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Experts in the field, as well as members of the general
public, have differed greatly as to what the future may hold for the
blind. Some, seeking to tell it like it is, see us blundering on forever
in roles of economic dependency and second-class citizenship. Others,
more hopefully, predict a slow but steady progress toward independence,
equality, and full membership in society. My own view is that this
is not a matter for prediction at all, but for decision. I believe
that neither of these possible outcomes is certain or foreseeable,
for the simple reason that the choices we make and the actions we take
are themselves factors in the determination of the future. In short,
we the blind (like all people) confront alternative futures: one future
in which we will live our own lives, or another future in which our
lives will be lived for us. But if the future is open and contingent,
surely the past is closed and final. Whatever disputes men may have
about the shape of things to come, there can be no doubt about the
shape of things gone by--the permanent record of history. Or can there?
Is there such a thing as an alternative past?
We all know what the historical record tells
us. It tells us that, until only yesterday, blind people were completely
excluded from the ranks of the normal community. In early societies
they were reputedly abandoned, exterminated, or left to fend
for themselves as beggars on the lunatic fringe of the community. In
the late Middle
Ages, so we are told, provision began to be made for their care
and protection in almshouses and other sheltered institutions. Only lately,
it would seem, have blind people begun stealthily to emerge from
the
shadows, and to move in the direction of independence and self-sufficiency.
That is what history tells us—or, rather, that is what histories
and the historians have told us. And the lesson commonly derived
from these histories is that the blind have always been dependent
upon the
wills and the mercies of others. We have been the people things
were done to—and, occasionally, the people things were done for—but
never the people who did for themselves. In effect, according
to this account, we have no history of our own—no record of active
participation or adventure or accomplishment, but only (until
almost our own day)
an empty and unbroken continuum of desolation and dependency.
It would seem that the blind have moved through time and the
world not only
sightless but faceless—a people without distinguishing features,
anonymous and insignificant--not so much as rippling the stream
of history. Nonsense! That is not fact but fable. That is not
truth but
a lie. In reality the accomplishments of blind people through
the centuries have been out of all proportion to their numbers.
There are genius,
and fame, and adventure, and enormous versatility of achievement—not
just once in a great while but again and again, over and over.
To be sure, there is misery also—poverty and
suffering and misfortune aplenty—just as there is in the general
history of mankind. But this truth is only a half-truth—and,
therefore, not really a truth at all. The real truth, the whole
truth, reveals a chronicle of courage and conquest, of greatness,
and even
glory on the part of blind people, which has been suppressed
and misrepresented by sighted historians—not because these historians
have been people of bad faith or malicious intent but because
they have
been people, with run-of-the-mill prejudice and ordinary misunderstandings.
Historians, too, are human; and when facts violate their preconceptions,
they tend to ignore those facts.
Now, we are at a point in time when the story of the blind (the
true and real story) must be told. For too long the blind have
been (not unwept,
for there has been much too much of that) but unhonored and unsung. Let
us, at long last, redress the balance and right the wrong. Let
us now praise our
famous men and celebrate the exploits of blind heroes. Rediscovering
our true history, we shall, in our turn, be better able to make
history; for when people
(seeing or blind) come to know the truth, the truth will set them free. Let
us begin with Zisca: patriotic leader of Bohemia in the early fifteenth
century, one of history's military geniuses, who defended his homeland
in a brilliant
campaign against invading armies of overwhelming numerical superiority.
Zisca was, in the hour of his triumph, totally blind. The chronicle of
his magnificent
military effort—which preserved the political independence and religious
freedom of his country, and which led to his being offered the crown
of Bohemia—is
worth relating in some detail. Need I add that this episode is not to
be found, except in barest outline, in the standard histories? Fortunately
it has been
recorded by two historians of the last century—James Wilson, an Englishman
writing in 1820, and William Artman, an American writing seventy years
later. What do you suppose these two historians have in common, apart
from their occupation?
You are right: Both were blind. The account of the career of Zisca which
follows has been drawn substantially from their eloquent and forceful
narratives. The
Council of Constance, which was convened by the Pope in the year 1414
for the purpose of rooting out heresy in the Church—and which commanded
John Huss and Jerome of Prague to be burned at the stake—"sent terror
and consternation throughout Bohemia . . . ." 1
In self-defense the Bohemian people took up arms against the Pope
and
the emperor. They chose as their commanding general the professional soldier
John de Turcznow—better known as Zisca, meaning "one-eyed," for
he had lost the sight of an eye in the course of earlier battles. At the head
of a force of 40,000 citizen-soldiers—a force not unlike the ragged army
that would follow General Washington in another patriotic struggle three centuries
later—Zisca marched into combat, only to be suddenly blinded in his remaining
eye by an arrow from the enemy. Here is where our story properly begins.
For Zisca, upon his recovery from the injury, flatly refused to play the role
of the helpless blind man. ". . . His friends were surprised to hear him,
talk of setting out for the army, and did what was in their power to dissuade
him from it, but he continued resolute. 'I have yet,' said he, 'to shed my blood
for the liberties of Bohemia. She is enslaved; her sons are deprived of their
natural rights, and are the victims of a system of spiritual tyranny as degrading
to the character of man as it is destructive of every moral principle; therefore,
Bohemia must and shall be free.'" 2
And so the blind general resumed his command, to the
great joy of his troops. When the news came to the Emperor
Sigismund "he
called a convention of all the states in his empire . . . and
entreated them, for the sake of their sovereign, for the honor of their empire,
and for the cause of their religion, to put themselves in arms
. .
. . The news came to Zisca that two large armies were in readiness
to march against him . . . . The former was to invade Bohemia
on the west, the latter on the east; they were to meet in the center, and
as they expressed it, crush this [rebel] between them." 3
By all the rules of warfare, by all conventional standards
of armament and power, that should have been the end of Zisca
and his rabble army. "After some delay the emperor entered Bohemia at
the head of his army, the flower of which was fifteen thousand
Hungarians, deemed at that time the best cavalry in Europe . . . . The infantry,
which consisted of 25,000 men, were equally fine, and well commanded.
This force spread terror throughout all the east of Bohemia." 4
The stage was set for the fateful climax—the
final confrontation and certain obliteration of the upstart rebel
forces. "On
the 11th of January, 1422, the two armies met on a large plain.
. . . Zisca appeared in the center of his front line (accompanied] by
a
horseman on each side, armed with a poleax. His troops, having
sung a hymn, . . . drew their swords and waited for the signal. Zisca
stood
not long in view of the enemy, and when his officers had informed
him that the ranks were well closed, waved his saber over his head, which
was the signal of battle, and never was there an onset more mighty
and irresistible. As dash a thousand waves against the rock-bound
shore,
so Zisca rolled his steel-fronted legions upon the foe. The imperial
infantry hardly made a stand, and in the space of a few minutes
they were disordered beyond the possibility of being rallied. The cavalry
made a desperate effort to maintain the field, but finding themselves
unsupported, wheeled round and fled . . . toward . . . Moravia
. .
. ." 5
It was a total rout
and an unconditional victory, but, ". . . Zisca's labors were
not yet ended. The emperor, exasperated by his defeat, raised
new armies, which he sent against Zisca the following
spring . . . . But the blind general, determined that his country
should not be enslaved while he had strength to wield a sword,
gathered his
brave army" and met the enemy yet again, despite fearsome disadvantages
in numbers and equipment. "An engagement ensued, in which the
[enemy] were utterly routed, leaving no less than nine thousand
of their number dead on the field." 6
The remaining branch of the grand imperial army,
under the command of Sigismund himself, next met a similar fate,
and the mighty emperor was compelled to sue for peace at the
hands of the
blind general. Then there occurred the final magnificent gesture
of this extraordinary human being. As the historian Wilson recounts
the
episode: "Our blind hero, having taken up arms only to secure
peace, was glad for an opportunity to lay them down. When his
grateful countrymen requested him to accept the crown of Bohemia,
as a reward
for his eminent services, he respectfully declined." 7
And this is what Zisca said: "While you find
me of service to your designs, you may freely command both my
counsels and my sword, but I will never accept any established
authority; on
the contrary, my most earnest advice to you is, when the perverseness
of your enemies allows you peace, to trust yourselves no longer
in the hands of kings, but to form yourselves into a republic,
which species
of government only can secure your liberties." 8
That is the true story of Zisca—military genius,
patriot, freedom fighter, statesman, and blind man. Extraordinary
as his heroism was, it exceeds only in degree the story of yet
another blind Bohemian—King John, the blind monarch who fell
in the historic Battle of Cressy, which engaged the energies and cost
the lives
of many of Europe's nobility. This king had been blind for many
years. When he heard the clang of arms, he turned to his lords and
said: "I
only now desire this last piece of service from you, that you
would bring me forward so near to these Englishmen that I may
deal among
them one good stroke with my sword." In order not to be separated,
the king and his attendants tied the reins of their horses one
to another, and went into battle. There this valiant old hero
had his desire, and
came boldly up to the Prince of Wales, and gave more than "one
good stroke" with his sword. He fought courageously, as did all
his lords, and others about him; but they engaged themselves
so far that all were slain, and next day found dead, their horses'
bridles
still tied together. In the country of the blind, it has foolishly
been said, the one-eyed man will inevitably be king. This, of
course, is nonsense. In fact, the very opposite has often been
true. History
reveals that in the realm of the sighted it is not at all remarkable
for a blind man to be king. Thus, in 1851, George Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, first cousin to Queen Victoria, ascended
the throne of
Hanover under the royal title of George the Fifth. That this
blind king of Hanover was no incompetent, but distinctly superior
to the
ordinary run of monarchs, is shown by the words of a contemporary
historian, who said: "Though laboring under the deprivation of
sight, this Prince is as efficient in his public, as he is beloved
in his private,
character; a patron of the arts and sciences, and a promoter
of agricultural interests . . .he has acquired a perfect knowledge
of six different
languages." 9
A strikingly similar account has been handed down
to us of the blind Prince Hitoyasu, who reigned as a provincial governor
in Japan over a thousand years ago and "whose influence set a
pattern for the sightless which differed from that in any other country
and saved his land from the scourge of beggary." 10
Thoroughly trained in both Japanese and Chinese literature,
Prince Hitoyasu introduced blind people into society and the
life of the court. In ninth century Japan, when the blind led
the blind, they
did not fall into a ditch, but rose out of it together. Let us
turn now from the records of royalty to the annals of adventure.
Perhaps the most persistent and destructive myth concerning the blind
is the
assumption of our relative inactivity and immobility—the image
of the blind person glued to his rocking chair and, at best,
sadly dependent on others to guide or transport him on his routine
daily
rounds. "Mobility," we are led to believe, is a modern term,
which has just begun to have meaning for the blind. To be sure,
many blind persons have been cowed by the myth of helplessness
into remaining
in their sheltered corners. But there have always been others—like
James Holman, Esquire, a solitary traveler of a century and a
half ago, who gained the great distinction of being labeled by
the Russians
as "the blind spy." Yes, it really happened! This intrepid
Englishman, traveling alone across the steppes of Greater Russia
all the way to Siberia, was so close an observer of all about
him that he was arrested as a spy by the Czar's police and conducted
to
the
borders of Austria, where he was ceremoniously expelled. Here
is how it happened. Holman lost his sight at the age of twenty-five,
after
a brief career as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but his urge
to travel, instead of declining, grew stronger. He soon embarked
upon a series
of voyages—first through France and Italy, then (at one fell
swoop) through Poland, Austria, Saxony, Prussia, Hanover, Russia,
and Siberia. His real intention, as he later wrote, was to "make
a circuit of the whole world," entirely on his own and unaccompanied—an
ambition he might well have fulfilled had it not been for the
Czar's police and the Russian spy charges. He later published
a two-volume account of his travels and observations, and his own reflections
upon
his Russian adventure are worth repeating: "My situation," he
wrote, "was now one of extreme novelty and my feelings corresponded
with its peculiarity. I was engaged . . . in a solitary journey
of a thousand miles, through a country, perhaps the wildest on
the face
of the earth, whose inhabitants were scarcely yet accounted within
the pale of civilization, with no other attendant than a rude
Tartar postillion, to whose language my ear was wholly unaccustomed;
and yet,
I was supported by a feeling of happy confidence . . ." 11
As Federationists know, there have been other blind
travelers in our own time quite as intrepid as James Holman.
Yet Holman's story—the case of the "blind spy"—is
important for its demonstration that blind people could wear
such seven-league boots almost two centuries ago—before Braille
or the long cane, before residential schools or vocational rehabilitation,
before
even the American Foundation for the Blind and its 239-page book
on personal
management for the blind. But there is a more basic side to mobility,
of course, than the opportunity and capacity for long-distance
traveling. There is the simple ability to get about, to walk
and run, to mount
a horse or ride a bicycle—in short, to be physically independent.
The number of blind persons who have mastered these skills of
travel is countless, but no one has ever proved the, point or
shown the way
with more flair than a stalwart Englishman of the, eighteenth
century named John Metcalf. Indeed, this brash fellow not only
defied convention,
but the world. Totally blind from childhood, he was (among other
things) a successful builder of roads and bridges; racehorse
rider; bare-knuckle
fighter; card shark; stagecoach driver; and on occasion, guide
to sighted tourists through the local countryside. Here is an
account of some
of his many enterprises: "In 1751 he commenced a new employment;
he set up a stage wagon betwixt York and Knaresborough, being
the first on the road, and drove it himself, twice a week in
summer, and once
in winter. This business, with the occasional conveyance of army
baggage, employed his attention till the period of his first
contracting for
the making of roads, which engagement suiting him better, he
relinquished every other pursuit . . . . The first piece of road
he made was about
three miles . . . , and the materials for the whole were to be
produced from one gravel pit; he therefore provided deal boards,
and erected
a temporary house at the pit; took a dozen horses to the place;
fixed racks and mangers, and hired a house for his men, at Minskip.
He often
walked to Knaresborough in the morning, with four or five stones
of meal on his shoulders, and joined his men by six o'clock.
He completed the road much sooner than was expected, to the entire
satisfaction
of the surveyor and trustees . . . ." 12
The story of "Blind Jack" Metcalf, for
all its individuality, is far from unique. Rather, it underscores
what even we as Federationists sometimes forget, and what most
of the sighted
have never learned at all—namely, that the blind can compete
on terms of absolute equality with others—that we are really,
literally, the equals of the sighted. We have been kept down
by the myths and false beliefs about our inferiority, by the
self-fulfilling prophecies of the custodial system which has conditioned
the
sighted
and the blind alike to believe we are helpless, but not by any
innate lacks or losses inherent in our blindness. Metcalf's accomplishments
in applied science were probably matched by those of a French
army
officer more than a century before. Blaise Francoise, Comte de
Pagan, was blinded in the course of military service, shortly
before he was
to be promoted to the rank of field marshal. He then turned his
attention to the science of fortifications, wrote the definitive
work on the
subject, and subsequently published a variety of scientific works,
among which was one entitled "An Historical and Geographical Account
of the River of the Amazons" (which included a chart drawn up
by this military genius after he became blind)! Like the sighted,
the blind have had their share of solid citizens, namby-pambies,
strong-minded individualists, squares, oddballs, eggheads, and eccentrics.
The sixteenth-century
German scholar James Shegkins, for instance, refused to undergo
an operation which was virtually guaranteed to restore his
sight: "in
order," as he said, "not to be obliged to see many things
that might appear odious and ridiculous." 13
Shegkins, a truly absent-minded professor, taught
philosophy and medicine over many years with great success, and
left behind him influential monographs on a dozen scientific
subjects. The
success story of Dr. Nicholas Bacon, a blind lawyer of eighteenth-century
France, somewhat resembles that of our own beloved founder, Dr.
Jacobus tenBroek. Both were blinded in childhood by bow-and-arrow
accidents, and both went on to high academic achievement in law
and related
studies.
The strenuous exertions which Bacon was forced to go through
at each stage of his climb are indicated by the following account: "When
he recovered his health, which had suffered from the accident,
he continued the same plan of education which he had before commenced
. . . . But
his friends treated his intention with ridicule, and even the
professors themselves were not far from the same sentiment; for
they admitted
him into their schools, rather under an impression that he might
amuse them, than that they should be able to communicate much
information to him." However, he obtained "the first place
among his fellow students. They then said that such rapid advances
might
be made in the preliminary branches of education, but not . .
. in studies
of a more profound nature; and when . . . it became necessary
to study the art of poetry, it was declared by the general voice
that all was
over . . . . But here he likewise disproved their prejudices
. . . . He applied himself to law, and took his degree in that
science at
Brussels." 14
Years earlier - in the fourth century after Christ -
another blind man made an even steeper ascent to learning. He was Didymus
of Alexandria, who became one of the celebrated scholars of the
early church. He carved out of wood an alphabet of letters and
laboriously taught himself to form them into words, and shape the
words
into
sentences.
Later, when he could afford to hire readers, he is said to have
worn them out one after another in his insatiable quest for knowledge.
He
became the greatest teacher of his age. He mastered philosophy
and theology, and then went on to geometry and astrology. He
was regarded
by his students, some of whom like St. Jerome became church fathers,
with "a touch of awe" because of his vast learning and intellect.
Didymus was not the only blind theologian to gain eminence within
the church. In the middle of the seventeenth century, at almost
the same
moment Milton was composing Paradise Lost, a blind priest named
Prospero Fagnani was writing a commentary on church law, which
was to bring
him fame as one of the outstanding theorists of the Roman faith.
At the precocious age of 21, Fagnani had already earned the degree
of
doctor of civil and canon law, and in the very next year, he
was appointed Secretary of the Congregation of the Council. His
celebrated Commentary,
published in six quarto volumes, won high praise from Pope Benedict
XIV and caused its author to become identified throughout Europe
by a Latin title which in translation signifies "the blind yet
farseeing doctor." These few biographical sketches plucked from
the annals of the blind are no more than samples. They are not
even the most illustrious
instances I could have given. I have said nothing at all about
the best known of history's blind celebrities—Homer, Milton,
and Helen Keller. There is good reason for that omission. Not
only are
those resounding names well enough known already but they have
come to represent—each in its own sentimentalized, storybook
form—not
the abilities and possibilities of people who are blind but the
exact opposite. Supposedly these giants are the exceptions that
prove the
rule—the rule, that is, that the blind are incompetent. Each
celebrated case is explained away to keep the stereotype intact:
Thus, Homer (we are repeatedly told) probably never existed
at all—being
not a man but a committee! As for Milton, he is dismissed as
a sighted poet, who happened to become blind in later life. And
Helen Keller,
they say, was the peculiarly gifted and just plain lucky beneficiary
of a lot of money and a "miracle worker" (her tutor and companion,
Anne Sullivan). Don't you believe it! These justly famous cases
of accomplishment are not mysterious, unexplainable exceptions—they
are only remarkable. Homer, who almost certainly did exist and
who was clearly blind, accomplished just a little better what
other blind
persons after him have accomplished by the thousands: that is,
he was a good writer. Milton composed great works while he was
sighted, and
greater ones (including Paradise Lost) after he became blind.
His example, if it proves anything, proves only that blindness
makes no difference
in ability. As for Helen Keller, her life demonstrates dramatically
what great resources of character and will and intellect may
live in a human being beyond the faculties of sight and sound—which
is not to take anything at all away from Anne Sullivan. In the
modern world it is not the poets or the humanists, but the scientists,
who
have held the center of the stage. As would be expected, the
stereotyped view has consistently been that the blind cannot
compete
in these areas.
How does this square with the truth? Consider the case of Nicholas
Saunderson—totally blind from infancy—who succeeded Sir
Isaac Newton in the chair of mathematics at Cambridge University,
despite the fact that he had earlier been refused admission to
the same university
and was never permitted to earn a degree! It was the great Newton
himself who pressed Saunderson's appointment upon the reluctant
Cambridge dons;
and it was no less a personage than Queen Anne of England who
made it possible by conferring the necessary degree upon Saunderson.
Later
he received a Doctor of Laws degree from King George II, a symbol
of the renown he had gained as a mathematician. Among Saunderson's
best
subjects, by the way, was the science of optics—at which he was
so successful that the eminent Lord Chesterfield was led to remark
on "the miracle of a man who had not the use of his own sight
teaching others how to use theirs." 15
For another example, consider John Gough, a blind
English biologist of the eighteenth century, who became a master
at classification of plants and animals by substituting the sense
of touch
for that of sight. Or consider Leonard Euler, a great mathematician
of the same century, who (after becoming blind) won two research
prizes from the Parisian Academy of Sciences, wrote a major work
translated into every European language, and devised an astronomical
theory
which "has
been deemed by astronomers, in exactness of computation, one
of the most remarkable achievements of the human intellect." l6
Or, for a final illustration, consider Francois Huber,
blind Swiss zoologist, who gained recognition as the pre-eminent
authority of the eighteenth century on the behavior of bees.
The famous writer
Maurice Maeterlinck said of Huber that he was "the master and
classic of contemporary apiarian science." l7
Even after all of this evidence, there will be many
(some of them, regrettably, our own blind Uncle Toms) who will
try to deny and explain it all away—who will attempt to keep
intact their outworn notions about the helplessness of the blind
as a class.
So let me nail down a couple of points: In the first place, is
all of this talk about history and the success of blind individuals
really
valid? Isn't it true that most blind people throughout the ages
have lived humdrum lives, achieving neither fame nor glory, and
soon forgotten?
Yes, it is true—but for the sighted as well as for the blind.
For the overwhelming majority of mankind (the blind and the sighted
alike) life has been squalor and hard knocks and anonymity from
as far back as anybody knows. There were doubtless blind peasants,
blind
housewives, blind shoemakers, blind businessmen, blind thieves,
blind prostitutes, and blind holy men who performed as competently
or as
incompetently (and are now as forgotten) as their sighted contemporaries. "Even
so," the doubter may say, "I'm still not convinced. Don't
you think the track record for the blind is worse than the track
record for the sighted? Don't you think a larger percentage of
the blind have
failed?" Again, the answer is yes—just as with other minorities.
That's what it's all about. Year after year, decade after decade,
century after century, age after age we the blind were told that
we were helpless—that
we were inferior—and we believed it and acted accordingly. But
no more! As with other minorities, we have tended to see ourselves
as others have seen us. We have accepted the public view of our
limitations, and thus have done much to make those limitations
a reality. When our
true history conflicted with popular prejudice, the truth was
altered or conveniently forgotten. We have been ashamed of our
blindness and
ignorant of our heritage, but never again! We will never go back
to the ward status of second-class citizens. There is simply
no way. There
are blind people aplenty—and sighted allies, too—(many
of them in this room tonight) who will take to the streets and
fight with their bare hands if they must before they will let
it happen. And this, too, is history—our meeting, our movement,
our new spirit of self-awareness and self-realization. In our own time
and in our own day we have found leaders as courageous as Zisca,
and
as
willing to go into battle to resist tyranny. But we are no longer
to be counted by ones and twos, or by handfuls or hundreds. We
are now
a movement, with tens of thousands in the ranks. Napoleon is
supposed to have said that history is a legend agreed upon. If
this is true,
then we the blind are in the process of negotiating a new agreement,
with a legend conforming more nearly to the truth and the spirit
of the dignity of man. And what do you think future historians
will say
of us—of you and me? What legends will they agree upon concerning
the blind of the mid-twentieth century? How will they deal with
our movement—with the National Federation of the Blind? Will
they record that we fell back into the faceless anonymity of
the ages, or
that we met the challenges and survived as a free people? It
all depends on what we do and how we act; for future historians
will write the
record, but we will make it. Our lives will provide the raw materials
from which their legends will emerge to be agreed upon. And,
while no man can predict the future, I feel absolute confidence
as to what
the historians will say. They will tell of a system of governmental
and private agencies established to serve the blind, which became
so custodial and so repressive that reaction was inevitable.
They will tell that the blind ("their time come 'round at last")
began to acquire a new self-image, along with rising expectations,
and that they determined to organize and speak for themselves.
And they will
tell of Jacobus tenBroek—of how he, as a young college professor,
(blind and brilliant) stood forth to lead the movement like Zisca
of old. They will tell how the agencies first tried to ignore
us, then resented us, then feared us, and finally came to hate us—with
the emotion and false logic and cruel desperation which dying
systems always feel toward the new about to replace them. They
will tell of
the growth of our movement through the forties and fifties, and
of our civil war—which resulted in the small group that splintered
away to become puppets of the most reactionary of the agencies,
a company union: our counterfeit dwarf image, the American Council
of the Blind.
They will tell how we emerged from our civil war into the sixties,
stronger and more vital than we had ever been; and how more and
more of the agencies began to make common cause with us for the
betterment of the blind. They will tell of our court cases, our legislative
efforts,
and our organizational struggles—and they will record the sorrow
and mourning of the blind at the death of their great leader,
Jacobus tenBroek. They will also record the events of today—of
the 1970's—when
the reactionaries among the agencies became even more so, and
the blind of the second generation of the NFB stood forth to
meet them. They
will talk of the American Foundation for the Blind and its attempt
(through its tool, NAC) to control all work with the blind, and
our lives. They will tell how NAC and the American Foundation
and the other
reactionary agencies gradually lost ground and gave way before
us. They will tell of new and better agencies rising to work
in partnership with the blind, and of harmony and progress as the century
draws
to
an end. They will relate how the blind passed from second-class
citizenship through a period of hostility to equality and first-class
status in
society. But future historians will only record these events
if we make them come true. They can help us be remembered, but
they cannot
help us dream. That we must do for ourselves. They can give us
acclaim, but not guts and courage. They can give us recognition
and appreciation,
but not determination or compassion or good judgment. We must
either find those things for ourselves, or not have them at all.
We have come
a long way together in this movement. Some of us are veterans,
going back to the forties; others are new recruits, fresh to
the ranks. Some
are young; some are old. Some are educated, others not. It makes
no difference. In everything that matters we are one; we are
the movement; we are the blind. Just as in 1940, when the National
Federation
of
the Blind was formed, the fog rolls in through the Golden Gate.
The eucalyptus trees give forth their pungent smell, and the
Berkeley hills
look down at the bay. The house still stands in those hills,
and the planes still rise from San Francisco to span the world.
But Jacobus
tenBroek comes from the house no more, nor rides the planes to carry
the word. But the word is carried, and his spirit goes with it.
He it was who founded this movement, and he it is whose dreams
are still
entwined in the depths of its being. Likewise, our dreams (our
hopes and our visions) are part of the fabric, going forward
to the next
generation as a heritage and a challenge. History is not against
us: The past proclaims it; the present confirms it; and the future
demands
it. If we falter or dishonor our heritage, we will betray not
only ourselves but those who went before us and those who come
after. But,
of course, we will not fail. Whatever the cost, we shall pay
it. Whatever the sacrifice, we shall make it. We cannot turn
back, or stand still.
Instead, we must go forward. We shall prevail—and history will
record it. The future is ours. Come! Join me on the barricades,
and we will make it come true.
FOOTNOTES
1. William Artman, Beauties and Achievements
of the Blind (Auburn: Published for
the Author, 1890), p. 265.
2. James Wilson, Biography of the Blind (Birmingham, England: Printed
by J.W. Showell,
Fourth Edition, 1838), p. 110.
3. Artman, op. cit., p. 265.
4. Ibid., p. 266.
5. Ibid., p. 267.
6. Ibid., p. 268.
7. Ibid., pp. 268-9.
8. Wilson, op. cit., p. 115.
9. Mrs. Hippolyte Van Landeghem, Exile and Home: The Advantages of Social
Education
of the Blind (London: Printed by W. Clowes & Sons, 1865), p. 95.
10. Gabriel Farrell, The Story of Blindness (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press,
1956), p.7.
11. Wilson, op. cit., p. 262.
12. Ibid., pp. 100-101.
13. Artman, op. cit., p. 220.
14. Wilson, op. cit., p. 243.
15. Farrell, op. cit., p. 11.
16. Artman, op. cit., p. 226.
17. Farrell, op. cit., pp. 12-13.
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