Jernigan, Kenneth (1926–1999)

American activist

Kenneth Jernigan, born blind, was one of the preeminent leaders of the struggle for equality waged by blind people during the twentieth century. He served as president of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) from 1968 to 1986, with one brief interruption in 1978–1979. As president emeritus, he remained actively involved in the NFB and its operations until his death in 1999. Jernigan was mentored by Jacobus tenBroek, the NFB's first president, and one of the most influential voices addressing discrimination against the blind in the United States.

Born in Detroit, Jernigan grew up in Tennessee on a family farm. He held many jobs as a young man, including furniture maker, insurance salesman, and, briefly, professional wrestler. He received a degree in literature from Peabody University, and soon after went to teach at the Tennessee School for the Blind. In 1953, he was encouraged by tenBroek to move to California to work at the Orientation Center for the Blind in Oakland. In 1958, he became the first blind director of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, a position he held until 1978. During his time in Iowa, the commission was transformed from the worst to the best agency serving blind adults in the United States, and Des Moines became the epicenter of the blind movement.

Jernigan joined the NFB in 1949, and he was its vice president by 1958. Jernigan's rise to power occurred in the context of a bitter struggle for the leadership and direction of the NFB, resulting in the expulsion of several state affiliates and the creation of a splinter group in 1961, the American Council of the Blind (ACB).

Jernigan's philosophy of blindness was that the average blind person could do the work of an average sighted person when the former was given proper blindness adjustment training. With such training, Jernigan asserted, blindness could be reduced to a mere physical nuisance.