HPOD Events
Tracing the Origins of Mass Institutionalization of Persons with Disabilities in North America
Book talk with HPOD Fellow Alex Green
Alex Green's biography of Dr. Walter E. Fernald sheds critical light on the origins of the United States' historic overreliance on institutional settings to provide services to persons with disabilities. Credit: Shawn Read
In the mid-twentieth century, at the height of the United States' program of mass disability institutionalization, hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities were being housed in segregated facilities that claimed to offer specialized care not otherwise available in the community. By the 1970s, following reports of flagrant and systemic abuses inside institutions, and buoyed by rising societal expectations about persons with disabilities' human rights and dignity, a broad-based deinstitutionalization movement was underway. Driven by disabled activists, family members, and allied professionals, this movement sought not only to avoid the harms experienced by institutionalized persons with disabilities but also to change prevailing public attitudes that favored sequestering persons with disabilities from mainstream society. Although the deinstitutionalization project has been imperfect and remains unfinished, today more persons with disabilities receive the services and support they need in communities than ever before. While today's service delivery systems leave much to be desired, at least in principle they are premised on inclusion, informed choice, and person-centeredness.
Was an alternative path to community inclusion for persons with disabilities ever possible?
At the end of the nineteenth century, it was by no means predetermined that the United States would pursue policies of mass institutionalization of persons with disabilities. When Dr. Walter E. Fernald became superintendent of the nation's oldest public school for intellectually and developmentally disabled children in 1887, the community of professionals dedicated to promoting the well-being of persons with disabilities were at a crossroads. Before eugenical pseudoscience infiltrated U.S. disability policy, some believed that segregated facilities were the most appropriate settings to serve persons with disabilities, while others held the conviction that institutions would ultimately do more harm than good.
Until his death in 1924, Dr. Walter E. Fernald played a central role in the debates that led the United States to chart its modern course towards mass institutionalization. While superintendent of the Waltham, Massachusetts, institution that would later bear his name, Dr. Fernald led a wholesale transformation of our understanding of disabilities in ways that continue to influence our views today. How did the man who designed the first special education class in America, shaped the laws of entire nations, and developed innovative medical treatments for the disabled slip from idealism into the throes of eugenics before emerging as an opponent of mass institutionalization?
HPOD fellow Alex Green presents a decade of research in his landmark biography of this lesser known historical figure in A Perfect Turmoil: Walter E. Fernald and the Struggle to Care for America's Disabled. Fernald's is the story of a doctor, educator, and policymaker who was unafraid to reverse course, even if it meant going up against some of the most powerful forces of his time. In his groundbreaking work, Green draws on extensive, unexamined archival evidence to unearth the hidden story of one of America's largely forgotten, but most complex, conflicted, and significant figures to shed light on the origins of the United States' overreliance on segregated institutions to provide care to persons with disabilities.
On April 9th, from 12:15 to 1:30 U.S. Eastern time, HPOD, the Disabled Law Students Association, and University Disability Resources will co-host an in-person, lunchtime book talk with Alex Green in Wasserstein Hall, Caspersen Student Center (WCC) 1015 to probe his analysis of the historical record and explore the ramifications of this historical record for our understanding of the structure of service delivery systems for persons with disabilities today.
ASL interpretation and lunch will be provided.
About the Author
Alex Green teaches political communications at Harvard Kennedy School and is a visiting scholar at Brandeis University Lurie Institute for Disability Policy. He has piloted a nationally recognized disability history curriculum for high school students, developed and taught the first graduate disability policy course offered at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Public Policy, and is the author of legislation to create a first-of-its-kind, disability-led human rights commission to investigate the history of state institutions for disabled people in Massachusetts. He lives outside of Boston.
