Franklin D. Roosevelt - Looking Fear in the Face

This post was a massive endeavor, which I knew going in and why it's taken me two months to write. There was so much about Franklin Delano Roosevelt's life and career that I simply had to leave out. That includes photographs, too! Franklin is one of the most well-known visibly disabled men in recent history. He became the first - and only, to date - disabled man elected to the US Presidency. Not only that, he's the longest-serving President: elected to four terms and served the last twelve years of his life. Because of this, and his many Great Depression- and World War II-era policies, Franklin is a controversial President, to say the least. This post's focus is not about whether he was a "good" or "bad" President, but about his life prior to and then dealing with significant physical disability in adulthood.  He chose to publicly display a persona of "overcoming" his disability, while the reality was that it was with him every moment, influencing his every thought and movement.

 

Franklin, 1932 - age 50

Frida Kahlo - Art & Identity from Pain

While I am very passionate about history generally, art history has never been specifically interesting to me. I know the names of the famous artists but generally know little more than surface-level information. Imagine my surprise when I found out that Frida Kahlo lived with disability and chronic pain! All I had known about her was that she was a Mexican self-portrait painter and had a unibrow. Learning so much more about her life was fascinating, especially since it allowed me to also explore a time period I didn't know as much about.

Frida, 1932

Ed Roberts - Be an Artichoke

One of the biggest observations I have made while writing for this blog is, "Boy, it's so different having disabilities today than it was then!" This is not due to chance; this is a consequence of intensive work of disability rights activists and families who fought for decades. My sister was born the year after the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed: her life has been made immeasurably better because of hundreds of activists that my family has never met. Today, I am honoring the work of just one of these crusaders. Though he passed away the day after my sister's fourth birthday, I hope he knows how grateful we are for him.

Ed in the l970s

Rosa May Billinghurst - The Fighting Suffragette

Last August 18, 2020 marked the 100-year anniversary of women being granted the right to vote in the United States. The United Kingdom had only been a couple years quicker: they granted the right to vote to certain qualified women over the age of thirty in 1918 (this was adjusted to all women over 21, the same as applied to men, ten years later). The mid-19th and early 20th centuries were marked by the suffragettes' activism: thousands protested, lectured, endured imprisonment, and were tortured in order to grant millions of women the right to vote and serve in governmental offices. 

I have always admired these women, of course, since it is because of them that I can make my voice heard. There are the famous American names (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, or Ida B. Wells), but there are hundreds more that are not as well-known. Today we'll learn about an English suffragette who fought for women's rights while also using a modified, self-propelled tricycle or crutches to ambulate.

May at a suffragette demonstration, crutches placed on each side of her tricycle