Disability Community, Culture & History Links

Artists with Disabilities Oral History Project | UC Berkeley

• Propelled by a powerful history rooted in the struggle for civil rights, artists with disabilities are creating a vibrant arts culture which embodies the individual and collective experience of disability.  Funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the interviews in this collection explore the lives and works of seminal artists in dance and performance art.

Disability History Museum

• The Disability History Museum's mission is to promote understanding about the historical experience of people with disabilities by recovering, chronicling, and interpreting their stories to help foster a deeper understanding of disability and to dispel lingering myths, assumptions, and stereotypes by examining these cultural legacies.

Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement | UC Berkeley

• Discover our rich collection of primary sources exploring the social and political history of the disability movement from the 1960s to the present.  The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote, "Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever.  The urge for freedom will eventually come." For people with disabilities, the urge for freedom has arrived.  The story of how this happened—a vital part of American history—is preserved in the oral histories, with audio and video clips, and in the archival papers of this collection.

Disability Social History Project

• The Disability History Project is a community history project that welcomes your participation.  People with disabilities have an exciting and rich history that should be shared with the world.

I AM PWD

• The nation’s largest minority cannot remain invisible in the entertainment and news media.  The mission and goals of the I AM PWD campaign becomes one of basic, civil and human rights; no different than what any other group has fought for in the past or continues to fight for today.  People with disabilities will finally see themselves truly integrated on the stage and screen.  They will see themselves report the news of interest to the general community at large, as well as the disability community.  They will no longer fight for access into inaccessible interviews, auditions or work sites.  Most importantly, children will grow up seeing themselves and know they are not alone...or different.  People with disabilities of all ages will finally become part of the American Scene in the media. 

National Minorities with Disabilities Coalition (NMDC)

• The NMDC,  a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, is a national response to the need for minorities with disabilities in America to organize around issues of mutual concern and use that collective strength to address disability issues from all communities of color.

Ouch!

• Ouch! is a website from the BBC that reflects the lives and experiences of disabled people.  It has articles, blogs, a very busy messageboard and an award-winning downloadable radio show - The Ouch Podcast.  It's aimed at those with a stakehold in disability: family, friends, professionals and, rather importantly, disabled people themselves - without whom all this would be a bit meaningless.  There are many ways to join in, comment and add value by posting your personal experiences or helpful tips.  Ouch! often likes to use humour and doesn't dodge issues with fancy politically correct language.  And the Ouch team are themselves disabled.

Self-Advocacy Movement Oral History Project | UC Berkeley

• This project explores the life stories of thirteen leaders in the self-advocacy movement and their perspectives on key issues and leadership challenges.  Part of the broader disability rights movement, the self-advocacy movement is unique in that it has been led and informed by the individual and collective experiences of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Despite its widespread existence nationwide and internationally, few works have explored the rich history, culture, and significance of the self-advocacy movement.  To help fill this void, Joe Caldwell, Ph.D., Department of Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois at Chicago, undertook this life history project and donated transcripts to The Bancroft Library for its Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement collection.