Disability History through Primary Sources
Disability History through Primary Sources
*These resources have been curated from various other organizations and link to external sources.
As our friends from Engaging America state, “Primary sources … can provide entry points and deepen exploration into historical events. Primary sources add immediacy, such as the faces in a photograph, the emotional tone of a drawing or song, or the complex look of a handwritten document. Documents from multiple points of view can illuminate conflicting ideas and events. Varied media, including maps, oral histories, published reports, and graphs offer many options for connection and investigation”.
We share these collections of primary sources as tools to continue introducing disability into the conversation from natural perspectives, using disabled people to tell their own stories whenever possible.
This entry links to the resources that are owned by the creators and listed here for easier access within our database of lessons and resources.
This collection of articles, videos, music, artifacts, ephemera and more represents over 30 years of history of a grassroots disability rights organization that is still going strong. Use the drop down menu labeled “Albums” or the “Keywords” link in the dropdown menu under “Explore” to find information and documents related to the subject you are interested in.
It’s Our Story is a mixed-media digital history archive that houses the most comprehensive collection of video, photos and documents regarding life with disability in America. The It’s Our Story repository and its contents are testaments to America’s most fundamental values of freedom, autonomy, and independence. The national initiative that has developed from the archive has united hundreds of grassroots advocates, scholars, educators and civic leaders from nearly every state in the United States.
Many stories and events related to people with disabilities never make it into the history books or shared public memories. Familiar concepts and events such as citizenship, work, and wars become more complicated, challenge our assumptions about what counts as history, and transform our connection with each other when viewed from the historical perspective of people with disabilities, America’s largest minority.
Emerging America - Disability History through Primary Sources
Primary source sets on Disability History:
Disability History (3-5, 6-8, 9-12)
Eugenics: Preoccupation with Genetic Fitness and Threats of Difference & Disability (6-8, 9-12)
Polio and Parallels to the Covid-19 Pandemic (6-8, 9-12)