The history of people with disabilities in America is a rich one that has not always been acknowledged. For most of our shared history, people with disabilities have been marginalized and invisible; there are a couple of reasons why this may be so. Nondisabled people see those of us who are and often see the things they fear most, such as an inability to control their individual lives or anatomy. Fear of these things can have a profound psychological effect on people, and people avoid what they are afraid of. Another reason disabled people have been left out of history is the medical view of people with disabilities.

For many of the people who write history, disability has been a medical issue, not a cultural one. Rehabilitation, medicine, special education and other, similar areas of approach to viewing and interacting with people who have a disability have become the common place. Disability has been the realm of the professional in association with a medical model. Even in the liberal arts, a disabled individual is often viewed as a deviant subject instead of with interest in their social structures. Do not be misled into thinking that disability does not have a place in history; though, disability has had a very large part in American history.

One of the ways that disability comes to play in American history is through its use by white Americans to justify slavery, prejudice and mistreatment against African-Americans. In the early to mid-nineteenth century, arguments such as the African-American being intellectually deficient, and articles written by medical professionals stating that they were "diseased" and had "physical peculiarities" particular to their race were common. An article in the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal stated, "It is this defective hematosis, or atmospherization of the blood, conjoined with a deficiency of cerebral matter in the cranium, and an excess of nervous matter distributed to the organs of sensation and assimilation, that is the true cause of that debasement of mind, which has rendered the people of Africa unable to take care of themselves." A description of two "mental illnesses" by Dr. Samuel Cartwright in 1851 really brought home to me the abuse of disability in relation to anti-African American hatred and manipulation.

Dr. Cartwright describes the first "mental illness" as "Drapetomania", a condition that makes slaves run away from their slavery, and which was caused by slaveholders who supposedly became too familiar with their slaves. Dr. Cartwright's second "mental illness", which was only experienced by African-Americans, was described as being "Dysaesthesia Aethiopis", which was different from any other mental disease. This "mental illness" causes slaves to disobey, is known as "rascality" among the overseers, and is accompanied by lesions on the body. "Dysaesthesia Aethiopis" is caused by badly-governed plantations, and is more common among freed slaves, according to Dr. Cartwright. This kind of thinking promoted the hateful use of disability to control African-Americans past the turn of the twentieth century.

The turn of the century didn't deter medical doctors from using disability as a means of classifying African-Americans as being less able or worthy than the white men in the country. A prevailing argument in relation to African-Americans was that they were disabled by freedom and needed oversight. J.F. Miller's article in the "North Carolina Medical Journal" stated that Negroes of the south experienced a great increase in mental illness and tuberculosis, which were supposedly rare among those who were not free. The "New York Journal of Medicine" in 1844 suggested that free blacks suffered from more idiocy, blindness, insanity and deafness than blacks who were not free. White people during this time were described as being the normal race, and their features as being beautiful and desirable. Black Americans were described as having exaggerated lips, big feet, extremely long or bowed legs, missing teeth or bulging eyes. I was amazed by the use of disability to degrade and control people.

When a person with a noticeable disability is treated badly today, I automatically think about how I am not surprised by the offender's behavior. I also try to counter their behavior with a more positive one; I am sometimes successful at making a good point. Incidents which demean a person with a disability through the actions of a nondisabled person don't surprise me as much as they offend me; though, I have unfortunately come to see such incidents as part of living a life as someone with a disability. Seeing non-existent disabilities pressed on African-Americans for the purpose of control is a new disability perspective for me. Ignorance of disabilities, and the issues that surround them, are a recurring theme in Disability history in America; but not the only theme. There are a number of attempts to help, or work with, people with disabilities, as well as a theme of forgetting and then discovering that people with disabilities are useful workers.