Overview
The Texas Disability History Collection emphasizes the pioneering role played by a racially and ethnically diverse cast of Texan disability rights activists, many of whom attended or have worked at UT Arlington, in fighting for equal access to education, work, union membership, public transit, and sports.
The collection reveals how, in the late 1960s, disabled students convinced UT Arlington administrators to make the campus accessible to students with a wide array of disabilities, eventually making the school into a model campus for Texas and the greater Southwest. UT Arlington alums Sam Provence and Jim Hayes not only led efforts to make higher education accessible, but also drove disability rights advocacy and independent living programs in Arlington and adapted sports in Texas, respectively. Other papers and images document disabled workers’ longstanding efforts to gain access to paid employment and insurance benefits and the efforts of earlier activists to create educational opportunities for children with disabilities at a time when public schools could legally bar them from attending, among other topics.
The oral histories showcase the voices of a wide variety of disability rights activists, athletes and coaches in adapted sports, advocates for higher education accessibility, and alumni of UT Arlington, among others. These interviews were conducted starting in 2013 by undergraduate Disability Studies Minors, graduate students in the Department of History, Sarah Rose, and Trevor Engel.
Mission
To showcase Texas’s central role in the disability rights movement, especially as it relates to access to higher education and adapted sports, and reveal the impact of disability rights on ordinary people’s lives. The collection also aims to help students and scholars from across the state and nation to incorporate regional and racial diversity into disability history and civil rights narratives.
Awards
2017 Diversity Award from the Society of American Archivists
Personnel
UTA Libraries - Department of Digital Creation
Sana Louay Jas Al-Shalal, Student Assistant
Joshua DeBurr, Student Assistant
Jeff Downing, Digital Projects Librarian and Project Manager
Maggie Dwyer, Web and Digital Specialist
Ramona Holmes, Department Head
Lynn Johnson, Digital Projects Librarian
Andrew Leverenz, Senior Web Developer
Candy McCormic, Web Graphic Designer
Donald Quarles, Web and Digital Specialist
Derek Reece, Digital Projects Librarian
Krystal Schenk, Web Developer
Nichole Sheridan, Student Assistant
Diane Turner, Web and Digital Specialist
Faedra Wills, Digital Projects Librarian
UTA Libraries - Department of Special Collections and Archives
Brenda McClurkin, Department Head
Betty Shankle, University Archivist
Cathy Spitzenberger, Photographic Collections Specialist
UTA Libraries - Scholarly Communication Division
Rafia Mirza, Digital Humanities Librarian
UTA Department of History
Gerald Saxon, Associate Professor
UTA Minor in Disability Studies
Trevor Engel, Assistant
Sarah Rose, Associate Professor and Director, Minor in Disability Studies
Acknowledgements
This project is made possible by a grant from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services and Texas State Library and Archives Commission.
Special thanks goes to Laurie Block, Executive Director and Graham Warder, Director, Education Materials Development at the Disability History Museum for sharing their taxonomy schema to be used with this project.