaders speak for themselves in the form of seven recent quotations:
Quotation number one uttered by an agency
psychiatrist: All visible deformities require special study. Blindness is a
visible deformity and all blind persons follow a pattern of dependency. That
one hardly requires any elucidation to make its meaning plain.

Quotation number two uttered by the author
of a well-known volume upon the blind for which the American Association of
Workers for the Blind conferred upon him a well-known award: With many persons,
there was an expectation in the establishment of the early schools that the
blind in general would thereby be rendered capable of earning their own support
a view that even at the present is shared in some quarters. It would have been
much better if such a hope had never been entertained, or if it had existed
in a greatly modified form. A limited acquaintance of a practical nature with
the blind as a whole and their capabilities has usually been sufficient to demonstrate
the weakness of this conception. That one also speaks adequately for itself.

Quotation number three uttered by a
well-known blind agency head: After he is once trained and placed, the average
disabled person can fend for himself. In the case of the blind, it has been
found necessary to set up a special state service agency which will supply them
not only rehabilitation training but other services for the rest of their lives.
The agencies keep in constant contact with them as long as they live. So the
blind are unique among the handicapped in that, no matter how well-adjusted,
trained, and placed, they require
lifelong supervision by the agencies.

Quotation number four uttered by another
well-known blind agency head: The operation of the vending stand program, we feel,
necessitates maintaining a close control by the Federal Government through the
licensing agency with respect to both equipment and stock, as well as the actual
supervision of the operation of each individual stand. It is therefore our belief
that the program would fail if the blind stand managers were permitted to operate
without control. This is, of course, just the specific application of the general
doctrine of the incompetence of the blind expressed in the previous quotation.
Blind businessmen are incapable of operating an independent business. The agencies
must supervise and control the stock, equipment, and the business operation.
Quotation number five, first sentence
of the Code of Ethics (so-called) of the American Association of Workers for
the Blind: The operations of all agencies for the blind entail a high degree
of responsibility because of the element of public trusteeship and protection
of the blind involved in services to the blind. The use of the word protection
makes it plain that the trusteeship here referred to is of the same kind as
that existing under the United Nations Trusteeship Council that is, custody
and control of underprivileged,
backward, and dependent peoples.

Quotation number six uttered by still
another well-known blind agency head: 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 choosing this is to
fill the life of anyone with the things that make life worth living. 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 accessories to a life well filled with other things a home, a job, and
the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, for example.

Quotation number seven uttered by still
another head of a blind agency: A job, a home, and the right to be a citizen,
will come to the blind in that generation when each and every blind person is
a living advertisement of his ability and capacity to accept the privileges
and responsibilities of citizenship. Then we professionals will have no problem
of interpretation because the blind will no longer need us to speak for them,
and we, like primitive segregation, will die away as an instrument which society
will include only in its historical records. A job, a home, and the right to
be a citizen, are not now either the possessions or the rights of the blind
they will only come to the blind in a future generation! A generation, moreover,
which will never come to the sighted since it is one in which each and every
blind person will live up to some golden rule far beyond the human potential.
In that never-to-be-expected age, the leaders of the agencies for the blind
will no longer discharge their present function of interpretation, because the
blind will then be able to speak for themselves.

Whatever else can be said about these
quotations, no one can say that these agency leaders lack candor. They have
stated their views with the utmost explicitness. Moreover, these are not isolated
instances of a disappearing attitude, a vestigial remainder of a forgotten era.
Such expressions are not confined to those here quoted. Many other statements
of the same force and character could be produced; and the evidence that the
deed has been suited to the word is abundant. At long last, we now know that
we must finally lay at rest the pious platitude and the hopeful conjecture that
the blind themselves and the agencies for the blind are really all working towards
the same objectives and differ only as to means for achieving them. I would
that it were so. We are not in agreement as to objectives although we frequently
disagree as to means as well.

The frankly avowed purposes and the practices
of the agencies tend in the direction of continued segregation along vocational
and other lines. The blind would move vigorously in the direction of increasing
integration, of orienting, counseling, and training the blind towards competitive
occupations and placing them therein, towards a job, a home, and normal community
activities and relations. The agencies, by their words and their acts, tend
to sanctify and reinforce those semi-conscious stereotypes and prejudicial attitudes
which have always plagued the condition of the physically disabled and the socially
deprived. We, by our words and acts, would weaken them and gradually blot them
out altogether. Their statements assert and their operations presuppose a need
for continuous, hovering surveillance of the sightless in recreation, occupation,
and congregation virtually from cradle to grave. We deny that any such need
exists and refute the premise of necessary dependency and incompetence on which
it is based. Their philosophy derives from and still reflects the philanthropic
outlook and ethical uplift of those Friendly Visitors of a previous century
whose self-appointed mission was to guide their less fortunate neighbors to
personal salvation through a combination of material charity and moral edification.
We believe that the problems of the blind are at least as much social as personal
and that a broad frontal attack on public misconceptions and existing program
arrangements for the blind is best calculated to achieve desirable results.
We believe, moreover, that it is worthwhile inquiring into the rationale of
any activity which takes as its psychological premise the double-barreled dogma
that those deprived of sight are deprived also of judgment and common sense,
and that therefore what they need above all else is to be adjusted to their
inferior station through the wise ministrations of an elite corps of neurosis-free
custodians.

The agency leaders say, and apparently
believe, that the blind are not entitled to the privileges and responsibilities
of citizenship or to full membership in society betokened by such attributes
of normal life as a home and a job. This can only be predicated on the proposition
that the blind are not only abnormal and inferior but they are so abnormal and
inferior that they are not even persons. We believe that blind people are precisely
as normal as other people are, being in fact a cross section of the rest of
the community in every respect except that they cannot see. But were this not
so, their abnormality would not strip them of their personality. The Constitution
of the United States declares that all persons born in the United States or
naturalized are citizens. There is nothing in the Constitution or in the gloss
upon it which says that this section shall not apply to persons who are blind.
If born in the United States or naturalized, whether before or after blindness,
blind persons are citizens of the United States now and are now, not merely
in some future generation, possessed of the right to be citizens and share the
privileges, immunities, and responsibilities of that status. Moreover, the bounty
of the Constitution extends to all persons, whether citizens or not, rights
to freedom, equality, and individuality. As citizens, then, or as persons, who
happen to be deprived of one of their physical senses, we claim, under the broad
protection of the Constitution, the right to life, personal freedom, personal
security; the right to marry, to have and rear children, and to maintain a home;
and the right, so far as government can assure it, to that fair opportunity
to earn a livelihood which will make these other rights possible and significant.
We have the right freely to choose our fields of endeavor, unhindered by arbitrary,
artificial, or manmade impediments. All limitations on our opportunity, all
restrictions on us based on irrelevant considerations of physical disability,
are in conflict with our Constitutional right of equality and must be removed.
Our access to the mainstreams of community life, the aspirations and achievements
of each of us, are to be limited only by the skills, energy, talents, and abilities
we individually bring to the opportunities equally open to all Americans.

Finally, we claim as our birthright,
as our Constitutional guarantee, and as an indivestible aspect of our nature
the fundamental human right of self-expression, the right to speak for ourselves
individually and collectively. Inseparably connected with this right is the
right of common association. The principle of self-organization means self-guidance
and self-control. To say that the blind can, should, and do lead the blind is
only to say that they are their own counselors, that they stand on their own
feet. In the control of their own lives, in the responsibility for their own
programs, in the organized and consistent pursuit of objectives of their own
choosing in these alone lies the hope of the blind for economic independence,
social integration, and emotional security.

You may think that what I have said exaggerates
the error and the danger to be expected from those whose only interest is to
serve the welfare of the blind. I think it does not. No one could ask, it is
true, for any more conscientious and devoted public servants than those who
serve in the rank and file of the agencies for the blind, public and private.
The leaders of many agencies, too, must be given commendation for enlightened
policies and worthwhile programs. We have heard from some of these agency leaders
yesterday at our convention and we will hear from more before our convention
is over. No one can doubt either that the agencies when so manned and so led
may be of immense and constructive assistance in a multitude of ways, during
the onward movement of the blind into full membership in society. As to some
of the agencies not headed by leaders of the character just described, credit
must be given for sincerity and good intentions. This, however, but serves to
raise the question whether, in social terms, sincere and upright folly is better
or worse than knavery. This discussion
I forbear to enter.

What should the posture of the National
Federation of the Blind be in the midst of these attacks and struggles? As the
possessors of power, we must exercise it responsibly, impersonally, and with
self-restraint. As a people's movement, we cannot allow others to deflect us
from our course. We must apply our power and influence to achieve our legitimate
goals. To this end, we must all exert ourselves to the utmost. Our opponents
have history and outmoded concepts on their side. We have democracy and the
future on ours. For the sake of those who are now blind and those who hereafter
will be blind and for the sake of society at large we cannot fail. If the National
Federation of the Blind continues to be representative in its character, democratic
in its procedures, open in its purposes, and loyal in its commitments so long,
that is, as the faith of the blind does not become blind faith we have nothing
to fear, no cause for apology, and only achievement to look forward to. We may
carry our program to the public with confidence and conviction choosing the
means of our expression with proper care but without calculation, and appearing
before the jury of all our peers not as salesmen but as spokesmen, not as hucksters
but as petitioners for simple justice and the redress of unmerited grievances.
We will have no need to substitute the advertisement for the article itself
nor to prefer a dramatic act to an undramatic fact. If this is group pressure,
it is group pressure in the right direction. If this involves playing politics,
it is a game as old as democracy, with the stakes as high as human aspiration.

In the sixteenth century, John Bradford
made a famous remark which has ever since been held up to us as a model of Christian
humility and correct charity and which you saw reflected in the agency quotations
I presented. Seeing a beggar in his rags creeping along a wall through a flash
of lightning in a stormy night Bradford said: But for the Grace of God, there
go I. Compassion was shown; pity was shown; charity was shown; humility was
shown; there was even an acknowledgement that the relative positions of the
two could and might have been switched. Yet despite the compassion, despite
the pity, despite the charity, despite the humility, how insufferably arrogant!
There was still an unbridgeable gulf between Bradford and the beggar. They were
not one but two. Whatever might have been, Bradford thought himself Bradford
and the beggar a beggar one high, the other low; one wise, the other misguided;
one strong, the other weak; one virtuous, the other depraved.

We do not and cannot take the Bradford
approach. It is not just that beggary is the badge of our past and is still
all too often the present symbol of social attitudes towards us; although that
is at least part of it. But in the broader sense, we are that beggar and he
is each of us. We are made in the same image and out of the same ingredients.
We have the same weaknesses and strengths, the same feelings, emotions, and
drives; and we are the product of the same social, economic, and other environmental
forces. How much more consonant with the facts of individual and social life,
how much more a part of a true humanity, to say instead: There, within the
Grace of God, do go I. Thank you.

That convention address of 1956 by President
tenBroek did not, of course, for all its reasoned argument and good humor, bring
an end to the strife brought on by the coalition of hostile agencies in the
blindness system. On the contrary, in the next few years the agency forces retaliated
in more areas and in new ways. Blind workers in the sheltered shops, and blind
operators of vending stands in state-controlled programs, were fired out of
hand or threatened with dismissal if they dared to join or support the National
Federation of the Blind. Blind employees of state agencies and commissions were
subjected to a wide variety of pressures. Confidential case records of blind
persons active in the National Federation of the Blind, who were receiving public
aid or services, were opened and their contents exploited in an effort to discredit
them and their group affiliations. At one desperate point, a combination of
state agencies created a special committee, a kind of strike force, to seek
ways of counteracting and undermining the Federation. President Jacobus tenBroek
put the case squarely and simply when he declared at the 1957 convention in
New Orleans: The National Federation of the Blind stands today an embattled
organization. Our motives have been impugned; our purposes reviled; our integrity
aspersed; our representative character denied. Plans have been laid, activities
undertaken, and concerted actions set in motion for the clear and unmistakable
purpose of bringing about our destruction. Nothing less is sought than our extinction
as an organization.

The response of the Federation to these
attacks constitutes one of the most dramatic chapters of its history: namely,
the campaign to gain protection for the right of the blind to organize, to speak
for themselves, and to be heard. In effect there were three distinctive rights
involved in this struggle: the right to organize invoked the constitutional
guarantee of free association and assembly; the right of the blind to speak
for themselves involved not only free-speech guarantees but the very principles
of representative democracy; and the right to be heard, perhaps the most controversial
of all, implied the development of regular channels of consultation and participation
of the blind in the broad range of public programs affecting their lives. On
the face of it these were far-reaching demands; in the context of blind affairs,
hitherto a history of the inarticulate, the demands were nothing short of revolutionary.
In a compelling speech delivered at the
1957 convention in New Orleans, President tenBroek definitively portrayed the
three rights of the blind revolution and the 300,000 wronged by their denial.
He made clear the interconnections between the right to organize, the right
to speak, and the right to be heard; and he laid down a challenge to the hostile
agencies of the blindness system to cease their destructive attacks and join
the cause in which, officially and ostensibly, they served the cause of security,
opportunity, and equality for blind Americans. Here is what he said to the convention:

THREE RIGHTS AND THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND
WRONGED

by Jacobus tenBroek

"When bad men combine, the good
must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a
contemptible struggle."
So said the Great Commoner, Edmund Burke,
nearly 300 years ago. And speaking of those who had organized the political
associations of Great Britain, he declared: They believed that no men could
act with effect who did not act in concert; that no men could act in concert
who did not act with confidence; that no men could act with confidence who were
not bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common interests.

No luster has been lost from these words
over the intervening centuries. Their meaning, if anything, is magnified today,
in our modern age of mass organization
and mass communication, of vast diversity of interests and differences of opinion.
But if the argument for association still holds good for the generality of men,
it has a special urgency for the blind men and women of America.
For if we cannot say that bad men have
combined against us, we can and do say that men of bad philosophy and little
faith have done so sighted and sightless men whose vision is short, whose ears
are stopped, and whose minds are closed by institutional and occupational self-interest,
whose banner is the wretched patchwork of medieval charity and poor relief.

When such as these combine, the blind
indeed must associate: else we shall fall, as we have fallen in the past, one
by one, a merely pitied sacrifice
in a contemptible struggle.

And if it is also true, as Burke believed,
that no men can act with effect who do not act in concert, how much more profoundly
true is this of men who cannot act at all as individuals because they are deprived
of every normal avenue of opportunity and expression. The rejected, the declassified,
the disfranchised, the custodialized, are compelled in sheer self-defense to
organize to act in concert in order to act with effect to act with confidence
in order to act in concert and to bind themselves together on the basis of their
common opinions, common affections, and common interests.

The blind of America have bound themselves
together primarily in order to unbind themselves of the arbitrary shackles which
throughout all history have confined their movement and smothered their self-expression.
Their emancipation from this social straitjacket requires the achievement of
three essential and inseparable rights: three rights which constitute the fountainhead
of American democracy and the recognized birthright of ordinary citizens: three
rights withheld from our 300,000 blind.

They are the right to organize, the right
to speak, and the right to be heard.

These rights comprise a trinity related
as closely to one another as the points of a triangle. Each gains its meaning
in the presence of the others; each loses its significance in the absence of
the others. To paraphrase the language of Burke, no men can act effectively
who do not have the right to organize; no men can organize at all who do not
have the right to self-expression; and no men can achieve self-expression who
do not have the right to be heard.

That these three rights are indeed inseparable
that each is the touchstone of the others was fully recognized by those who
framed our Constitution, and who placed them side by side in the First Amendment,
identified as the rights of free speech, assembly, and petition essential liberties
beyond the control of Congress but not beyond its protection.

In modern terms, the right of free speech
is the right of self-expression; the right of assembly is the right to organize;
and the right of petition is the
right to be heard.

The blind of America are today in the
throes of an historic struggle to secure for themselves these rights which the
Constitution guarantees to all Americans. In two bills now before Congress S.
2411, sponsored by Senator Kennedy, and H.R. 8609, sponsored by Congressman
Baring are incorporated the safeguards which for the first time in history would
gain for the blind the rights to self-organization, to self-expression, and
to consultation in the public conduct of their affairs.

Before turning to that legislation,
let us take a closer look at this trinity of rights the struggle for which has
plunged us into the most bitterly
contested battle of our organized existence.
First of all, what is the right to organize?
At bottom, it is only the recognition, in law and common sense, that man is
a social animal and that, in particular, men of common interests and a common
purpose gain satisfaction and support from each other's company. But there is
more to it than that. In a self-governing democracy the right to organize is
virtually synonymous with the right of self-expression that freedom of speech
which is the foundation of all our liberties. Our theory of government is an
attempt to capture the values of a diverse society; to seek the truth through
open competition in the marketplace of ideas. It is essential to this principle
that all legitimate demands be heard, that no body of citizens be silenced or
suppressed. The great value of voluntary groups and associations to democracy
is that they give a voice to citizens who, in Burke's words, are bound together
by common opinions, common affections, and common interests. Without the right
to organize, the right to speak would remain for millions a cruel mockery of
their mute condition. For these groups it is organization alone which makes
the right to speak articulate.

If the blind are to speak for themselves,
if they are to be heard in public forum and the councils of government, let
us be certain that they will speak forcefully, and with a single voice. Let
us guard our organized structure from collapse into a Tower of Babela confusion
of tongues. Let us remember that to act in concert means to take concerted action;
that the hallmark of a functioning democracy is not anarchy but unity; and that
when all of us are faithful to our responsibilities as members, we may be sure
that we shall act in concert and with confidence that the voice of the blind
will be heard in the land and that it will carry the ring of truth.

But what is this right to be heard, and
why is it so closely linked to the right to speak and the right to organize?
The answer is of course that no degree of organization, and no amount of speech,
is of any value if no one is listening. The right to be heard is the right to
be consulted in matters of direct and vital concern. It is the right to have
access to the agencies of government, the right to an audience at the seats
of the mighty, the right of petition, the right of fair hearing. The right to
be heard, for the organized blind, means in particular the right of consultation
with the administrators of federal-state programs of public assistance, of vocational
rehabilitation, of vending stands, and of other aids and services. But the right
to be heard extends equally to consultation with those so-called private agencies
which in effect are quasi-public in their structure, in the character of their
programs, and in the source of their funds. These large foundations and charitable
institutions, often the recipients of public aid and always the advisor of public
programs, bear an obligation equal to that of government to consult with the
clients of their services who must otherwise become the victims of their arbitrary
authority.

Until such agencies as these, both public
and quasi-public, recognize the right of the blind to be heard, our cause may
endure but it can never prevail. For no constitution, no law, no formal regulation,
can compel anyone to listen. There are none so deaf as those who will not hear
no minds so closed as those resistant to new ideas and to the appeals of newly
vocal groups. But it is the right to be heard, through the means of consultation,
which we are seeking to establish in the two bills now before Congress. I might
add that our immediate task is to establish the right of these bills to be heard:
to get them before the proper committees and to give them a public hearing.
Once this right has been recognized and implemented by Congress, our voice will
no longer cry in a wilderness. Our words will then fall upon the ears of government,
not always perhaps like music, but like the serious speech of reasonable men
acting in concert and with confidence, and bound together
by common opinions, common affections, and common interests.

But is there really a need for protection
of the right to be heard? Do not the blind already possess the full sympathy
and good wishes of society? Are not their problems clearly recognized and their
demands understood and carried out by a benevolent government and
a kindly community?

The answer, to put it bluntly, is that
the blind have indeed gained sympathy, but they have not gained understanding.
They have won compassion without comprehension. Over the centuries they have
progressed from the status of outcasts to that of social wards but not yet to
that of free citizens. The goals of protection of adequate shelter, of minimum
security, are presently within their grasp; but the goals of dignity, of opportunity,
of independence, of total integration into normal society, are still placed
beyond their reach. In short, the blind have been given the right to life; it
remains for them to secure the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The present halfway house in which the
blind live results from the fact that, until a very short time ago, the blind
remained silent while others spoke for them sighted benefactors who wished them
well but neither knew nor understood the reality of loss of sight. These good
neighbors and well-meaning friends contributed unwittingly to the development
of a crippling stereotype, a two-sided image of the nature of blindness which
is equally in error on both sides: it has been too pessimistic on the one hand
and too optimistic on the other.

The apparent paradox of this popular
stereotype is the product of society's failure to distinguish clearly between
the two different kinds of limitation which accompany blindness: the physical
limitation and the social limitation. On the one hand, the physical effects
of loss of sight have been drastically exaggerated in all societies. The blind
man, intoned an ancient saying, is as one
dead!

If that view is no longer current, it
is still commonly believed that the blind man is as one immobilized. This conviction
of the total immobilization of the blind person has persisted stubbornly in
the face of massive scientific and factual evidence to the contrary. Nor is
it a view usually held toward others of the physically handicapped. Surely there
are few who imagine that loss of hearing, for example, carries with it the loss
of all mental faculties; or that the lack of taste, or of the sense of smell,
must render a man incapable of normal activity and enterprise. Nevertheless,
it is widely felt that loss of sight involves a total personality transformation
which leaves its victims mentally incompetent, psychologically abnormal, socially
inept, and physically helpless.

That is one side of the stereotype: a
thoroughly pessimistic and defeatist picture of the physical effects of loss
of sight. On the other side, no less significant and no less wrong, is an attitude
of casual optimism if not unconcern toward the social limitations imposed by
the sighted community upon the blind. These social limitations include discrimination
in employment; segregation in and from ordinary social relations; exclusion
from living accommodations, public and private; rejection from many of the normal
activities of the community; and relations with government in which they are
viewed as wards rather than citizens, or as patients rather than clients. They
have not yet been fully emancipated and are very far from being accepted on
a basis of social equality and individual capacity. Their inferior and deprived
status is thought to be their normal, natural, and inevitable
lot.

Fortunately today there are increasing
signs of a basic change in this traditional perspective. The blind themselves
are organized and steadily winning the right to self-expression and to consultation
in the public conduct of their affairs. No less important, growing numbers of
welfare and service groups are coming to recognize and support the competence
of the blind in the management of their own affairs.

Among the most striking and heartening
examples of this new spirit of cooperation and understanding as opposed to condescension
and pity is that developing in the Lions Clubs of America. I could take a good
deal of your time this evening illustrating the ways in which Lions in many
parts of the country are participating with us today in our movement toward
equality and self-expression. But I know of no better statement of this new
spirit of Lionism, than that which was made before our National Convention this
summer by Tim Seward, himself a prominent Lion and administrative assistant
to Congressman Walter S. Baring of Nevada. In the past, said Mr. Seward, the
Lions who have always felt a particular closeness to their blind neighbors have
done things for them rather than with them.

I believe we are on the threshold of
a new era. I know that there are some of us in Lionism [he goes on to say] who
feel that the blind are infringing on our right by conducting their own white
cane drives, because the Lions for the past 25 years have honored White Cane
Day. But the white cane is a symbol of blindness, and what more understanding
and true spirit of Lionism could there be than to return the symbol of blindness
to the blind and thank God they are able to carry their own banner.

I believe [he continued] that it is time
we better understand our relationship with the blind, and to do that we must
better understand the blind. We should understand that you not only seek but
are entitled to both social and economic equality; that you are normal people
and as such you have the right of self-expression as individuals and through
your organizations; that both federal and state agencies should consult with
your representatives in formulating programs that concern your welfare, or further
your opportunities. To this end I believe we can work together as a team, and
lend a hand when it is needed. I believe that it is far better that we learn
the purposes and objectives of your organization and help you accomplish them
rather than try to steer you on a different course. In short, I believe we should
work with you rather than for you,
and this I believe is true Lionism.

This clear affirmation is representative
of a spirit rapidly spreading today among welfare and service organizations.
This new spirit has been translated into practical administration by many public
officials including some who administer programs for the blind. We have received
from blind agency personnel in a substantial number of states correspondence
testifying to the value of close consultation with organizations of the blind.
Listen to these quotations:

1. From the organized blind of the state,
the state has received sound advice concerning the problems and needs of the
blind, thus enabling us to draft policies and procedures which are not only
realistic but are also geared to helping blind persons in their
efforts to decrease dependency.

2. The organizations of the blind have
undertaken an interpretative program among their members with respect to the
responsibilities, as well as the rights, of recipients of aid to the blind.
This in turn has contributed greatly to the smooth functioning administration
of the program.

3. As an administrator, I have found
the State Federation of the Blind a valued source of assistance in administering
services for the blind. Its activities have been a key factor in the growth
and improvement of our programs during the past few years.
4. From the first, the Federation has
provided helpful counsel and advice to the department. One means has been through
its representation on the State
Aid to the Blind Advisory Committee.

5. I feel that it is of the utmost importance
to know how the persons served feel about the services provided, how such services
can be improved. The Federation of the Blind has been an excellent vehicle
for this purpose.
6. Please be assured of this agency's
willingness and intention of always and in every way possible carrying out the
thesis that we can progress in the interest of the blind only by close cooperation,
and we certainly believe that when blind people organize together to help themselves
it certainly is helpful to any group or agency interested in the same ultimate
goals.

7. The values derived from close consultation
with the blind cannot be obtained from any other source.

Who are the state administrators who
have made these and similar statements? Are they unknowns in the field? Are
they minor officials without position, influence, or opportunity to observe
the overall picture? Quite the contrary! They are the top administrators of
their programs, thoroughly in possession of the facts and responsible not only
for what they say but for the conduct of their agencies. They are: Harry L.
Hines, Director, Services for the Blind, Nebraska; Clifford A. Stocker, Administrator,
Commission for the Blind, Oregon; Malcolm Jasper, Director, Iowa Commission
for the Blind; Perry Sundquist, Chief, Division for the Blind, California; Merle
Kidder, State Director, Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, North Dakota;
Harry E. Hayes, Director, Services for the Blind, Kansas; T. V. Cranmer, Supervisor,
Services for the Blind, Kentucky; Thomas J. Lucas, Director, Division of Public
Assistance, Wisconsin; Howard H. Hanson, Director, Services to the Blind, South
Dakota; Barbara Coughlan, Director, State Department of Public Welfare, Nevada;
John F. Mungovan, Director, State Division of the Blind, Massachusetts.

To confer the benefits which these administrators
have listed on all administrators of programs for the blind through Congressional
implementation of the rights of organization, speech, and consultation is the
very purpose of the Kennedy and Baring bills. That purpose has seemed so obvious
to many people that they have wondered why such legislation should be needed
at all or, at least, have felt confident that no one could wish to stand in
the way of so reasonable an object.

In case there are any among you who still
feel such confidence, allow me to remind you of the resolution condemning the
Kennedy bill which was railroaded through their convention this summer by a
controlling faction of the American Association of Workers for the Blind. In
this official diatribe the little group of willful men placed squarely on the
record its considered judgment of the competence of blind people generally,
the irresponsible character of their organizations, and the dictatorial function
of such groups as the AAWB. In their sweeping denunciation of the bill and all
it stands for, these agency spokesmen made four distinct
and definite points:

First, the blind are second-class citizens,
undeserving of the normal responsibilities and privileges accorded as a birthright
to other Americans. Do I exaggerate? Here are their exact words: the bill embodies
a completely unsound and retrogressive concept of the responsibilities and privileges
of blind persons as citizens. What clearer statement could there be of the view
that loss of sight is tantamount to loss of citizenship in particular, of the
right to speak and the right to be heard?

Second, the organized blind lack even
the maturity and simple competence to participate on normal terms in the conduct
of programs affecting them. Do I distort their meaning? Now hear this: the proposed
legislation, if enacted, would create an arbitrary and unwieldy system of review
and supervision of all federally-financed benefits or services on behalf of
blind persons by professionally unqualified groups; and such reviews would in
effect make these blind persons supervisors of the federal agencies and programs
and such administrative procedure would impair the efficiency of federal programs.
These statements leave no room for doubt as to the utter contempt with which
the dominant elements in the AAWB regard the abilities of their blind clients;
in a word, they regard these abilities as nonexistent.

Third, only the AAWB and its fellow custodians
possess the rights and competence to consult on programs for the blind in fact,
to dictate what these programs are to be and this vested interest must be protected
at all costs against the unwarranted intrusion of the blind themselves. Am I
unfair to them? Look at the resolution: in contrast to its rejection of the
organized blind from consultation, it declares that one of the principal functions
of the AAWB is to provide the benefits of its extensive knowledge about the
problems of blindness to those leaders in our American society who are responsible
for the reflection in legislation of sound social thinking in other words, to
advise and supervise the programs for the blind. The resolution is replete with
such odious contrasts: where the blind are professionally unqualified, the agencies
are professionally responsible and moreover possess the professional processes
and authentic information to counteract the errors and evils perpetrated by
the unprofessional blind.

Fourth, although the Kennedy bill is
here condemned as completely unsound and retrogressive, all of its provisions
are said to be contained in the Constitution and in the laws! Does this spurning
of the Constitution seem unlikely? Listen: All of the provisions of this bill
are already guaranteed in the Constitution of the U.S. and furthermore, most
federally authorized programs of benefits already provide through statutes or
regulations opportunities for fair hearings. If this is true, then all the preceding
statements damning the bill are flagrant attacks upon the Constitution! But
what is even more amazing is the incredible constitutional doctrine here set
forth that it is unnecessary and improper to give legislative enforcement to
any right. This lack of understanding of American government and institutions
on the part of a group most of whom are in the employ of government is appalling.
Might we observe that the leaders of the AAWB are professionally unqualified
when it comes to questions of constitutional law.

By this reasoning we should do away with
all our laws against murder because the Constitution guarantees the right to
life. By this reasoning we should throw out all our laws protecting property
because the Constitution guarantees the right to property. By thi reasoning
we should discard all our laws protecting persons against unlawful imprisonment
because the Constitution guarantees the right to liberty. By this reasoning
we should eliminate all our laws protecting individuals against violence to
their persons or invasion of their rights of privacy because the Constitution
guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects. By this reasoning we should repeal all those legislative enactments
maintaining the rights of citizens because the Constitution forbids abridgment
of the privileges and immunities of citizens. By this reasoning we should destroy
all those legislative provisions requiring that persons similarly situated be
treated alike because the Constitution guarantees to all persons the equal protection
of the laws. By this reasoning we should strike down one by one, section by
section, clause by clause, those statutes which prohibit the peonage and chattelage
of man because the Constitution abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude.

In most of its provisions the Constitution
is not a self-executing document. Virtually all of its provisions require the
support of special laws in order to gain enforcement. Even the 13th Amendment
sometimes cited as one of the few examples of a self-executing provision has
been implemented by particular legislation, and indeed the Amendment itself
calls for just such - implementation.

To these four planks in the anti-blind
platform of the AAWB, some others have recently been added by their once-silent
partner, the American Foundation for the Blind. In a July bulletin of the Foundation,
the Kennedy bill was also condemned as administratively unsound because it would,
in some unspecified way, injure the spread of services for the blind. More important,
however, said the Foundation, passage of the measure would tend to further the
segregation of blind persons, and coerce them into added identification with
selected organized groups if they wished to have any voice in affairs affecting
their welfare.

Note the logic of that assertion. The
bill would strengthen and assist organizations of the blind therefore it would
further the segregation of the blind. In other words there must be no legislation
to support the farmers, because it could only serve to further their segregation.
There must be no legislation to advance the cause of private enterprise, because
it could only serve to further the segregation of businessmen. There must be
no legislation on behalf of organized labor, because to strengthen the unions
is only to further their segregation. There must be no aid to needy children
or the totally and permanently disabled because such aid will further the segregation
of these groups. By this logic, there must be no legislation of any kind for
any group of citizens except, presumably, that legislation aiding the AFB and
the AAWB. That alone may be encouraged without the danger of segregation.

But we may also agree that successful
self-organization by the blind would tend to further their segregation from
the grip of custodial agencies. As for the charge of coercion, it need only
be said that the primary purpose of the Kennedy and Baring bills is to afford
the blind protection from the degree of coercion which now exists by virtue
of the denial of their rights to organize, to speak for themselves, and to be
heard in the councils of - government.

One more declaration of the American
Foundation against the Kennedy bill deserves our attention. In a separate release
the executive director, Mr. M. Robert Barnett, characterized the introduction
of the bill as a regrettable incident because it is likely to cause one of the
most serious philosophical debates yet experienced in our field. We may all
agree that the bill is likely to produce such a result: but why should such
a serious philosophical debate be regrettable? Why, on the contrary, is it not
welcomed as a golden opportunity to be eagerly embraced by all who are sincerely
interested in the welfare of the blind and therefore in the solution of their
problems? One might suppose that no greater contribution could be made in our
field than the production of serious philosophical debate. But Mr. Barnett considers
it regrettable. Are there now those who would deny to the blind not only the
rights of free speech and organization but even the right of free thought and
philosophical reflection? Such serious discussion should, it would seem, prove
regrettable only to those whose philosophy cannot stand the rigors of the contest.

On the basis of the assertions in the
AAWB resolution and the Foundation release it is hard to imagine any wider and
more unbridgeable gulf of thought and principle than exist between our philosophy
and theirs. We believe the blind to be normal individuals lacking only the sense
of sight. They believe the blind to be abnormal individuals lacking maturity,
responsibility, and mentality. We believe the organized blind to be the best
interpreters of their own needs and aspirations. They believe the organized
blind to be entirely indeed, dangerously unqualified and instead assert their
own claim to act in the name of the blind without the approval of the blind.
We believe the role of the agencies, whether public or quasi-public, to be that
of servants of their blind clients, responsible to their interests, and responsive
to their needs. They believe the role of the agencies to be that not of public
servants but of private dictators, members of an elite corps of self-designated
experts beyond the reach or consultation of the people. Finally, we believe
these bulletins and resolutions to be a shocking revelation of backwardness
and prejudice among the dominant agency. They believe but wait! Do they really
believe? Is it possible that these specious arguments are not really their beliefs
but only the outpouring of propaganda in a ruthless campaign to stamp out the
competition of the organized blind and to perpetuate their own unchallenged
dominance? With the publication of these revealing resolutions whatever trust
and confidence the blind may once have had in the integrity and wisdom of those
who dominate the AAWB has been forever swept away. They are shown to be among
those who have been dragged protesting into the 20th century but still have
one foot in the grave of medieval charity and custodialism and the other foot
in the pit of their own institutional and occupational vested interests.

Their belief is that the blind should
be overseen and not heard; that the blind have no right of self-expression because
the blind are not full-fledged citizens and, besides, are not capable of sound
social thinking; and that the organized blind, if they cannot be dismissed as
a handful of eccentrics, must be dispersed as
a mob of delinquents.

Once upon another time a somewhat different
group of deprived people only slightly more numerous than we are today rose
up against their own protectors on this very issue of the right of men and citizens
particularly to the rights of self-expression and representation. In terms of
material strength they were no match for their adversary at that time the world's
greatest power. But the rebels were united in their dedication to certain unalienable
rights among these were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in their
own way and they were determined to make good their declaration of independence.
Their power was not so much physical as spiritual. It lay in their collective
will, their unity of purpose, and their faith in themselves. Armed with these
weapons, their cause proved invincible
180 years ago.

God helping us, that cause will prevail
today. The good have associated and will not fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice
in a contemptible struggle.

In the summer of 1957 two identical bills
were introduced into Congress one by Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts and
the other by Congressman Walter S. Baring of Nevada expressly to protect the
right of the blind to self-expression through organizations of the blind. When
he rose in the Senate to introduce and speak for his bill, the future President
went directly to the heart of the matter in forceful words which clearly reflected
his commitment to the political and civil rights of disadvantaged Americans.
This is what he had to say:

Organizations of blind persons exist
today in many cities and communities throughout the country. In most of our
states today, organizations of the blind have formed one or more statewide organizations.
Forty-three of these statewide organizations of the blind are now federated
into a single nationwide organization, the National Federation of the Blind.

Organizations of this kind [Senator Kennedy
continued] have been formed by the blind to advance their own welfare and common
interests. These organizations provide to our blind citizens the opportunity
for collective self-expression. Through these organizations, these citizens
are able to formulate democratically and voice effectively their views on the
programs that our national government and our state governments are financing
for their aid and rehabilitation. It is important that these views be expressed
freely and without interference. It is important that these views be heard and
considered by persons charged with responsibility for determining and carrying
out our programs for the blind.

In some communities [he said] this freedom
that each of our blind citizens should have to join, or not to join, organizations
of the blind has been prejudiced by a few professional workers in programs for
the blind who have allowed their personal views to be expressed in official
action for or against particular organizations of the blind. Administrators
and workers in welfare programs for the blind possess unusual power to control
the lives and influence the conduct of their clients. It is important that our
blind citizens be protected against any exercise of this kind of influence or
authority to interfere with their freedom of self-expression through organizations
of the blind.

The Kennedy bill was designed to do two
complementary things: to insure to the blind the right to organize without intimidation
or interference and to guarantee their right to speak for themselves and to
be heard through meaningful consultation with the agencies responsible for services
affecting their welfare. Literally as well as symbolically it was a blow for
participatory democracy, establishing the principle of representation by the
clients of the services the consumers in the decision-making councils
of government.

For a three-week period at Christmas
of 1957, Kenneth Jernigan made an extensive swing through much of the country
writing testimony for Federationists to give during anticipated upcoming hearings
on the bill. One such undertaking resulted in an eloquent analysis of the need
for the bill and for checks and balances to curb the power of the agencies.
This testimony, which was given by Walter McDonald of Georgia, was printed in
the March, 1958, Braille Monitor.

CHECKS AND BALANCES
We are asking Congress to enact legislation
requiring that the blind be consulted about programs affecting them and protecting
the right of the blind to organize. Why are we doing this? Is it really conceivable
that there are times when the best interests of the blind and of the agencies
established to serve the blind are different, even antagonistic? If there are
such times, then the need for the
legislation we are proposing is obvious.

Let me create for you a rather fanciful
and purely hypothetical situation. Suppose the year is not 1958, but 1940 instead.
Suppose further that you are not in your present circumstances but are in work
for the blind. You may be a social caseworker, a home teacher, or the manager
of a sheltered workshop. You may be sighted or blind. It makes no difference
for the purposes of our story.

In 1940 the Depression was just beginning
to ease and the lifeblood of commerce to flow through the nation again. It was
a year of hope a time to dream dreams and have ambition. Like the rest, you
have your dream and your ambition, but it is not a selfish dream, not an unworthy
ambition. You have in mind the launching of a project which will benefit blind
people, not only those with whom you have been working but others throughout
your state and region.

You have observed that one of the greatest
problems confronting the blind is their difficulty in traveling independently.
In the past, when you have tried to help a blind person get a job, almost the
first question you have always been asked by the prospective employer has been,
But how can he get to and from work? You have given a great deal of thought
to the matter and have concluded that the best answer to the problem is the
guide dog. Guide dogs cannot be procured in your part of the country, and the
local blind person who wants one must travel many hundreds of miles at great
trouble and expense. Besides, there is usually a long waiting list. You decide
to do something about the situation. In
short, you decide to establish a guide dog school.

You quit your job and put your whole
time and energy into the project. You talk to local business people and begin
to raise money. Soon you have a building, and you are collecting a staff of
guide dog trainers and beginning to bring in dogs and students. You work day
and night, and you pay yourself a salary of, let us say, ten thousand dollars
a year which is not unreasonable and certainly not
too high for the amount of time and effort you are putting in.

Your school prospers. Blind people who
have learned to travel by using your dogs are working in competitive industry
and the professions throughout the country, and you have letters of gratitude
and appreciation from them as well as many newspaper clippings and magazine
articles telling of their success.

Your happiness is complete. You are doing
a worthwhile job, and you are respected and honored throughout your entire state.
In your own community you have become quite a figure and have more prestige
than anyone else doing work for the blind. Yearly fund drives, complete with
picture displays of guide dogs leading their masters, touch the hearts of thousands
of donors and insure plenty of
money for the growth and expansion of the school.

Time rushes by, and the year is now 1960.
One day I come into your office, and I tell you of the perfection of a new travel
aid for the blind. Perhaps I say something to this effect:

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology have, as you probably know, been working for several years to
perfect an electronic travel aid for the blind. They have now achieved success.
The instrument is perfect. It is light, compact, inexpensive, and able to scan
for at least thirty feet in all directions and to give the blind person all
of the information his eyes would give him if he were sighted. I have one of
the instruments here with me, and since I know that you have devoted the greater
part of your life to the improvement of the lot of the blind and that you are
sincerely interested in their welfare, I am certain you will (after looking
at the instrument and verifying my statement about it) rejoice with me that
the blind no longer need canes or dogs. I am sure that you will close up your
school, discharge your staff, cease your fundraising, stop paying yourself your
salary of ten thousand dollars a year, and tell the public that
the guide dog is no longer needed.

If this were a true instead of a hypothetical
situation, what would you do? I submit that you would rationalize and say to
yourself and to others, These people are doing real harm to the blind. It may
be a good instrument, but nothing will ever replace the guide dog, at least
not in our lifetime. You would not admit to yourself that you were merely protecting
your own vested interests. You would rationalize. The alternative would be to
give up your position, your prestige, your feeling of importance, your established
program, and last but not least your ten thousand dollars
a year.

As I have said, this is purely a hypothetical
situation. Nineteen-sixty has not yet arrived, and the people at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology have not, so far, perfected their travel aid. Besides,
as any guide dog school official will tell you, nothing will ever replace the
guide dog, at least not in our lifetime.

The situation I have created for you
is purely hypothetical, but its real-life counterpart is occurring every day
in literally hundreds of agencies for the blind in this country. It occurs every
time the manager of a sheltered workshop for the blind has to decide whether
to encourage his best and most skilled workers to leave the sheltered workshop
and seek employment in competitive industry or to discourage them from seeking
such employment so that they will stay in the shop. If they go, they will be
finding normal lives and better pay, but the efficiency of the shop will be
lowered, and more subsidies will have to be found. On the other hand, if the
best workers are kept in the sheltered workshop, overall efficiency rises, and
the workshop manager looks good as an administrator. He is getting skilled labor
at substandard wages to help offset the inefficiency of his poorer workers.
What is he to do, consider the welfare of the blind worker who might be placed
in private industry or defend the interests of the overall workshop program?
The answer is that many workshop managers rationalize and tell themselves that
it is really to the best interests of all the workers to be kept in sheltered
employment.

The same basic situation occurs every
time the administrator of a vending stand program for the blind has to decide
what kind of system he will have. If he advocates the philosophy of independence
for the blind and admits to himself and others that many blind are capable of
operating vending stands without constant care and supervision on the part of
the agency, he needs fewer vending stand supervisors, and his agency will not
expand as rapidly as it would under what has come to be known as the controlled
system. The result is that most vending stand agencies have controlled rather
than independent programs.

In reality the counterpart of my hypothetical
situation occurs every time the blind set up an independent organization of
their own in a community where a well-established agency doing work for the
blind exists. The agency has a monopoly on fundraising in the name of the blind.
Its officials have unchallenged prestige and are considered to be the authorities
in the field. If the blind organize, the empire is challenged; the monopoly
is threatened.

The agency leaders not only rationalize
to themselves; they also propagandize the public in an attempt to perpetuate
their programs and defend their vested interests. The first sentence of the
Code of Ethics (so-called) of the American Association of Workers for the Blind
reads as follows: The operations of all agencies for the blind entail a high
degree of responsibility because of the element of public trusteeship and protection
of the blind involved in services
to the blind.
As our national President, Dr. tenBroek,
has so aptly put it, The use of the word `protection' makes it plain that the
trusteeship here referred to is of the same kind as that existing under the
United Nations Trusteeship Council that is, custody and control of underprivileged,
backward, and dependent peoples.

Mr. M. Robert Barnett, executive director
of the American Foundation for the Blind, says on page 12, of the Pinebrook
Report, an official publication of the Foundation: A job, a home, and the right
to be a citizen will come to the blind in that generation when each and every
blind person is a living advertisement of his ability and capacity to accept
the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship. Then we professionals will
have no problem of interpretation because the blind will no longer need us to
speak for them, and we, like primitive segregation, will die away as an instrument
which society will include only in its historical records.

No statements could be clearer than these
and none could be more unsound or more harmful to the best interests of the
blind and to public understanding of our problems. The matter is as simple as
this. Most agency workers are basically good people, but they are also human.
They tend to defend their own vested interests, and those interests are not
always identical with the interests of the blind they are supposedly serving.
We need agencies for the blind, and we need independent organizations of the
blind. In the best American tradition the two forces serve as checks and balances.
Both have duties; both have rights; both have responsibilities. The existence
of one need not, and should not, constitute a threat to the proper activities
of the other. No agency should claim to represent the blind or set itself up
as a spokesman for the blind. No organization of the blind nor any individual
member should indulge in sweeping condemnation of all agencies and all agency
activities. When each recognizes that the other has a necessary and appropriate
role, mutual jealousy and antagonism should give way to an
attitude of mutual respect and to a spirit of cooperation.

Against the right-to-organize bill during
that epochal struggle were the Federal Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare and various of its subdivisions such as the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation,
along with such powerful professional organizations as the American Foundation
for the Blind and the American Association of Workers for the Blind. The major
arguments advanced by these agency interests were, first, that the legislation
was not needed because everyone has the right to free association, and, second,
that the bill would give the organized blind a degree of authority and influence
over public programs sufficient to outweigh the combined power of the professional
agencies.

In the end, that combined power was enough
to defeat the Kennedy bill in the Congress. But it was a Pyrrhic victory for
the agencies. In 1959, extensive public hearings were held on the issue by a
subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and Labor; the National Federation
of the Blind's testimony alone took up three full days and ran to several volumes
of transcript. The impact of the hearings was felt at various levels and by
all groups involved. Little Kennedy Bills, as they came to be called, were introduced
in a number of states and passed by several. More important, the objectives
of the bill to protect the rights of assembly and petition, the right to organize,
and the right to be heard came to be at least partially achieved in practice
where they were not formally granted in law. Like the trade union movement a
generation before, the organized blind movement came to be granted a kind of
tacit legitimacy by the agencies of the blindness system; the overt attacks
upon National Federation of the Blind members and leaders ceased (although not
the covert hostility), and an era bearing
the semblance of peaceful coexistence was ushered in.

As it turned out, however, the withdrawal
of the agencies from the battlefield was in reality a strategic retreat a temporary
cease-fire rather than a genuine peace-making effort. There was little serious
recognition yet of the rights of the blind to self-expression and self-direction,
whether individually or collectively. At the end of the embattled decade of
the fifties, the prevailing attitude of the custodial agencies was still essentially
that proclaimed a few years before, with casual confidence and ill-disguised
contempt, by one of their representative spokesmen: The fact, he wrote, that
so few workers or organizations are doing anything appreciable to [improve the
condition of the blind] cannot be explained entirely on the grounds that they
are not in the vanguard of social thinking. It is rather because they are realistic
enough to recognize that the rank and file of blind people have neither the
exceptional urge for independence nor the personal qualifications necessary
to satisfactory adjustment in the sighted world.

It was just such misguided notions as
those plus the appalling fact of their confession by the administrator of one
of the nation's largest private agencies for the blind that prompted Jacobus
tenBroek to address, at the 1957 convention of the National Federation of the
Blind in New Orleans, what he termed The Cross of Blindness. The symbolic cross he saw the blind to be bearing was the burden of social stigmas,
stereotypes, and superstitions the dead weight of public prejudice and misunderstanding.
In a masterful speech which has since become one of his most famous, tenBroek
spelled out in equally vivid terms both the case for and the case against self-organization
by the blind. His address, delivered before a banquet audience of 700, stands
as a memorial to the high ground the peak of unity and confidence which was
attained by the National Federation of the Blind in that watershed year. That
high ground was soon to be lost, in the turmoil of civil war, and not to be
reached again for years to come. But in 1957 the national movement of the organized
blind, not yet a score of years old, appeared as firm in its solidarity as it
was irresistible in its force. And no one who heard the leader of the movement
speak that day could doubt that these newly independent and self-assertive people
would forever refuse to bear the stigmatizing cross of blindness.
During the decade of the fifties at least
until the outbreak of the civil war in the closing years the organized blind
movement enjoyed rapid and steady growth not only in membership but also in
public reputation and influence. With the launching of a successful fund-raising
program early in the decade, it became possible to spread the word of Federationism
more widely and effectively than ever through the new Braille Monitor,
which was now published in both Braille and ink print editions, as well as through
a profusion of speeches, articles, and special publications such as The Blind
and the Right to Organize: A Report to the Nation, a compilation of key
documents relating to that struggle by the National Federation of
the Blind.

With increased information and publicity
came enhanced recognition and stature for the Federation and its leadership
notably its founder and chief executive, Jacobus tenBroek. In the course of
the struggle for the Kennedy bill, tenBroek and others of his colleagues in
the movement found themselves rather suddenly in the limelight of public attention
repeatedly interviewed on radio and television, reported on in the press, and
even (in the case of one California newspaper) editorialized about. One of the
most significant and widely read examples of this newly favorable press appeared
in the New Yorker magazine on January 11, 1958, in the form of a prose
profile of President tenBroek, which vividly conveyed both his forceful personality
and his backbreaking schedule of travels on behalf of the organized blind. For
its expression of the human and personal dimensions of leadership, the New
Yorker sketch remains a valuable memento of both the man and the
movement. Here is the article as it appeared in the magazine:

NEW YORKER MAGAZINE FEATURES NFB PRESIDENT
Jacobus tenBroek, a hearty, vigorous
man of forty-six with aquiline features, a ruddy complexion, and a carefully
groomed reddish goatee, is an authority on government and constitutional law,
a field in which he has published a number of highly regarded books and monographs;
the chairman of the Speech Department of the University of California at Berkeley;
a member of California's Social Welfare Board; and the country's leading lobbyist
and campaigner against an adage that he deems mistaken, mischievous, and far
too commonly accepted the one that goes When the blind lead the blind, they
all fall into the ditch. As President and one of the founders of the National
Federation of the Blind, Professor tenBroek, who lost his sight when he was
a boy, has a formidable spare-time schedule of speeches, conferences, and caucuses,
through which he seeks to spread his organization's belief that the blind are
much more capable than is generally realized of holding down normal jobs and
running their own affairs. I've had to make ten flying trips throughout the
country on the last twelve weekends, he told us when he called on us at our
office during a stopover of a few hours in New York, in route from Washington,
D.C., where he had been talking with congressmen about legislation that his
organization is advocating, to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he was scheduled
to make a speech before one of the Federation's local chapters. As a rule, I
board the plane Friday evening, right after my last class, he said. I prepare
my speeches during the trip and usually manage to pick up a return flight that
gets me to Berkeley just in time for my Monday-morning eight-o'clock class.
He laughed. My children, I have three, are getting fed up with this routine.
They say they're beginning to forget what I look like.
One of Professor tenBroek's chief ambitions
as he flies about the country is to persuade people he meets that he is not
exceptional in either talent or character but pretty much an ordinary man who
has simply refused to accept the widespread assumption that a blind person must
live a dependent and sheltered life. I've got a neighbor in Berkeley a blind
man I've known since we were classmates at school who built his house entirely
with his own hands, he said. It's quite a good-sized house, too about twenty-seven
hundred square feet. He built the forms, poured the cement, put in the plumbing,
did the wiring everything. The place is on a fairly steep hillside, and before
he could start he had to make himself a large power-operated boom, for hauling
his materials up to the site. Now, there's a man that someone like me someone
who has no aptitude for that sort of thing would call an exceptional person,
but he doesn't seem to think he is. He says he just happens to be handy with
tools. The Professor shook his head in admiration.

As things are now, he went on, most
of the country's three hundred and twenty-five thousand blind people who work
are employed in the special sheltered shops that society with the best and most
charitable intentions has set up for us, where we can make baskets and such,
and come to no harm. Only about two or three per cent of us are holding normal
jobs out in the world. My organization is convinced at least twenty times that
many could be doing so if they had the chance. What we seek for the blind is
the right to compete on equal terms. In this, the Federation the only national
organization in this field whose membership and officers are all blind is very
much at odds with most of the traditional organizations and agencies set up
to help us, which are sure they know better than we do what is good for us.
But we've been making considerable progress. In the last few years, we've succeeded
in persuading the Civil Service to let blind people try out for many categories
of jobs from which they used to be excluded.

We asked Professor tenBroek what jobs
he himself thinks are impossible for the blind to hold. He laughed, stroked
his goatee professorially, and said, "Well, airplane pilot, I suppose though,
for that matter, planes fly most of the time nowadays on automatic controls,
don't they, and someday may be completely automatic. Actually, I can't say what
the limits are. Every time I think I have hit on some job that a blind man couldn't
conceivably hold, I find a blind man holding it. One of my friends in the Federation
is an experimental nuclear physicist, and you wouldn't think of that as a promising
field for a blind man to be in. Dr. Bradley Burson is his name, and he's at
the Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago. When he was working on problems
involving the decay of radioactive matter, he invented some devices for himself
that measured the decay in terms of audible and tactile signals, rather than
the commonly employed visual signals. Some of the devices turned out to be more
accurate than the standard ones, and are now widely used at the lab. I'd always
assumed that being an electrician would be impossible for a blind man, but not
long ago I found a blind electrician a fellow named Jack Polston. I went and
talked to his boss, and he told me that Polston does everything any other electrician
can do wiring, soldering, and all the rest. While I was there, Polston was doing
the complete wiring for a service station, which I'm told is a particularly
complicated job. To be sure, he had been an electrician before he became blind,
but don't ask me how he solders without setting the place on fire. I couldn't,
even if I had my sight. Anyway, now that I've found him I'm pestering the Civil
Service not to disqualify blind people automatically
from trying out for electricians' jobs."

Professor tenBroek paused for a moment,
and then said, "Don't let me give you the idea that it isn't a nuisance
to be blind. To bump your head on an overhanging sign as you walk down the street
or to fall into a hole that anybody else can seeit's a nuisance, I can assure
you, but it isn't a catastrophe. He stood up, buttoning his coat, and picked
up his cane and his briefcase. Well, he said briskly, it's after two o'clock,
and I'll have to step lively if I'm going to make it out to LaGuardia in time
to catch the three-fifteen for Springfield. If you'll be so kind as to see me
to the elevator, I'll carry on from there."

Among the leaders of the organized blind,
Jacobus tenBroek was clearly preeminent in this first generation of Federationists;
and he remained so until his death in 1968. But from the start of the movement
he gathered around him the ablest men and women he could find the best and the
brightestamong the blind of the nation. Among them were lawyers like Raymond
Henderson of California; businessmen like George Card of Michigan; social workers
like Perry Sundquist of California; and philosophers like Kingsley Price of
Johns Hopkins University. Specialized talents aside, the primary characteristic
which tenBroek sought in his circle of colleagues was energetic devotion to
the cause of the organized blind; and as a teacher and mentor of youth he was
particularly intent upon seeking out this leadership potential among the younger
members of the movement. (One of his greatest disappointments over the years
was the reluctance of many successful blind persons of the professional middle
class to be identified with a movement of rank-and-file blind people who not
only were often unemployed but were categorized as unemployable.)

During the course of the fifties, year
after year, the name of one younger leader in the movement came increasingly
to be heard in the conventions, discussed in the meetings, pronounced in the
Braille Monitor, and recognized among the organized blind everywhere. Kenneth
Jernigan first sprang into national prominence in 1952 when he organized the
National Federation of the Blind convention and was elected to the Board of
Directors. From that time on he was in the thick of it; by 1958, when Jernigan
accepted an appointment as director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, he
also became the Second Vice President of the National Federation of the Blind,
and the following year became the First Vice President. The full scope and impact
of Jernigan's participation in the movement to that point was set forth in a
1958 Braille Monitor article by the man who knew the most about it: Dr.
tenBroek. Ostensibly the article was an announcement to the membership of Jernigan's
Iowa appointment; in truth it was a tribute from the Federation's leader and
senior statesman to the younger man who had become his chief lieutenant. In
retrospect this testimonial takes on a prophetic quality; for of all the confidantes
and colleagues who surrounded President tenBroek in that era, the one who was
to remain longest by his side, and ultimately to receive from his hands the
mantle of leadership, was the young man of whom he was writing then.
This is what Jacobus tenBroek said about
Kenneth Jernigan in 1958:

FEDERATION LEADER APPOINTED DIRECTOR OF

IOWA COMMISSION FOR THE BLIND
by Jacobus tenBroek

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
also was 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
even than 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 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.
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