Out of the Horrors of War. Audra Jennings
access to education based on their disabilities. Most states maintained separate, residential facilities for blind and deaf children, where they were educated away from their homes and families.41 Still, the availability of instruction through special classes or schools was woefully inadequate. In 1937, the U.S. Office of Education estimated that of the approximately two million disabled children in the country only one in every ten benefited from a special education program.42 Access to public or special schools for children with physical disabilities largely depended on the city and state the child lived in, the individual child’s disability, family resources and advocacy, and decisions of school administrators. For example, Melvin E. Schoonover, AFPH member and editor of the Shut-In’s Companion, wrote to other AFPH members, “The shut-in fraternity as a whole probably constitutes the largest single unit of illiterate and semi-literate persons within our national community.” He claimed that “very few” homebound people with disabilities were “able to complete even grammar school.” Schoonover concluded, “It seems foolhardy to refuse to the shut-in what is compulsorily given to others.”43
While white children with disabilities encountered serious barriers to their education, the conditions African American children with disabilities faced were worse. Writing for the Journal of Negro Education in 1937, educator James A. Scott argued that blind and deaf African American children had the greatest access to education, but that even the education that these children received was “distinctly inferior.” Many southern states maintained completely separate schools for blind and deaf African American children, while others provided instruction for African American pupils in segregated classes within the states’ blind and deaf schools. Scott declared, “Practically no effort is made to enforce compulsory attendance laws for either Negro blind or deaf pupils.” Moreover, he maintained that in the South public education programs for white children with other physical disabilities were “practically non-existent,” and conditions were much worse for African American children. Finally, Scott contended that racial discrimination against African American children with disabilities also extended to some programs in the North. On the whole, racial discrimination dramatically reduced the already slim educational opportunities open to children with disabilities, and in most cases, the institutions open to African Americans suffered from chronic underfunding, with the quality of instruction falling far below what was available to white children.44
People with disabilities also faced considerable barriers to higher education. For example, Lurie told the subcommittee that she had tried for more than a year to attend college, applying for admission to several schools. Lurie complained, “Not one of these colleges would accept me because of spastic paralysis.” At least one of the schools was direct about rejecting Lurie because of her disability. The dean, Lurie reported, thought that the school would be too crowded for her and “feared that I would not fit into the college due to the fact that all of my classmates would be physically fit and I would be the only one handicapped.”45 As late as 1949, an effort to find a college or university to accept a group of disabled students, mostly veterans, who had been attending the temporary Galesburg campus of the University of Illinois, yielded telling results. Of the approximately 150 schools contacted, fifteen expressed a willingness to admit the students but only four could offer an accessible campus.46
The quality and availability of prosthetic limbs and mobility aids, necessary for many people with disabilities to gain an education or employment, figured prominently in disability activists’ testimony—both on the military and civilian side. Like members of the AFPH, veterans and the organizations that represented them used the House investigation to draw attention to the difficulties that they faced. As early as 1942, the American Legion had begun a campaign to pressure the government to conduct research into better prosthetics. During the war, the Army Medical Corps alone performed successful amputations on roughly 14,000 soldiers. Amputees overwhelmed the system caring for them. Early in the war, the army provided initial treatment for its amputees who were then transferred to the VA for further care, rehabilitation, and training. By 1943, the army—soldiers suffered the bulk of injuries during the war that required amputations—had to offer definitive care for its amputees, as the VA could not handle the influx of patients. The army established special amputation centers in seven army hospitals across the country that produced limbs and provided surgical and medical care and rehabilitation. Army limbs were meant to be temporary to facilitate adjustment, while the VA would provide permanent, commercially manufactured limbs after discharge. The army struggled to meet the demand for limbs with a limited number of trained prosthetic device makers and technicians. The results were troubling to soldiers who were issued these prostheses. Moreover, once discharged, veterans relied on the VA for future prostheses, follow-up care, and maintenance, repair, and replacement of artificial limbs. Veterans applied for services at a local field station but might be referred to one of the VA’s twelve amputation centers. The VA contracted with private manufacturers to provide limbs for veterans, which typically narrowed the choices available to them. The surgeon general of the army worked with the National Research Council to launch a study of artificial limbs that resulted in the establishment of a permanent National Research Council committee on the development of better prostheses in 1945, but the effort came too late to stave critique.47
In 1945, Lieutenant Sol Rael, who had received medical care and an artificial limb at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, D.C., told subcommittee members that his prosthetic was “crude and out-moded and definitely a throw-back to horse-and-buggy days.” He reported, “There was no question in my mind when I received my prosthesis that I was greatly disappointed and disillusioned in seeing what a hackneyed article it really was.”48
Veterans expressed frustration about the utility and fit of their new limbs and the process they had to go through to get assistance from the VA. After losing a limb in an explosion in northern Africa in July 1943, Robert L. Rogers was shipped home to receive treatment at Walter Reed. His leg was amputated about five inches below the knee, but once he began walking with his prosthetic, his stump opened up. After four surgeries and over a year in Walter Reed, Rogers still had constant troubles with his leg and was waiting for a new socket and a new leather foot to give him greater function. He argued that the army’s legs were improperly fitted and made of poor quality materials—materials so cheap that a limb maker had told him his leg was not worth “two hoots in hell.”49
For men like Rogers, who depended on their earnings to make ends meet, replacing an ill-fitting or low-quality limb with personal funds was out of the question. Taking time away from work to travel to the VA for repairs and to apply for a new limb had costs as well. The VA had determined that Rogers’s artificial leg should be repaired and not replaced; consequently, Rogers had to go to the VA repeatedly and wait. He had to wait for repairs. He had to wait for the VA to decide that he was eligible for a new limb. He even had to wait for new crutches. When his army-issued crutches broke, he went to the VA to request a new pair. Fortunately, Rogers was able to borrow a pair from the dispensary at his job as it took over two months for his VA crutches to arrive. All of the waiting had profound consequences for Rogers. He had difficulty working, shifting from job to job in hopes of finding something that would not set off the pain, and as a result, he struggled to make a living.50
According to Rogers, disabled veterans were tired of waiting and tired of having their situation ignored. He said that the public face of army amputation centers was a farce. When they photographed men walking and dancing, he claimed, it was after only a few steps and not “after he had walked 20 steps” or after the dance when “he has hopped … into the corner or goes hopping downstairs to get his crutches.” Just as the pain made Rogers “hate to walk,” it made him, and others like him, question the government that had sent them to battle. “These derned legs,” he cried, “I do not know what is wrong, the Government is supposed to be trying to do so much for us, and they are not doing a darned thing.”51 A DAV representative told the committee that developing better artificial limbs was necessary to pay back “an undischarged war debt.”52
The difficulties disabled soldiers and veterans faced with their prosthetic limbs were amplified in the civilian sector. When a member of the subcommittee asked Dr. Charles M. Griffith, medical director of the VA, how a civilian might fare in purchasing an artificial limb,