Five (5) 🖐🏻Disabled People from History that I wish people knew at a 5-year-old’s level
History is complex, and we need to discuss it with a far more nuanced view than we do.
But Disability History is lacking at even this most basic level, and you have to start somewhere. So:
Was a paraplegic watch-maker. In 1655, he made a three-wheeled hand-driven cart for himself, inventing the crank, chain and gear mechanism that is now part of all modern bicycles.
[Image description: a contemporary black and white illustration of Stephen Farfler using the three-wheeled hand cycle he’d invented, demonstrating how the hand crank turns the front wheel. Description ends.]
Harriet Tubman was severely injured when she defended a fellow slave from an overseer, and was hit in the head with a heavy metal object. Although this caused her pain and dizzy spells for the rest of her life, it did not stop her from working becoming a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, nor did it stop her from being the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the American Civil War.
Blind since childhood because of an accident, Louis Braille invented the tactile writing system named for him at the age of 15.
Margarete Steiff contracted polio when she was a year and a half old. Her sisters and neighborhood friends helped her get to school by pulling her in a hand cart. When she grew up, she had a dress-making business, and made stuffed animals for children. Her most famous stuffed animal was a bear with jointed limbs that her nephew designed. It was the first Teddy Bear.
He contracted polio and had to use a wheelchair in 1947, just before going to university. Even though he earned his degrees in history and education, and wanted to become a teacher, the university wouldn’t let him have his teaching certificate, because he was disabled. Many years later, he was appointed vice chair of the National Council on Disability, and led other government councils after that. He toured the USA with his wife twice, visiting each of the 50 states, and meeting with disabled people to learn about their struggles and how they were fighting for their rights. He helped write the language of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was signed into law in 1990
There are many more things I wish people knew about, such as the intersection between class and disability, and between race and disability, and how the ADA isn’t strong enough to protect disabled people’s rights in the way they need to be protected.
But these are five reference-points that I figure are child friendly.
