Date: Wed, 29 Jun 1994 11:45:48 -0600
From: Terence Finnegan <finnegan@ncsa.uiuc.edu>
Subject: Disability and Ex-Slave Narratives
From:Jerrold and Karen Hirsch, Northeast Missouri State University
Dear Students of American Slavery:
We are writing you in connection with research we are doing on
disability among the American slave population. It can be useful
to think about disability and slavery together in order to understand the
need for and promise of disability history and to provide another angle on
the slave's experience. (A copy of the proposal for the paper we will be
giving at the International Conference on Oral History follows this
letter). We are interested in how the slaves and their owners dealt with
and felt about disabilities that occurred among the slave population.
Materials from former slaves noting disabilities acquired either during or
after slavery also interest us. Perhaps given your own research in this
area you can direct us to some relevant primary sources. If you have any
notes citing primary sources that deal with disability among slaves we
would appreicate your sharing this material with us. We regard any
reference to disability, no matter how brief, as relevant to our work. At
the end of this letter we offer a definition of disability.
In the current phase of our research we are focusing primarily on
the FWP interviews; however, we are interested in looking at
other primary materials that would be relevant to this topic.
>From various conversations with historians of slavery, we have
come to believe that most students of slavery have found primary
sources relating to disability; but, because questions about
disability have not been key issues in the historiography of
slavery this material has not been explored. The way we conceptualize
historical inquiry constructs histories that not only include, but also
exclude, various topics. Indeed, our impression is that few scholars
have organized any of their notes around this topic. The closest they seem
to have come is placing some of this material under health or medical
concerns, especially as this relates to the longstanding historical
debate about the treatment of slaves. We think that the attitudes of both
the slave community and their masters toward disability are also an
important part of the cultural history of slavery.
At this stage of our research, we have found the most extensive
references to and most interesting information about disability
in the FWP slave narratives concerns disabilities that the former
slaves have acquired in their old age, rather than a discussion
of disabilities they had had as slaves. The former slaves were
much more likely to talk about the latter than the former. For
neither national FWP officials, former slaves, or their interviewers was
disability a category of experience that was consciously explored.
Nevertheless, many of the elderly former slaves had become disabled. It is
becoming clear to us that for both the interviewee and the interviewer that
this aas more than a medical connection to be noted; for both interviewee
and interviewer disability was a socially constituted condition that fit
into and took its meaning from a larger cultural dynamic. Numerous
scholars have noted that in sharing their memories the former slaves
interviewed by the FWP were often comparing old age to childhood, and the
harships of their post-emancipation lives to their memories of slavery and
the initial promise of freedon. Few scholars have considered that many of
the former slaves were also contrasting their lives as disabled people with
a youth in which they had been able-bodied--and doing this in a society
were most of them had been physical laborers, whether slave or free, in a
society that privileged the able/bodied over the disabled, and in a society
in which independence and dependence were to some degree interchangeable
with able/bodied and disabled. Many white southern interviewers dwelled on
the disabilities of the former slaves, seemingly cherishing those
disabilities for the opportunity it offered whites to see blacks as
dependent, non-threatening, and people who needed paternalistic whites.
Disabled interviewees often cherished memories of physical independence
while manipulating the role of disabled former slave to their benefit in a
paternalistic society.
Our definition of disability is summarized in Karen Hirsch's
"Culture and Disability: The Case for Oral History" forthcoming
in the Oral History Review. She states: The definition of a
disability used here is taken from the Americans with Disabilities Act: A
physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the
major life activities of an individual. This definition is meant to be
broad and inclusive so that no disabled individuals would be excluded from
civil rights protection under the law. The group includes, but is not
limited to, people with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, multiple sclerosis,
muscular dystropy, amputations, spinal cord injury, polio, epilepsy,
cancer, tuberculosis, diabetes, blindness, deafness, arthritis, asthma,
mental illness, mental retardation, stroke, Altzheimer's disease, learning
disability, heart disease, and AIDS. A disabled person may and may not be
under medical care and may be in excellent health. The identity of a
person with a disability is something that some people choose to claim
even if their disability is relatively minor and others choose to reject
in spite of a visible and/or severe disability."
Please mention our inquiry to anyone you think might be interested and we
would appreciate suggestions about other scholars we should contact. We
thank you in advance for your time and help. We look forward to hearing
from you.
Sincerely,
Jerrold Hirsch, History, Northeast Missouri State University,
SS85%NEMOMUS@ACADEMIC.NEMOSTATE.EDU
Karen Hirsch, Education, Northeast Missouri State University,
ED40%NEMOMUS@ACADEMIC.NEMOSTATE.EDU
The Neglected Oral History of Disability:
Another Approach to the FWP Former Slave Narratives
Jerrold and Karen Hirsch, Northeast Missouri State University
It is hard to conceive of two more seemingly disparate topics
than the historiography of American slavery and the historiography of
disability studies. The former topic has led to the production of
dictionaries, book length bibliographies, and frequent assessments of the
historical writing in the field. The historiography of disability studies
is in the process of being constructed out of work that has only recently
begun. And yet it can be useful to think about these two topics together
in order to understand the need for and promise of disability history, to
provide another angle on the slave's experience, and to help us think long
and hard about how the way we conceptualize historical inquiry constructs
histories that not only include, but also exclude, various topics. This
paper will examine major historical works on slavery that use the FWP
oral history interviews with former slaves, but ignore disability history
present in that material. It will also suggest how a new look at theses
sources for information about disability experience can contribute both to
the history of American slavery and to disability history.
There has been no disability historiography in which the ex-
slave's discussion of disability history could be placed. The
national FWP officials who encouraged the interviewing of former
slaves saw the project in relationship to an existing and well
developed historiogaphy about slavery, emancipation, and Reconstruction.
They wanted to allow black voices to participate in reopening a national
dialogue about these topics that they hoped would affect popular culture as
well as scholarly discourse. Many of the white southerners who conducted
the interviews wanted to obtain narratives that would confirm the
plantation tradition that virtually all of them accepted. No one then or
since has paid much attention to the disability oral history that the
narrators shared with the interviewers.
The growth of disability studies reflects recent improvements in
the political and social status of disabled people. In another
context, Idus A. Newby has suggested "that sea changes in historical
treatment of social groups occur only when basic improvements take place
in the status of the groups themselves." Nevertheless, to date the
disability rights movement has had much less effect on historical
scholarship than the Black Freedom movement and the womens' movement have
had. It is time for that to change. And it is time for historians to hear
what individuals in past societies have been saying about disability.
Thoughtful listening could lead historians to include disability issues as
an analytical category in historical scholarship and to new understandings
of the past.
Alessandro Portelli has argued that "ever since the Federal
Writers' Project interviews with former slaves in the 1930s, oral
history has been about the fact that there is more to history
than presidents and generals, and there's more to culture than
the literary canon." Despite the hopes and plans of key national
FWP officials, Portelli's assessment did not actually become true
for over thirty years. Historians were slow to explore the
potential of the FWP oral history interviews to developing a new
understanding of slavery. They have hardly started to think
about oral history and disability studies. Ever since at least
the 1930s, oral history has been about more than the able-bodied.
There are interviews that can and need to be done today regarding
disability. But there are also voices from the past waiting to
be heard. It is well past time for us to begin listening.
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