Restoration: The Beginning Years of the Second Jernigan Presidency

Restoration: The Beginning Years of the Second Jernigan Presidency

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Restoration: The Beginning Years of the Second Jernigan Presidency

A National Convention which would later be designated by its key figure as one of the finest episodes in our history took place in the sunshine of Miami
Beach during the summer of 1979 when over one thousand members of the National
Federation of the Blind gathered in a mood compounded of excitement and determination
to dispatch the sowers of internal discord, to map the strategies of a dozen
external campaigns, to celebrate a return to solvency, and to reassure each
other that old acquaintances were not forgot.
Kenneth Jernigan, who had been restored to the presidency by acclamation only
the year before, was to say of this Miami convention that it was one of our
very best. There was a mood of closeness and harmony which probably surpassed
anything we have ever had. And Ramona Walhof, the national leader who wrote
the Monitor's convention roundup, called it a tremendous experience exciting,
informative, uplifting, and spiritually rewarding.
What was remarkable about these accolades, in retrospect, was that they were
uttered in reference to a convention which was compelled to deal with an organized
campaign by dissident members to take over the Federation and reduce it to the
impotence of a loose confederation of autonomous state groups. It might have
been an ugly scene; but as it turned out the threat was summarily dispatched
by the delegates through a series of decisive actions (to be described below)
which left no doubt as to the feelings of the membership and the direction of
the movement.

Scarcely less remarkable than the convention's dispatch of the internal quarrel
was its general equanimity in the face of greater and more concerted attacks
from without than the organized blind movement had known since the distant days
of the civil war in the late fifties. That prevailing mood of confidence and
quiet strength found eloquent expression in the banquet speech which President
Jernigan delivered at the Miami convention. Addressing the theme "That's
How It Is At The Top of the Stairs", Jernigan pointed out that the Federation's
rapid growth in power and stature had brought with it, as a natural consequence,
a rising tide of opposition amounting to a backlash: No group ever goes from
second-class status to first-class citizenship without passing through a period
of hostility, he said. Several years ago I made the statement that we had
not even come far enough up the staircase of independence for anybody to hate
us. I believe I can safely say that that problem has now been solved. We have
enemies enough to satisfy even the most militant among us. We have actually
progressed to the point of creating a backlash.

He went on to point out that the hardening of opposition and the widening of
attacks upon the organized blind movement were cause not for dismay but for
satisfaction as graphic evidence of the Federation's ascent to the higher reaches
of the stairway: This is our challenge and our confrontation. It is also the
strongest possible proof of how far we have come. For the first time in history,
the choice is ours. As other minorities have discovered, the final steps are
the hardest.

Here is the complete text of the Miami address: BLINDNESS:
THAT'S HOW IT IS AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS

The Civil War That Wasn't

A second time of troubles for the organized blind reminiscent on a minor
scale of the internal struggle that had wracked the movement two decades before
descended upon the National Federation in the waning years of the seventies.
Like the earlier episode, the new push for power by a dissident faction of the
membership which was quickly to prove abortive grew out of a combination of
adverse factors and events, some interconnected and others merely coincidental.
But, unlike the earlier episode, this mini-rebellion barely rippled the surface
of a united organization and left it stronger, closer-knit, and more mature
than ever.

There were other differences between the two periods of stress. The civil war
of the fifties had been fought over issues of some consequence (as well as others
of merely personal ambition and spite); its effect was to settle in principle
the question of NFB's identity and character, establishing the fact that it
was not a loose confederation but a unitary national organization with authority
to supervise its constituent local and state affiliates. Unfortunately what
was established de facto was not reinforced and nailed down de jure, in the
formalities of legal and constitutional procedure; the Federation's members
had neither the stomach nor the energy, after their years of civil ordeal, to
fight on further in the courts and the convention for what seemed already plainly
settled and agreed upon. It was precisely that legal-procedural imprimatur,
however, which was the significant achievement of the attempted mutiny of the
late seventies. The issue was conclusively resolved in two venues: it was decided
in the courts with victorious lawsuits against the dissidents in California,
Washington, and Iowa respectively; and it was settled in the convention through
constitutional amendments, resolutions, and other democratic decisions.
The most conspicuous difference between the two internal episodes was one of
scale. The earlier episode of the fifties deserved the title of civil war, in
terms of both size and duration; it involved real numbers, it spread through
much of the country, and it sustained heavy casualties in the form of fallen
chapters and split affiliates. The later insurrection broke out in two states
California and Washington and when it had done its worst and played itself out
it could claim but a handful of defectors in a single additional state, that
of Iowa. It was for this reason that, for years thereafter, the entire episode
would be widely known in the movement as the civil war that wasn't.

The first of the factors which combined to precipitate the new squabble was
the 1977 resignation of President Jernigan for reasons of ill health. Inadvertently,
but perhaps inevitably, that development sent a signal to anti-Federationists
without and to dissident members within that a window of vulnerability had
been opened and with it an opportunity for mischief and maneuver. To understand
the internal side of this scenario it is important to recall the extraordinary
growth enjoyed by the Federation during the seventies, which brought new members
and chapters into the movement in numbers too great to be easily or quickly
assimilated into the Federation community. Added to this, not incidentally,
were the economic factors which had transformed the movement in a decade or
two from a comfortable primary group in which everyone knew everyone into a
far-flung network of affiliated groups and individuals. Despite this expansion
there was, as we have seen, a countervailing force of community and family bonding;
but not everyone in the nationwide network could be readily brought into the
family circle. There were bound to be some who still felt alienated and at odds
with the mainstream of the organized blind movement; and there would also be
others who, alienated or not, misperceived the Federation community as a competitive
scramble no different from the cut-throat enterprises of their own experience.
In the two far western states of California and Washington encouraged by their
geographic distance from the center, emboldened by the strength of their two
affiliates, and enticed by the size of their state treasuries two overambitious
leaders in particular (Robert Acosta and Sue Ammeter) conspired to carve out
independent territories of their own, without regard for the limitations and
constraints imposed by membership in the National Federation.

It should be noted that, while these internal power plays were going on, parallel
forces outside the movement in particular some elements in the professional
blindness system long opposed to the Federation had also been stirred into renewed
agitation by the resignation of President Jernigan and the impression of weakness
which that conveyed. The main journalistic conduit for their efforts to sabotage
the NFB and its leadership became the Des Moines Register, a newspaper whose
statewide circulation could be deployed to discredit Jernigan as Director of
the Iowa Commission for the Blind as well as to malign the Federation itself
with its national headquarters situated in Des Moines. Significantly the same
paper had for nearly twenty years supported Jernigan and the Commission with
uniform enthusiasm an attitude exemplified by a 1968 editorial on Jernigan,
typical of numerous other articles over the years.

Here is the Register's editorial:

If a person must be blind, it is better to be blind in Iowa than anywhere else
in the nation or the world. So said Harold Russell, chairman of the President's
Committee on the Handicapped in awarding a presidential citation to Kenneth
Jernigan and it's true.

More than that, the major reason it is true is that for ten years Kenneth Jernigan
has been director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind.

Before coming here, Jernigan had sold insurance, taught in a teachers college,
worked in a rehabilitation program for the blind in Tennessee, and then been
psychologist and counselor at the California Rehabilitation Center for the Blind
at Oakland.

He was brought here by Mrs. Alvin Kirsner, who had known him for years. She
headed a volunteer group at B'nai Jeshurun's Temple Sisterhood which had turned
a needed textbook into Braille the raised type which blind can read by touch
for Jernigan when he was teaching in Nashville. By 1958 she was chairman of
the Iowa Commission for the Blind, which at long last had a program and had
talked the Iowa legislature into putting up some money for it.

Bringing Jernigan here to head it was a brilliant stroke. Jernigan is a dynamo.
From one of the worst in the country, Iowa's rehabilitation program for the
blind became one of the best in the country.

The money was essential, but even more important was the spirit Jernigan managed
to infuse into it.

You can see it in the spirited swing of those long fiberglass canes the blind
trainees use around Des Moines as they begin to acquire some confidence in the
newly learned skill of traveling making their way around without help.

You can see it in the record his trainees have made, and in the growing acceptance
of his work by the legislature and the public.

By public, we mean not just the people of Iowa. Among the center's trainees
was a woman physician from Pakistan, who went back there to start a similar
center. The Iowa program attracts visitors from all over the U.S. and the world.

The presidential award to Jernigan was richly deserved. All Iowans can be proud
they have him in their midst.

That sweepingly positive attitude on the part of the Des Moines Register
shifted abruptly to one of implacable hostility shortly after the Jernigan resignation
from the NFB presidency. Various plausible explanations might be offered for
this precipitous editorial mood swing. One was that the newspaper, afflicted
with falling circulation and reduced revenues, needed a scapegoat and a burning
cause around which to rebuild its reputation for investigative journalism a
concept which had lately come into great popularity with the daily press and
its readers as a result of the famous Woodward-Bernstein exposes during what
were known as the Watergate scandals. Here in the newspaper's own back yard,
in the person of Kenneth Jernigan, was a local figure with the highest name-recognition
quotient across the state of any public official possibly excepting the governor.

The Register's campaign was also evidently linked (through personal
connections) to a recent legal victory of the Federation and its Minnesota affiliate
over the Minneapolis Society for the Blind in a landmark case which had featured
key testimony by Kenneth Jernigan. Certain facts are known, as Jernigan himself
was later to write. We know, for instance, that Jesse Rosten became head of
the Minneapolis Society for the Blind in the early 1970s and that the blind
of Minnesota have been engaged in a bitter struggle with the Society for a decade.
We know that Gil Cranberg is now head of the editorial section of the Des
Moines Register and that he has been a power at the newspaper for more than
twenty years. Rosten has bragged that Cranberg was his college roommate and
that he could get at Jernigan through Cranberg.

Whatever the source of its motivation, the Register launched a flurry
of attacks against the Iowa Commission and its director which, before the campaign
finally subsided two years later, amounted to a total of more than 200 separate
articles. All that needs to be said about these attacks by the Des Moines
newspaper is that despite all of the headlines, the hype, and the promises of
juicy exposure, no formal charges were ever brought, no accusations ever substantiated,
and in fact the Register's allegations were discredited one after the
other until nothing was left of the affair but the disgust of the thinking public
in Iowa who had rightly felt pride in the programs for the blind administered
through two decades by Kenneth Jernigan. (Officials of the Minneapolis Star
and Tribune, which was part of the corporate structure that owned the Des
Moines Register, were on the board of the Minneapolis Society for the Blind
and apparently deeply resented Jernigan's involvement in the case that exposed
the Minneapolis Society's violation of state law and attempted the suppression
of rights of the blind of Minnesota. It was widely felt that the attacks by
the Des Moines Register were at least in part, the result of corporate
pique.) There was also evidence that the National Accreditation Council for
Agencies Serving the Blind and Visually Handicapped and other regressive agencies
in the country made a concerted effort to plant stories in the Register,
which they could then circulate to divert attention from their poor performance
when Federationists called them to account for their program deficiencies and
custodialism.
Many if not most of these journalistic assaults had been inspired or fed by
the custodial agencies, both national and local, which had persistently warred
with the organized blind among them the American Foundation for the Blind and
its notorious offspring, NAC, and a number of state and municipal agencies which
had been targeted by the NFB for exploitive labor practices (e.g., the Societies
for the Blind in Minneapolis and Cleveland). There was also the company union of blindness, the American Council of the Blind, which had become almost abjectly
dependent upon NAC and the American Foundation for financial support and accordingly
toed the company line and carried out company wishes with respect to the independent
blind of the National Federation (although as a dissident splinter group from
an earlier era the ACB bore its own bitter grudge against its parent Federation).
These and other agency-oriented groups were clearly instrumental in fomenting
and sustaining the two-year vendetta waged by the Des Moines Register
thereby providing what one blind person called immoral support to the new
dissidents from California and Washington within the NFB.

In the aftermath of Kenneth Jernigan's resignation from the presidency in 1977
and at the same time as the newspaper attacks commenced in Iowa a dissident
faction began to take shape in two of the Federation's state affiliates: those
of California and Washington. The coincidence of these three events suggests
that the dissidents thought to see a weakness in the structure of the Federation
enabling them to exploit the situation for their own personal ambitions or at
the least to spread confusion and disrupt the movement.

In these purposes, however, they were to be thoroughly disappointed. As indicated
earlier, the membership of the Federation closed ranks swiftly behind its elective
leaders at the 1979 convention in Miami Beach following repeated futile efforts
to settle the issue by discussion and negotiation, notably at a special meeting
in California of the National Board of Directors in September, 1978, during
which a full hearing was afforded the dissident faction. The 1979 convention
voted overwhelmingly (46 to 3) to expel the faction and proceeded to bestow new charters upon reorganized state affiliates in California and Washington.
(It might be added that both of these reconstructed groups were shortly to become
among the most vigorous and effective in the movement.)

Despite the decisive action of the convention and the unmistakable repudiation
by the membership as a whole, the frustrated dissidents continued to agitate
and to insist on their right to be called Federationists. That issue was not
finally settled in the courts until January of 1983, when the California Court of Appeal dismissed with prejudice the last appeal of the California dissidents
and brought an end to the entire episode of misguided ambition and personal
spite. (Parallel court cases in Washington and Iowa were also settled in favor
of the NFB, as was a peripheral episode in Hawaii which resulted in a reorganized
affiliate.)

In the end the mini-rebellion was a sadly abortive affair which reminded some
observers of a question asked in a different context: What if they gave a war and nobody came? The small band of dissidents in California and Washington,
when they left in disgrace, took no affiliates with them not even their own.
They had failed to shake the movement or stir the membership. One member said
of them that they were like Shakespearean characters who strut and fret their
hour upon the stage and then are heard no more their play only a tale full of
sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The long-range effect of the abortive civil war was summarized by Kenneth Jernigan
in a 1983 Monitor report on the episode:

Whereas the NFB Civil War in the late 1950s divided and weakened us, the California
situation drew us closer together and brought harmony and increased determination.
We are now stronger than we have ever been. We have more momentum, more legislative
influence, more sense of organizational purpose, more dedicated members, more
love and understanding, and more care and concern for each other. The future
looks better than it has ever looked, and tomorrow is bright with promise.

Back to the Future

In the year of its fortieth anniversary, 1980, the movement of the organized
blind found itself embarked upon a new and portentous phase of its career. It
had successfully maneuvered the difficult physical transition from the Middle
West (Des Moines) to the Eastern Seaboard (Baltimore) in the process purchasing
a vast complex of buildings, creating the National Center for the Blind, and
multiplying its output of materials. It had also defended itself successfully
not to say spectacularly against the journalistic assault in Iowa with the publication
and mass statewide distribution of an extraordinary Special Edition of the Braille
Monitor (February, 1980) labeled "The Bizarre World of the Des Moines
Register: Malicious and Reckless Disregard of the Truth". (Following
that publication, for whatever reason, the Register suddenly ceased its drumbeat
of critical attacks against Jernigan and the Commission.) At the same time the
Federation was launching new campaigns and reinvigorating older ones in a host
of areas where blind people were ill-used and poorly treated in the unfriendly
skies of major airlines, in the underpaid and oversheltered workshops, in the
conclaves and machinations of the NAC Pack and everywhere that their civil rights
were denied or their dignity assailed.
The sense of motion and change, of transition amounting to transformation,
and above all of renewed commitment to the objectives of Federationism pervaded
the atmosphere of the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis during convention week,
1980, where some two thousand blind Americans were assembled for the anniversary
occasion. Apart from being the largest convention in Federation history, the
event epitomized the spirit and character of the NFB's annual meetings during
this volatile era; something was happening at every moment day or night throughout
the week something epochal, edifying, or at least engaging. A subsequent report
in the Monitor summarized:

The tone, the incredibly vast amount of information, the timeliness and variety
of the resolutions, the enthusiasm, the Monday press conference, the march to
the Minneapolis Society for the Blind, the events surrounding the meeting of
the Kiwanis Club, the panels, the reports, the speakers, and the give-and-take
of the jammed convention hall made this occasion what it was a vital, dynamic,
action-packed, dramatic experience: one which will have a lasting and unforgettable
impact upon those who were there, and, indeed, upon all of the blind everywhere.

The reference in that report to the march on the Minneapolis Society for the
Blind points to a remarkable action taken by the convention as a whole to demonstrate
peaceably but unmistakably the discontent of the organized blind with the exploitive
labor practices of the Society's sheltered workshop, in which blind employees
were forced to work at less (sometimes much less) than the minimum wage. The
NFB's dispute with this workshop agency had persisted for nearly a decade, both
in the press and in the courts. Convening in Minneapolis the home of the Society
and its workshop the Federation decided to adjourn the convention for several
hours one day in order to demonstrate its case en masse against the Minneapolis
Society. This is how the Monitor later described the Minneapolis March
:

More than 2,000 conventioneers left the hall in an orderly fashion, collected
signs outside the hotel, and began to march through the streets toward the Minneapolis
Society for the Blind chanting and singing as they went:

50,000 blind guys can't be wrong! We'll speak for ourselves! NAC, NAC get off our back! MSB hurts the blind!

Federationists who could not walk traveled to the Minneapolis Society on the
bus and joined in the demonstration. Marchers traveled along Hennepin Avenue
for several blocks before reaching the Minneapolis Society building. Windows
along the way were crowded with curious onlookers. Pedestrians in the streets
seemed surprised and interested in reading the signs.

When we reached the Minneapolis Society for the Blind headquarters, the press
was waiting to meet us. Some of the reporters were standing with cameras on
the roof; others held microphones in the streets; all were anxious to talk to
Federationists, anyone who would answer questions. Of course, some of the reporters
marched the entire route with us. As the marchers arrived, Dr. Jernigan and
Joyce Scanlan began to tell our story once again only this time to the public
in the city of Minneapolis over the loud speaker.

Dr. Jernigan said: We're here to speak to the Minneapolis Society for the
Blind. Since they won't speak to us around the conference table, we have to
speak to them in the great outdoors before the public and everybody. By the
thousands and the tens of thousands the blind of this nation have rejected what
the Minneapolis Society for the Blind stands for. Remember the workshop song.
It is truly a folk song that comes from the people: I've been workin' in the
workshop all the livelong day, and with the wages that they pay me it's just
to pass my time away.
Here, look out of your doors, see from behind your walls what the blind of
the nation think of you. Look at us and see if you think there are just a few
of us as you have said. We're going to show you what the blind are like in our
thousands and remember there are tens of thousands of us back in our home communities
throughout this country. The days of exploitation are coming to an end.

The public of this nation will not stand for what you have done once they know
it, and we're going to let them know it! Our line of march stretches back for
blocks. We'll be here, all of us to see you.

The crowd chanted together, NAC, NAC get off our back. NAC, NAC get off our
back. And we sang the workshop song, thousands of people singing together.

Joyce Scanlan came to the microphone and said: Hello, Minneapolis Society
for the Blind. The blind of the nation have come here en masse today
to speak to you, to tell you that we are fed up with your paternalism, your
custodialism, your lies, your hypocrisy, and the arrogant, aristocratic way
in which you have treated the blind so condescendingly. We will no longer tolerate
it. We are here to tell you and the public that we will no longer put up with
it. We will go back to court to see the proxies that you have not allowed us
to see up to this point. We will fight you for violating the court order. We
will gain our freedom. We will no longer be slaves of the Minneapolis Society
for the Blind and the National Accreditation Council.
The crowd chanted: We speak for ourselves. We speak for ourselves.

Dr. Jernigan: Minneapolis Society, in the name of the blind of the nation,
I speak to you. We have come to the outer walls of the Minneapolis Society for
the Blind. We have come from our farms, our businesses, our workshops, and our
agencies. We have come so that we might demonstrate our determination to be
free. For four long decades we have struggled to throw off the yoke of bondage
which has made us slaves to subminimum wages and substandard lives. We have
battled the broom shops, mastered the mattress shops, and rejected the sweat
shops. Through our sacrifices, our turmoil, and our scars, we have climbed close
to the final plateau on the stairway to freedom. We have rejected the workshop
tyranny, repudiated the workshop system, and refused to obey our workshop bosses.
We are confident, self-reliant individuals willing to give as well as receive.

Through our trials we have learned the value of freedom. We have paid the price
for first-class citizenship, and we're not willing to settle for second-class
status under control of third-class masters. We have come today from throughout
this nation to sustain our march toward freedom, to renew our climb up the stairway
to first-class citizenship. We are here by the thousands representing the tens
of thousands and the hundreds of thousands, to reject the custodial, repressive
attitudes and programs of the Minneapolis Society for the Blind.

Our message is clear and unmistakable. It is directed to the Minneapolis Society
for the Blind. It is intended as a response to the National Accreditation Council
(NAC)- American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)-American Council of the Blind
(ACB) combine. You have declared war on the blind of this nation. You have rejected
reason. You have determined that character assassination is your only alternative
to partnership and participation with the blind in society. Your time is past;
your present is perplexed; and our future is not in your hands.

The top level of the stairway to freedom is just ahead of us. We say to the
Minneapolis Society for the Blind: You can neither stop us nor dull our momentum.
We have come to your gates to tell you this: We are simply no longer willing
to be second-class citizens. We have said it to you before. You wouldn't listen
to us. We tried to talk to you. You wouldn't talk to us. We are now here today
to tell you as forcefully as we can: We do know who we are, and we will never
go back. This is the message we leave with you, Minneapolis Society. Think
about it, and see where you get with the public in this community from now
on. Also talk to your colleagues in NAC throughout the country and the American
Foundation for the Blind, and let us know how you fare in the war you have
declared on the blind. We would've chosen peace, but you wouldn't have it
that way. Very well, we are prepared on your terms to come forth and tell
you we stand forth to meet you. We want good

will, and we want no strife and confrontation, but we're not going to be second-class,
and you can't make us be. That is the message we have to bring to you and the
only message we have to bring to you.

This statement was interrupted repeatedly and loudly with prolonged cheers.

As Federationists returned to the meeting hall, we were tired, hot, and hungry.
We knew we had accomplished something very important and very worthwhile and
hardly noticed how we felt. President Jernigan and Ralph Sanders told the convention
that all four TV stations had covered the march and many radio stations had
been there as well. Joyce Scanlan said that she hoped we had taught the Society
something of the truth of our statements about blindness.

She said: Jesse Rosten expresses his philosophy on blindness something like
this: They say that blindness is only a characteristic, well here are the keys
to my car, now give me a ride home. President Jernigan asked if he is sighted,
and Joyce answered that he is. Apparently Jesse Rosten thinks driving is the
only way to get anywhere.
President Jernigan said: My answer to that is: Here's my Braillewriter, write
me a speech. (Loud cheering from the audience.) It may be easier to get a driver
for the car than a writer for a speech.

Joyce Scanlan continued: I want to tell you about something that the Minneapolis
Society brags about that I think you'll like to hear. The State Services for
the Blind here contracts with the Society for the rehab services that we all
get. State rehab pays 75% of the cost of those programs. The Society has to
make up the rest of the cost from some other program. They brag that in the
workshop they have between 26 and 27% profit, and they boast that that profit
is used for subsidizing the rehab program. Yet, they cannot pay their blind
workers the minimum wage.

The fortieth annual convention of the National Federation of the Blind will
be remembered by those who attended for the demonstration at the Minneapolis
Society for the Blind. Someone raised the question: How can it be militant to
do something so productive and really constructive? We knew we were fighting,
but no blood was shed. We knew we had won the battle in Minneapolis on July
1 and 2. If what we did was militant, so be it. It was necessary, and victory
sounded in the voices of the marchers.

The marchers in that purposeful parade felt that they were making history;
the Federationists attending the fortieth anniversary convention felt that they
were witnessing history; and the delegates and guests at the convention banquet
felt that they were a part of history. Their President himself a figure of historic
proportions, a mover and shaker of such undeniable impact as to have become
a legend in his time fully understood the historicity of the moment and made
it the subject of his banquet address: "Blindness: The Lessons of History." As he had done in other presidential orations, Jernigan recalled the background
of powerlessness and poverty from which the movement had sprung forty years
before, and compared it with the affluence and influence of the present day
emphasizing that the history of the organized blind was not something that happened
to them but something that they made happen. But he also pointed out that their
positive action upon the world was bringing about an equal and opposite reaction
of negativity in the form of a concerted combination of hostile agency forces
dedicated to the sabotage and ultimate demolition of the organized blind movement. Led by the American Foundation for the Blind, he said, this alliance consists
of NAC; our breakaway splinter group, the American Council of the Blind; the
Affiliated Leadership League of and for the Blind; and a handful of other would-be
custodians and keepers. They have interlocked their boards, concerted their
actions, pooled their hundreds of millions of dollars of publicly contributed
funds and tax money, and undertaken the deliberate and calculated destruction
of independent organization and self-expression on the part of the blind.

But Jernigan expressed confidence that the organized blind would prevail again
as they had overcome before against the massed hosts of repression, reaction,
and regression: We shall prevail against NAC and the other custodial agencies;
we shall prevail against social exclusion and discrimination; and we shall prevail
against those few in our own movement who would destroy it with bitterness and
strife. We are stronger and more determined than we have ever been, and we have
learned well the lessons of history.

The full text of the 1980 banquet address follows: BLINDNESS:
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

Turning the Corner

The opening years of the decade of the eighties, which were also the early
years of the second Jernigan presidency, might be characterized as the "Era
of Rising Expectations" among the blind of the country. No longer was it
sufficient merely to have a job if that job was in a sheltered workshop. No
longer was it good enough just to receive vocational training if that training
was in "blind trades" like basket weaving, chair caning, and broom
making. No longer could the airlines arbitrarily prohibit blind passengers from
sitting in the designated rows; the blind would not be moved. No longer could
the entertainment media casually portray blind persons as bungling, confused,
and ridiculous; they could try, but they would regret it. These were only a
few of the practices whose prejudicial character had been exposed and their
practitioners called to account. But it was not the agencies and professional
elites of the blindness system who had rung the bell and sent the message. It
was the organized blind, the members of the National Federation, who dared to
disturb the universe dared to talk plainly in polite company (such as conventions,
government hearings, and NAC meetings) dared to risk displeasure, verbal abuse,
and physical intimidation dared, in short, to take the heat. Only the organized
blind had the nerve (the unmitigated gall) to picket and march and demonstrate
on the public streets, to shout their grievances from the housetops, to say
again and again, in one idiom or another: We know who we are, and we will never
go back! or: We are the blind. We are the people. We speak for ourselves!

It was not that way always, of course. In fact it had not been that way very
long. Even after the founding of the National

Federation in 1940, the lives of blind men and women were still ringed around
with insecurity, their movements tentative, their brains washed. But the coming
of the NFB had opened the door and let in the air of freedom the breath of opportunity
the impossible dream of equality. The new age had begun, as Kenneth Jernigan
was to say, and the blind had turned a corner of time. After that they would
never turn back.

That was part of the message President Jernigan delivered to the Federation
and to the world in 1981 at the National Convention in Baltimore. He called
his speech "Blindness: The Corner of Time," and he spoke of critical
junctures and turning points in the history of the organized blind. At first
the Federation was small and ignored, he said. Most of the agencies tried
to deny its difference, pretending that it was simply another of themselves,
one among many. In some parts of the country our chapters were weak and our
purpose blurred. Sometimes the agencies took control of our affiliates, bought
off the leaders or bribed and threatened.

But the direction was certain and the trend unmistakable, Jernigan declared. The blind kept joining first by the thousands, then by the tens of thousands. In the beginning we were weak and divided. Then came accelerating power and unity. Ultimately we were fifty thousand members
clear in our mission, sure in our purpose, and firm in our unity: the strongest
force in the affairs of the blind.

The organized blind, he said, had turned the corner of time. But the problem
was that not many others in the field had kept pace with them in their progress
and transition; the most reactionary of the agencies (those that turned back
at the corner of time) even joined forces and pooled their efforts back in the
fifties to resist the organizing efforts of the blind: Hard though it is to
comprehend or believe, their purpose (which became a veritable obsession and
a principal endeavor) was to make war upon the blind, the very people they were
pledged to serve. Not all of the blind not the meek or the passive or the ones
they could control: these were needed for show and fundraising. Only the troublemakers
the independents the members of the National Federation of the Blind. Above
everything else, they wanted to destroy the National Federation of the Blind
and its leaders.

The NFB's President went on to observe that, when those destructive efforts
failed and the organized blind grew too powerful to crush, attitudes softened
in the blindness system and numbers of agencies summoned the will and the sensibility
to approach the present and turn the corner of time. These had become partners
and allies of the organized blind, prepared to walk with them (if not to march
with them) and to turn the next corner of time without looking back. Lagging
behind them, he said, were other agencies with good intentions but poor understanding
of the new reality and the new world; for these there was hope, and toward these
there should be toleration. But what about the others? he went on. What about
NAC and its principal allies? They are not misinformed or confused, and they
are not motivated by good intentions. They know exactly what they are doing.
They have deliberately and cold-bloodedly set out to ruin our movement and destroy
the reputations and careers of our leaders.

Jernigan thereupon proceeded to document and itemize an incredible succession
of accusations, insults, physical assaults, break-ins, and other episodes of hooliganism and harassment directed against leaders of the organized blind movement
at various levels throughout the country during the years just past incidents
which he charged had all the earmarks of an orchestrated campaign. But he leveled
a blunt warning to all those still filled with hate and still dwelling mentally
amid the straw and broomcorn of the workhouse, that their time was fast running
out: They will either learn to respect us and treat us as equal human beings,
or they will go out of business. It is that simple, that definite, and that
final. And he concluded with these ringing words:

Upon the rock of Federationism we have built our movement, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against it! For the first time in history we can play
a decisive role in determining our own destiny. What we in the Federation do
during the next decade may well determine the fate of the blind for a century
to come. We have turned the corner of time, and we live in a newness. My brothers
and my sisters, the future is ours! Come! Join me on the barricades and we will
make it all come true.

Following is the complete text of the 1981 convention banquet speech: BLINDNESS:
THE CORNER OF TIME

An underlying theme of Federationist literature and doctrine, evident from
the very outset of the movement and increasingly prominent over the decades,
was that the fundamental problem of blindness was to be found not in the physical
condition but in the social environment not in anatomy but in attitude. For
Kenneth Jernigan in particular this theme, and variations on the theme, resounded
and re-echoed in his speeches and writings all the way from, for example, "Blindness:
Concepts and Misconceptions" (a convention address delivered in 1965) through "Blindness:
The Myth and the Image" (1970 banquet address) to "Blindness: Simplicity,
Complexity, and the Public Mind" (1982 banquet address) and beyond.

The real problem of blindness, he said in 1965, is not the blindness itself
not the acquisition of skills or techniques or competence. The real problem
is the lack of understanding and the misconceptions which exist. The primitive
conditions of jungle and cave are gone, but the primitive attitudes about blindness
remain. And five years later he sounded the warning note again: Of all the
roadblocks in the path of the blind today, one rises up more formidably and
threateningly than all others. It is the invisible barrier of ingrained social
attitudes about blindness attitudes based on suspicion and superstition, on
ignorance and error, which continue to hold sway in men's minds and to keep
the blind in bondage.
In 1982, speaking before a banquet audience at the Minneapolis convention,
President Jernigan again struck the same major chord: Our basic problem in 1940
was society's misconceptions and misunderstandings, he said. That is still
our problem today. But then he noted a significant difference between the early
days and the present hour:

In 1940 we were not organized and had not yet developed our philosophy, planned
our public education campaigns, worked to eliminate our own false beliefs and
misconceptions, or started the slow process of bringing society to new ways
of perceiving and understanding. For the blind of the country, the greatest
single difference between 1940 and today (and it is a tremendous difference)
is the fact of the National Federation of the Blind our concerted effort, our
carefully thought out philosophy, our mutual encouragement and assistance, and
our absolute determination to achieve first-class citizenship. Yes, we have
learned it the hard way but we have learned it. We know who we are, and we will
never go back.

The President's theme was a new iteration of one which had been treated
before the public mind and its misconceptions and that provided him with both
a subtheme, Simplicity, and a contrapuntal theme, Complexity. For the
unchanged patterns of the public mind, the permanence of social attitudes,
suggested an underlying simplicity and sameness; but the changes in the lives
of blind people through four decades, the impact of self-organization, and
the evolution of competence and confidence, was making for a new complexity
in the field of blindness and the affairs of the blind. All of these were
elements (unresolved and mixed together) in the title of his speech but not
without the hope of future synthesis and balance. The 1982 banquet address
one of the best-remembered of the second Jernigan presidency was entitled "Blindness:
Simplicity, Complexity, and the Public Mind."
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