The Ugly Laws

Disability in Public

Susan M. Schweik

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9780814783610
• eBook ISBN:
  9780814740880
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The murky history behind municipal laws criminalizing disability

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, municipal laws targeting "unsightly beggars" sprang up in cities across America. Seeming to criminalize disability and thus offering a visceral example of discrimination, these "ugly laws" have become a sort of shorthand for oppression in disability studies, law, and the arts.

In this watershed study of the ugly laws, Susan M. Schweik uncovers the murky history behind the laws, situating the varied legislation in its historical context and exploring in detail what the laws meant. Illustrating how the laws join the history of the disabled and the poor, Schweik not only gives the reader a deeper understanding of the ugly laws and the cities where they were generated, she locates the laws at a crucial intersection of evolving and unstable concepts of race, nation, sex, class, and gender. Moreover, she explores the history of resistance to the ordinances, using the often harrowing life stories of those most affected by their passage. Moving to the laws' more recent history, Schweik analyzes the shifting cultural memory of the ugly laws, examining how they have been used—and misused—by academics, activists, artists, lawyers, and legislators.

Index

Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations

Abel, Elizabeth, 334n. 10

Abel, Emily, 305n. 12

Ability: cross-ability sociability, 47, 120, 130

in liberal theory, 85

phantasmatic, 11, 134

poverty, stigma and, 27

relation of able-bodied to unsightly beggars, 36, 334n. 12

securing of able-bodied status, 133

shading into disability, 136

temporarily able-bodied (TAB), 130

temporarily not able-bodied (TNAB), 130. See also Nor-mate and normality

Abjection: ambivalence and, 37

Kristeva on, 306n. 30

public sphere stripped of, 70

social link with impairment, 109

and ugly law, 56, 306n. 30

Ableism: conjoined with racism and nativism, 165

definition of, 321n. 33, 347n. 2

and eugenics, 142

logic of, 269

reading and, 131

state-sponsored, 280

Acts, prohibition on, vs. prohibition on basis of status, 10, 217. See also Status offenses ADA. See Americans with Disabilities Act

ADAPT, 208, 336–337n. 2

Addams, Jane, 91, 226, 313n. 9

on “great defectives,” 226

Addiction, 131, 316n. 40

disability and, 105–106, 316n. 43. See also Alcohol

Aesthetics: aesthetic failure, 87

“aesthetic motive” for care, 310n. 21

and affirmation, 286

bodily, 3, 15, 322n. 7

city planning and, 69–71, 77, 286

criminology, gender and, 323n. 15

eugenics and, 309n. 9

as form of social control, 286

politics of, 209

and urbanism, 286

African American: Agnes (burned enslaved girl in Charleston), 188, 283

begging, 195–196, 333n. 4, 335n. 27

black charity organization, 196

blind black disability theory, 203

blues, 199–200

critique of white charity organization, 335n. 27

cross-dresser, 163

cultural association with unsightliness, 186

first hospital, 335n. 23

Great Migration, 196

healing traditions, 194

health crisis, 194

identity after slavery, 333n. 6

imposters, 196

pegleg dancing, 336n. 36

press, 196, 201–204

policing of,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Introduction
• I: The Emergence of the Ugly Laws
• II: At the Unsightly Intersection
• III: The End of the Ugly Laws
• Conclusion
• Appendix: The Ugly Laws
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author