1911
Congress passes a joint resolution (P.R.
45) authorizing the appointment of a federal commission to investigate the
subject of workers' compensation and the liability of employers for financial
compensation to disabled workers.
1912
Henry H. Goddard publishes The Kadikak Family,
the best seller purporting to link disability with immorality and alleging
that both are tied to genetics. It advances the
agenda of the eugenics movements, which in pamphlets such as The Threat of
the Feeble Minded creates climate of hysteria allowing for massive human rights
abuses of people with disabilities, including institutionalization and forced
sterilization.
1918
The Smith-Sear Veterans Vocational Rehabilitation
Act establishes a federal vocational rehabilitation for disabled soldiers.
1920
The Fess-Smith Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation
Act is passed, creating a vocational rehabilitation program for disabled civilians.
1921
The American Foundation for the Blind is
founded. Helen Keller becomes its principal fundraiser,
(Robert Irwin becomes director of research, 1922 executive director in 1929.)
1927
Franklin Roosevelt co-founds the Warms Springs
Foundation at Warms Springs, Georgia. The Warm
Spring facility for polio survivors becomes a model rehabilitation and peer-counseling
program.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, rules that the forced sterilization
of people with disabilities is not a violation of their constitutional rights.
The decision removes the last restraints for eugenists; advocating
that people with disabilities be prohibited from having children.
By the 1970s, some 60,000 disabled people are sterilized without consent.
1929
Seeing Eye establishes the first dog guide
school for blind people in the United States.
