Not all was going well for the person with a disability in the early-to-mid 1930’s. Jobs were short, and in contrast to President Roosevelt’s message only four years earlier, people with disabilities were having a hard time making a “come back.” Frustrations grew, and on May 29th, 1935, a Wednesday, three young women and three young men entered the Emergency Relief Bureau in New York City; they were there to see the director of the program, one Oswald W. Knauth.

They were told that Mr. Knauth wouldn’t be available until the following week. The six young adults stated that they were going to sit there until he met with them or until “hell freezes over.” By the following day there was a large crowd supporting the demonstrators and demanding work for themselves, but after more than five years of economic depression, protests of this kind were commonplace. This demonstration; however, was different because the protestors and some of the people who were supporting them were physically disabled.

They complained that they were being discriminated against by the work-relief agencies and the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in particular. The WPA was run by the Federal government. The protest was the beginning of the League of the Physically Handicapped, and over the next few years they fought job discrimination and contested the ideology of disability that controlled early twentieth century public policies, social arrangements and professional practices.

A number of the people in the League of the Physically Handicapped limped, wore leg braces, or used crutches or canes as a result of polio. Some had cerebral palsy, heart conditions or tuberculosis. More than one member had lost limbs due to accidents. One member had been gassed during the Great War; but none of the members used wheelchairs, or was deaf or blind. Members of the League didn’t identify with people who had disabilities that were different from their own, but they didn’t dwell on their members disabilities either.

Their concentration was on discrimination, not diagnosis, and their activism was designed to alter the public’s understanding of disability. They wanted to change the focus from coping with a disability to managing an identity, and from experiences with polio to politics. The league’s approach showed the basic dilemmas and features of disability as a historical phenomenon. The effects of a physical injury or illness were just one part of what it meant to be disabled, in their opinion. The social and cultural meaning given to different conditions was much more at the center of disability.

The discrimination against league members, and people with disabilities in general, was largely social and cultural. Most league members were born in America, but immigration policies declared that “people like them” were unworthy, even of citizenship. School policies, court rulings and local laws very often segregated people with disabilities within communities, and immigration laws banned them from entering the country. The immigration act of 1907 barred anyone with a “mental or physical defect which may affect the ability of such alien to earn a living.” At a time when coming to America meant coming to freedom and justice for all, people with disabilities were barred out of fear that they would become a public charge or a threat to the national genetic stock.

Eugenic laws, meant to prevent the very existence of people with disabilities, sought to sterilize disabled people and prevent them from marrying. There were even efforts to incarcerate disabled people in order to prevent their reproduction. Euthanasia was called for among some doctors of the time, and in 1915 one such doctor, a Chicago surgeon named Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, stated that he had killed several newborns with disabilities. During this time in American history, disabled babies were considered to be “defective.” In 1916, the year that some future league members became disabled with polio, a film was released portraying a young man who “as a mentally normal hunchbacked boy…grows up to become an insane criminal” because of “the constant humiliation and embarrassment caused by his deformity.” Such is the social and cultural climate the members of the league had to live with.

In an example of the difficulties in finding work while handicapped, Florence Haskell, who used crutches, presents a frustrating and demeaning experience. Florence graduated from high school and applied for work as a secretary. The man in charge of hiring people told her, “I’m afraid you’ll have to take a physical.” She had not considered that her handicap would get in the way of her finding a job; the man disqualified her. Needless to say, Florence was angry and upset. Another woman, Sylvia Bassof, who used crutches and a leg brace, wanted to teach English or be a librarian; she found out that she couldn’t get either job, even if she was trained for it.

The reason was not the Depression; it was because she was handicapped. Sylvia entered the Drake Business School, did very well at stenography, typing, and the use of an adding machine. She thought, “I’ll graduate from the Drake Business School and they’re all going to grab me.” No-one did. Nondisabled people who were not as good at the same work she did were hired, but not her. Sylvia couldn’t work in private business because nobody would hire her, and she felt humiliated at having to take a job in a charity-run workshop. She finally got a job at the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities, who only hired handicapped people. She earned three dollars and fifty cents for every thousand envelopes she addressed.

The protesters who were The League of the Physically Handicapped didn’t get any public attention for the first twenty-four hours as they sat waiting for Mr. Knauth of the WPA to show up. When support for them did show up officials found themselves with demonstrators inside and outside of the building. Those same officials at first refused to allow any food to be brought in, but shortly decided that they would feed the protesters at the same cost or less than what it would cost the city for home relief, maybe because they felt it would be better to present a compassionate face to the press. Next, the officials acting for the WPA tried to cut them off from public attention, a tactic that failed as well.

By Saturday the number of nonhandicapped protesters outside shrank, but four women and five men, all handicapped, continued to walk the line under the title “Committee of Action for the Support of the Handicapped Unemployed.” Lou Razler, an ex-business college student with cerebral palsy, learned about the protest through the Daily News and went to watch it from across the street. A picketer, Sara Lasoff, saw Lou and asked him to join them; Lou did, and became very active. Lou later said, “I got nothing to lose.” All day long that Saturday, they chanted to director Knauth, “Knauth, come out, wherever you are!”

On Monday, June 3rd, the sixth day of the demonstration, Mr. Knauth finally met with the strikers, and the strikers again rejected charity and segregated workshops. Instead they warned Mr. Knauth that, “the league of 100 cripples would expand to 1,000, and that jobs would have to be found for all of them.” They demanded fifty jobs right then and another ten jobs per week at wages of at least twenty-seven dollars a week for workers who are married, and twenty-one dollars a week for single workers.

They demanded that those who were hired be integrated with nonhandicapped workers, and that they not be placed into separate projects. Mr. Knauth, perhaps predictably, rejected their demands, promising instead to “investigate.” “That’s not a good enough answer”, league member Mr. Abramowitz stated; “we are not just any other group. We are all handicapped and are being discriminated against.” Mr. Abramowitz then accused President Roosevelt of “trying to fix things so that no physically handicapped person can get a job, so that all of us will have to go on home relief. We don’t want charity, we want jobs.” But Mr. Knauth stuck to his policy; the city didn’t owe handicapped people anything more than home relief. “This is not an organization to give work to those who are permanently unemployable”, he said.

The demonstrators stayed put for three more days, and the picketers outside marched below. By Thursday, June 6th, the ninth day, workers in the building had begun to complain about the noise the protestors on the sidewalk were making, and Mr. Knauth told the superintendent to call the police. The police came, and arrested eleven protestors, eight of whom were handicapped. The strikers upstairs ended their demonstration, but by that evening there were twenty-five handicapped protestors and three hundred sympathizers demonstrating at Fifty-fourth Street and Eighth Avenue. The police again dispersed the protesters, but they re-grouped at the VA radio station where Mr. Knauth was to deliver a speech celebrating his departments first anniversary. Demonstrators rushed the lobby of the radio station and attempted to take over an elevator, but police arrived and removed them from the building.

On Friday, June 7th the handicapped activists met once more with Mr. Knauth, who said that he couldn’t promise them any immediate jobs, but hoped that federal funds would include some help for the purpose. Meanwhile, handicapped workers outside were passing out handbills announcing a demonstration at city hall on Saturday. The next morning a dozen handicapped demonstrators and around fifty nonhandicapped supporters circled City Hall Plaza. They unsuccessfully demanded an interview with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, and then moved to Foley Square where some speeches were made. They dispersed afterward, marking the end of the first actions of the novice activists.

The picketers that were arrested on June 6th were brought to trial, and Judge Overton Harris seemed at a loss as to how to deal with the militant young handicapped defendants before him. They were shouting slogans in the courtroom, and were labeled “the communist cripples” by the public. The first day of their trial there were picketers at the building where the protests began, and on the second day of the trial five more protesters were arrested, and later paroled without bail. Two of them, and another four handicapped protesters, were arrested at the Eats the next day.

On June 28th Judge Harris convicted the original protesters of disorderly conduct, suspended the handicapped defendants’ sentences, and gave the remaining nonhandicapped protesters five days in jail. By the end of the evening, police had arrested fifteen more handicapped protesters at the building where the demonstrations began; they were protesting the punishment of Judge Harris court in singling out the handicapped from the nonhandicapped defendants.

After six more months of unrest, and another three weeks of picketing toward the end of that time, WPA director Mr. Victor Ridder promised to hire around forty league members. Almost all of the original protesters would get jobs, but Mr. Ridder did not concede their claim that the government had an obligation to hire handicapped workers, and protect them from discrimination by private industry. Mr. Ridder wanted to create a “sort of demonstration project…to show employers what the handicapped can do.” Members of the league didn’t quite see things that way.

The officials “figured if they hired the most active of [us]…it might kill the thing. But instead of killing it, more handicapped came to the line,” stated Lou Razler. The success the activists were having prompted them to work toward not just finding jobs for themselves, but also efforts to change local and federal policies in relation to all handicapped workers. By January of 1936 they were once more picketing the WPA in New York.

Time passed, with more unrest and picketing, and on April 5th Mr. Ridder accepted that there are obstacles in the job market where handicapped workers were concerned, and that this needed government attention. He also admitted that handicapped people made up about five percent of New York’s population, but less than one percent of WPA employees. A new Bureau for the Physically Handicapped would be “the first step in a comprehensive plan to give closer attention to the employment problems of these people”, said Mr. Ridder. There would also be a “handicapped interview unit” which would refer home relief recipients to the WPA. But the WPA didn’t guarantee jobs; it just stated that handicapped workers would be considered for them. While there were five thousand handicapped workers classified as employable, fifteen hundred were given work by the WPA.

Mr. Ridder’s assistant suggested that only Washington could help them deal with their concerns, and league leaders tried to get a meeting with WPA chief Harry Hopkins and President Roosevelt; they received no response. They decided to announce that they were coming the next morning, “as per appointment through President Roosevelt.” Fourteen women and twenty-one men, some of them risking the jobs they had fought so hard for, rode a flatbed truck all night to the capital.

When they arrived at the WPA headquarters, Labor Relations Director Nels Anderson told them that they were concerned only with finding work for “employables.” Mr. Anderson told them that their problem was one for New York’s municipal relief agencies. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the activists. Sylvia Bassoff, who had become the league’s president, took a vote and told reporters, “unable to find satisfaction in New York, we resolved to come here and ask the aid of Mr. Hopkins in providing WPA employment. They class us as unemployables, despite the fact that our members include…teachers, chemists…and others who are professionally skilled. We are going to stay here until Mr. Hopkins does see us. Until then nothing can make us leave.” Mr. Hopkins left them to sleep on office furniture that night, but agreed to meet them the next day.

The activists’ meeting with Mr. Hopkins didn’t go as well as they had hoped. The activists demands included five thousand WPA jobs for handicapped New Yorkers, a permanent relief program for the handicapped, and a national census of the handicapped to be conducted by the league but funded by the WPA. Mr. Hopkins rejected the idea that his agency was discriminating against handicapped people, and doubted that five thousand handicapped people who were employable existed in New York. He also suggested that the league do its own census and come back with proof, “a thesis…showing such discrimination.” Then, he said, he would “correct those conditions at once.” Mr. Hopkins walked out, and the activists went home with the promise to return with the thesis.

In August of 1936 the league sent its “Thesis on Conditions of Physically Handicapped” to President Roosevelt and Mr. Hopkins, as well as the press. They used their own experiences to create a ten page paper that analyzed the struggle of handicapped people to find both economic and social security. The paper stated that their financial disadvantages were caused not by their disabilities, but by job discrimination, unfair rehabilitation, unjust policies and unfair relief programs.

In the paper they stated that a number of areas of manual labor were closed to them, but that the private sector had unfairly kept them out of jobs where disability didn’t matter. The league also said that Municipal, State and Federal government set ridiculous physical qualifications for jobs that people with handicaps could otherwise perform more than adequately. Federal hiring practice already gave preferential treatment to veterans with disabilities; the only difference between the disabled veterans and league members was the cause of their disabilities. The league’s paper also criticized government for indiscriminately classifying handicapped and Deaf people as “unemployable.”

In another statement, the league’s paper complained that vocational rehabilitation by the state was “not only inadequate but also detrimental” because it created the illusion of constructive action where none existed. New York State’s Rehabilitation Bureau was highly under funded, and had to turn away thousands of handicapped people, and could only offer limited training to those they did not turn away. Even those accepted for training lacked sufficient help for daily needs.

League members complained about sheltered workshops that singled them out from the rest of society, as well as the exploitation of workers in those same workshops – particularly the Brooklyn Bureau of Charities. Such charities hid behind the face of charitable action while paying workers rock bottom wages and reaping the benefits. Instead of charity, the league stated in their paper, Mr. Hopkins at the WPA should give them jobs. The deep suspicion of nonhandicapped policy makers and service providers league members promoted at this time traveled through disability culture, and in the late twentieth century emerged as the now familiar declaration “Nothing about us without us.”

The league turned to the subject of home relief next. In their paper, the league stated that many handicapped people were denied the opportunity to provide for themselves and their families, and were forced to accept charity from their families, private charities or home relief. Due to the hardships of living with a handicap, league members not only wanted jobs, but the expansion of home relief. If the home relief allowance was not adequate for ablebodied recipients it was very insufficient for a handicapped person because of the needs for medical care and mechanical appliances.

Handicapped people who were not only denied work, they said, but also denied home relief, were forced to live in municipal lodging houses. Others who had been denied work or home relief were forced to live as beggars during a depression. The problem is, beggar ordinances banned or regulated handicapped person’s begging. The league’s paper declared that something had to be done to “eliminate the necessity of any handicapped individual being forced to resort to begging.” The league’s paper concluded by stating that their proposals were the very minimum needed to ease the current situation of handicapped people.

President Roosevelt did not adopt the league’s analysis or advice, in fact – he apparently didn’t bother to respond to it. Mr. Ridder of the WPA was succeeded by Col. Brehon Somervell, who promised handicapped workers seven percent of WPA jobs in the future. Col. Somervell, come spring, began a process of massive layoffs across the entire WPA program; more than 600 handicapped people lost their jobs. The league threatened “drastic actions unless all cuts [were] stopped and dismissed persons reinstated”, but the layoffs continued. League members made the trip to the main WPA offices in August of 1936, demanding to be heard, and they were, but the meeting was not profitable. League members said that they would return in larger numbers, and soon; but they never did.

The league remained active in New York City, opposing job discrimination and working to open the public sector to workers with disabilities. At their peak, the league had forced the WPA to hire almost fifteen hundred handicapped workers in New York. The most active of the members went on into civil service careers. By 1938 the League of the Physically Handicapped dissolved. The actions the league took to gain rights during the depression were very impressive in that they were not only trying to live with disabilities during the depression; they were also fighting for work and the rights of inclusion during a time when the American public had a highly negative view of disability.

The League of the Physically Handicapped is a part of history that should promote attempts to understand disability from a social, cultural and political perspective, instead of a medical perspective. The league’s history shows us that we need to include people with disabilities in all levels of society, including roles as policy maker and professional. Perhaps a beginning to this process of inclusion should be the inclusion of the league’s history in the history classes taught to all people.