Learning about Disability Pride

I always knew that June was Pride Month for the LGBTQ+ community, but I didn’t know until recently that July is Disability Pride Month. As soon as I found out, I got excited to create a program highlighting Arkansans with disabilities who have become known locally, nationally, and internationally for their incredible accomplishments. I also wanted to understand more about the community in general.

As stated in a history of the disability pride flag on the Columbia University website, “Disability pride is about accepting and honoring each person’s uniqueness and seeing it as a natural and beautiful part of human diversity.”

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into federal law, prohibiting discrimination against people with disabilities. Disability Pride initially started informally as a day of celebration that year. (The Arkansas Civil Rights Act followed in 1993.)

In 2015, the first official celebration of Disability Pride Month was held, marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ADA.

In 2019, the original Disability Pride flag was created by writer Ann Magill, who has cerebral palsy. The original flag featured brightly colored zigzagging stripes on a black background indicating how people with disabilities have to maneuver around all the barriers they face. But this design prompted symptoms in individuals with visually triggered disabilities. So the community offered suggestions and Magill took them to heart.

The new version features stripes instead of zigzags and muted colors rather than bold ones. The stripes were also reordered to accommodate people with red-green colorblindness.

According to the Columbia University website, “The flag is considered a collaborative design effort, with Magill saying the new design truly represents the community because the community came together to solve a problem.”

The meaning of the colors is: Red for physical disabilities; Gold for neurodiversity; White for invisible disabilities and disabilities that haven’t yet been diagnosed; Blue for emotional and psychiatric disabilities, including mental illness, anxiety, and depression; and Green for sensory disabilities, including deafness, blindness, lack of smell, lack of taste, audio processing disorders, and all other sensory disabilities. Columbia University adds to this: “The black, gray, or faded black background represents mourning and rage for victims of ableist violence and abuse. The diagonal band cuts across the walls and barriers that separate the disabled from normate society, also representing light and creativity cutting through the darkness.”

What a beautiful flag with a rich history and significance of its own!

Here are just a couple of notable Arkansans with disabilities (click through to the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas entries to read more):

Bennie Fuller, who grew up near Hensley (Pulaski County), became the all-time leading scorer in Arkansas boys’ high school basketball history and was ranked fourth on the national scoring list. Fuller scored 4,896 points at the Arkansas School for the Deaf in Little Rock from 1968 to 1971. In 1971, Fuller scored 102 points in a game against Leola (Grant County). Fuller became third nationally on the per-game scoring average list (50.9 points per game during the 1970–71 season). He is also believed to be the first deaf player to receive a college basketball scholarship at a hearing institution.

Fuller chose to attend Pensacola Junior College in Florida when the school also offered a scholarship to Donnie Nutt, the nephew of Houston Nutt Sr., the coach at the School for the Deaf. No other school could offer Fuller a personal interpreter. After obtaining his associate’s he transferred to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), where he played for the Golden Lions. After receiving his bachelor’s from UAPB, Fuller taught at the Arkansas School for the Deaf for several years before beginning a long career with the U.S. Postal Service. He is a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.

Ronald Dale Tabor, born in Harrison (Boone County), is an artist who uses his mouth to hold a paintbrush. After a near fatal car accident caused him to be quadriplegic, he continued to pursue his love of painting. Some of his rehabilitation was done in Hot Springs (Garland County). His work was first noticed at exhibits in Eureka Springs (Carroll County) and at the Ozarks Heritage Arts Center. His work is famous worldwide, and he’s also known for his volunteerism. He lives with his wife, two sons, and service dog Silver in Pyatt (Marion County).

Be sure to also read about:

• Chad Colley, a Vietnam vet who was also a pilot, a businessman, and an advocate for disabled Americans
• Marjorie Lawrence, a famous Australian opera singer who lived in Hot Springs
• Roy Franklin Kumpe, who founded the World Services for the Blind
• Grover Evans, known for his political endeavors, sports accomplishments, and career as a motivational speaker
• Rupert Bayliss Vance, a sociologist on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), who co-established the field of “regional sociology”
• Inez Harrington Whitfield, noted for her community work in Hot Springs and nationally recognized for her paintings of Arkansas wildflowers
• Thomas Melvin Hinton, a classically trained artist whose paintings won many awards locally and nationally; he also did illustrations for the Texarkana Gazette
• Ellis CeDell Davis, a blues musician and recording artist who helped bring blues from its rural Southern roots into the twenty-first century
• John Bell Jr., an artist who documented Arkansas history on canvas and a wheelchair user known for lobbying to improve access to buildings and services for Arkansans with disabilities
• Al Hibbler, a pop and jazz singer, the first African American to have a radio program in Little Rock and the first blind entertainer to gain national prominence; he also became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement.
• Emma Hays Dusenbury, an outstanding traditional singer whose work is represented in the nation’s leading folksong archive at the Library of Congress
• Ved Mehta, a prolific Indian American writer who is best known for his autobiographical works and long tenure as a writer for the New Yorker magazine

and a special mention goes to:

• Bobby Fussell, who had a long career as a lawyer championing the legal rights of disabled veterans and the deaf

And those are just a sampling of the entries about individuals with disabilities we have available on the CALS EOA. You can also read about the Arkansas School for the Blind, the Arkansas School for the Deaf, the Arkansas Association for the Deaf, disability issues, mental health, and much more.

By Jobe, editorial assistant at the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas and programmer for the CALS Writing Circle

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