League of the Physically Handicapped

The League of the Physically Handicapped was a grassroots organization of disabled activists that operated in New York from 1935 to 1938. In 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, President Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration (WPA) to provide jobs for the unemployed. However, among the groups considered “unemployable”—and thus ineligible for WPA jobs—were people with disabilities. In response to this policy, six young people with disabilities held a sit-in at the offices of New York City's Emergency Relief Bureau. At first merely aiming to speak with the bureau's director, they escalated their demands as the sit-in continued. An ongoing picket line of supporters at times swelled to hundreds, with thousands of onlookers. Six days later, when those sitting in finally met with the bureau director, the nascent group was demanding jobs in unsegregated environments and explicitly rejecting charity.

The League grew from this core of activists. Focused on employment rights, the organization engaged in picketing, public education, and meetings—often confrontational—with public officials. The group also wrote a 10-page “Thesis on Conditions of Physically Handicapped.” Prefiguring later thinking, this work asserted that discrimination is the cause of disabled people's unemployment and critiqued the charity model, especially sheltered workshops.