Becoming Citizens. Susan Schwartzenberg

see Irving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New (York: Anchor/Doubleday Books, 1961).

      9. The compulsory education bill for feebleminded children was repealed in 1957. Even though it was irregularly enforced, the Washington State Archive has long lists of children with disabilities from that era. In the early 20th century people with disabilities were stigmatized and eugenic sterilization laws were enforced in Washington State to control the spread of the “feebleminded.” Parents often hid their children at home, or relinquished them to the state institutions. Numerous investigations of state facilities between 1880 to well into the 1960s found them under-staffed and overcrowded—often with people being abused and living in subhuman conditions. Wolf Wolfensberger, The Origin and Nature of Our Institutional Models (Syracuse: (Human Policy Press, 1975). See also Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan, Christmas in Purgatory: A Photographic Essay on Mental Retardation (Syracuse: Human Policy Press, 1975, originally published in 1966); and Barbara Brecheen, Developmental Disablilties Services: An Historical Outline 1861-1980 (Olympia: Publication of the Division of Developmental Disablilties).

      10. For a history of the Washington ARC and their early advocacy activities see Larry A. Jones and Phyllis A. Barnes, Doing Justice: A History of the Association for Retarded Citizens of Washington (Olympia: ARC of Washington, 1987); and Larry A. Jones, Phyllis A. Barnes, and Russell Hollander, “Our Brothers’ Keepers: The Story of Human Services in Washington,” 1853-1937.” Columbia Spring 1989.

      11. I made no accurate count of the materials I looked through, though I estimate over 2,000 pieces of visual information—photos, snapshots, articles, and other documents. I have over 40 hours of interviews—800 pages of transcriptions, documentation and notes.

      12. Normalization was an idea first articulated by Scandinavian activists Gunnar and Rosemary Dybwad. Wolf Wolfensberger, in his influential book, The Principle of Normalization (Toronto: National Institute on Retardation, 1972), promoted de-institutionalization and normalization—bringing people out of the state institutions and into the mainstream of daily life. This idea became a guidepost for many parents during the ‘60s and ‘70s.

      Becoming Citizens

      Family Life and the Politics of Disability

      You’re one birth away

      from my experience,

      that’s what I think…

      –Nancy Melzer