PEOPLE OF VISION
A History of the American Council of the Blind
by
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CHAPTER 12
AFTERTHOUGHTS
It would be hard indeed to find in the annals of U.S. organizational history anything quite like the story we have just surveyed. As late as the 1930s there was no national organization of blind people in the United States, but by the early 1960s there were two such organizations, bitterly divided and often working at cross purposes. In reflecting on this strange phenomenon, it may be worth asking three basic questions: one about the past, one about the present, and one about the future. That these questions get very different answers from members and nonmembers alike should not be surprising since access to records and documents is limited for a variety of reasons. Future historians should have more to work with, but there is still a special problem of unavailability of primary sources, partially due to the endemic hostility between the two groups. So, we are closing out this interim account with tentative answers to the following questions:
- The basic question about the past is undoubtedly: What caused the 1961 split in Kansas City?
Why did it happen? After having been founded by a richly talented group of blind people in the
1940s, and having functioned with rather remarkable harmony into the mid-1950s, an ugly "civil
war" broke out within the NFB, which was ultimately resolved by a radical dismembering of the
organization, tearing it apart and turning it into two totally separate organizations. Why? We will
look especially at the reasons that were alleged or suggested by some of the major participants at the
time, if only to take note of divergent explanations, without claiming to find any of them fully
persuasive or conclusive.
- The basic question about the present is: Why have the 40 intervening years failed to ameliorate
relations, so that there is such continuing alienation between the two organizations today? With the
mounting challenges seen more recently to the entire disabilities field, one might have thought that
pragmatism, if nothing else, would dictate cooperation and coordination of efforts in support of
appropriate programs and policies, even if other factors justified retaining two different
organizations. But, for whatever complex of reasons, such is clearly not the case. Why?
- The final question is about the future: What are the prospects for any significant change in this fractured situation? Are there any grounds for expecting anything other than more of the same, or has the new millennium, with top-level changes of leadership in both organizations, created any likelihood of a different pattern to come...something other than the kind of conflict that has bedeviled the blind community in America for nearly half a century?
As is obvious, it may not be possible to answer these questions satisfactorily at the present time...but it should certainly be worth trying, if only in the hope of better and broader understanding of why the American blind community is so balkanized and whether anything can or ought to be done about it.
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About the Book
People of Vision relates the largely untold story of how the American Council of the Blind came to be. It begins by providing historical background and special context for the formation in 1940 of the first national organization of its kind in the United States, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB). It goes on to tell of the early years of harmony, then the gradually escalating internal troubles that in 1961 resulted in a split, forming a second organization, the American Council of the Blind (ACB).
By ample use of private correspondence and internal memos of the unusually articulate blind persons at the center of the conflict, the authors have, in large part, let the chief participants speak for themselves. Among the most striking features of the story are the writings of the "dissenters." The high level of discourse present in the Free Press articles, which set forth and defended the democratic principles and values at stake in the dispute at its height, is remarkable.
After the parting of the ways in 1961, the struggles of the new organization to survive and thrive are chronicled up to its 40th anniversary convention in 2001. The Afterthoughts reflect on the continued alienation of the two groups.
About the Author
When ACB's "founding father," Durward K. McDaniel, first asked the Megiverns to write the ACB history, they were hesitant to agree, given their many other commitments. Jim was teaching full-time at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and working to complete a major historical manuscript. Marjorie, busy as a journalist and editor of several newsletters, was also directing a very active children's repertory theater. Both had written extensively, published books and journal articles, and done years of newspaper columns. But once they learned the basics of the ACB history, and what an unusually talented group of blind people had endured and accomplished, they knew it was a story that simply had to be told, even though it would take them years to put it all together.