Pelka, Fred

OUR SYNOPSIS: Fred Pelka amplifies “the political struggle for disability rights in the United States, focusing on the decades immediately preceding the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.” By bringing together oral histories from numerous sources, he vitally foregrounds “first person accounts—the voices—of people with disabilities.” (ix) He argues, “It was the successes of the African American civil rights movement, more than any other single factor, that sparked the resurgence of disability rights activism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.” (23) Disability rights advocates leveraged civil rights gains and strategies, applying discrimination claims to their own cause. Throughout the book, Pelka provides context and analysis for each individual case of a person living with disabilities, then directly includes substantial portions of their oral histories to build his thematic chapters. He also crucially shows that from the late nineteenth century well into the twentieth, a large portion of people living with disabilities were institutionalized. Indeed, “having a disability often meant virtual lifelong imprisonment.” (48) In all cases, he emphasizes the importance of trying to understand discrimination against people living with disabilities as a personalized lived experience, unique to each person.