THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT
          A Book Review By Robert Mauro

     The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to
Confrontation by Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames is a
must read for anyone interested in the history of the disability
rights movement.  Ms. Fleischer is a member of the Humanities and
Social Science Department of the New Jersey Institute of
Technology.  Ms. Zames, who has polio, is Associate Professor of
Mathematics at NJIT and has been a disability activists since the
early 1970s.
     From the earliest beginnings in the 19th century to today,
this 278-page book, published in 2001 by Temple University Press,
covers every aspect of the disability rights movement -- and the
dynamic, daring and determined people with disabilities who led
and lead it.
     Early legislation, the disabled veterans movement, deaf
culture, the sign language controversy, the invention of Braille,
the fight for 504, IDEA, the birth of the Independent Living
Movement, ADAPT, accessible transportation, housing,
institutionalization, deinstitutionalization, rehabilitation,
technology, sheltered workshops, terminology, attitudes, image,
mainstreaming, health care, the media, Disability Pride, assisted
suicide, protest demonstrations and sit-ins are all collected and
covered in this intensively researched and extensively footnoted
book.  It's a gold mine of information and history for anyone
interested in learning about disability rights and history.
     Together the authors, who are sisters, have filled their
book with quotes from numerous disability activist.  Readers will
hear the words of people like Ed Roberts, who, despite the fact
that he needed an iron lung to breathe, opened the doors of U.C.
Berkeley to students with significant disabilities, like himself,
and founded the Independent Living Center movement; and activist
Judith E. Huemann, who founded Disabled In Action, cofounded the
World Instituted on Disability and was the under secretary of
Education in the Clinton Administration.
     Activists and advocates like Frank Bowe, Fred Fay, Eunice
Fiorito, and Lucy Gwin are also heard in this book.  The reader
will get to know them all from their own words and from numerous
quotes and articles excerpted from disability publications like
The Ragged Edge, Mouth, and Able Newspaper. 
     And finally young people with disabilities will get to meet
the role models we people with disabilities do indeed have.
     Over the years there have been many known and unknown men
and women with disabilities who have fought long and hard to
secure access, equality, accessibility and freedom for this
country's fifty-four million Americans with disabilities.  Those
known and little known advocates are all present in word, deed or
spirit in The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to
Confrontation.
     The Disability Rights Movement is available in most
books stores.  And you can order it online from Amazon.com for $19 + shipping. 
It is a must read for anyone interested in where we have
been and where we people with disabilities are going.  And we are
going far -- thanks to those men and women who have gone before
us and who have led and continue to lead the fight for equal
access for all!