Preserving and Promoting Disability History

NCDR engages in public education and the promotion of programs and initiatives to preserve disability rights history. NCDR joins forces with those educating communities about disabilities and disablity social history for the purpose of eliminating discrimination, implementing disability rights and increasing responsibility for disability rights. We seek to preserve disability rights social history to foster an understanding of disability rights as basic civil and human rights.

Most Americans are familiar, as they should be, with the struggles of African Americans, women and other minorities that led to the attainment of enhanced civil rights for these constituencies. Fewer Americans are familiar with the history of the disability rights movement, a “people’s movement” which includes traditional lobbying and grassroots organizing, as well as civil disobedience and mass arrests. Rather than a focus on sympathy, pity or charity, It is a story of inclusion, empowerment and the creation of a social movement.

NCDR seeks to preserve this social history by including leading disability historians such as Professor Paul Longmore on our National Advisory Council and by promoting the work of acclaimed disability rights photographer, Tom Olin. Olin’s work, illustrating Arlene Mayerson’s written “People’s History of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” is at the center of the Road To Freedom’s traveling disability rights history exhibit and will continue to be highlighted in the Disability Rights Concert series. His work will be central to the soon-to-be-released Road To Freedom documentary film and book.

The Road To Freedom traveling disability rights history exhibit also features the nationally acclained 24-panel disability history exhibit produced by Advocates Coming Together (ACT), as well as the Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities’ Parallels In Time, a comprehensive history of disability through time.

The Road To Freedom traveling disability rights history exhibit has traveled to all 50 states and more than 120 cities, has received widespread media attention and has been formally recognized by scores of Governors, Mayors, Members of Congress, and other policymakers across America.

RELATED STORIES

• About Us
• Our Programs
• West Virginia: Exhibit Highlights Disability Rights
• Iowa: Senator Tom Harkin Joins Freedom Bus
• Sen. Harkin Praises NCDR’s Road To Freedom
• Connecticut: Road To Freedom Visit a Success!
• Sotomayor Sign-On Letter
• Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor
• Tennessee: On the Road for the ADA
• Indiana: Everybody Counts on the Freedom Bus

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• California Disability Activists Hail State Supreme Court Ruling
• Illinois Disability Groups Speak Out Against Budget Cuts
• Doctors Fight Labeling Obesity a Disability
• Community Choice Act National Kickoff Draws Thousands
• “Special” Edition: President Obama and Special Olympics

ACTION ALERTS

Support Community Choice Act

The ADAPT Community wants you to Kick-Off the Introduction of the Community Choice Act on on March 24th!  We want YOU to celebrate the introduction of the most important health care reform for people with disabilities in this country — Community Choice Act!

We intend to give all of you the opportunity to be connected directly to the chamber [...]

OPINIONS

Disability 101: I Have A Voice

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