THE BRAILLE MONITOR
Vol. 45, No. 3 April, 2002
Barbara Pierce, Editor
Published in inkprint, in Braille,
and on cassette by
THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND
MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT
National Office
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THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES
ISSN 0006-8829
Louisville Site of 2002 NFB Convention!
The 2002 Convention of the National Federation of the Blind will take place in Louisville, Kentucky, July 3-9. We will conduct the convention at the Galt House Hotel and the Galt House East Tower, together a first-class convention hotel. The Galt House Hotel, familiarly called the Galt House West, is at 140 N. Forth Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202. The Galt House East Tower, or Galt House East, is at 141 N. Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202. Room rates for this year's convention are excellent: singles, doubles, and twins $57 and triples and quads $63 a night, plus tax. The hotel is accepting reservations now. A $60-per-room deposit is required to make a reservation. Fifty percent of the deposit will be refunded if notice is given to the hotel of a reservation cancellation before May 29, 2002. The other 50 percent is not refundable. For reservations call the hotel at (502) 589‑5200.
Rooms will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations may be made to secure these rooms before May 29, 2002, assuming that rooms are still available. After that time the hotel will not hold the block of rooms for the convention. In other words, you should get your reservation in soon.
Our overflow hotel is the Hyatt Regency at 320 W. Jefferson Street, Louisville, Kentucky 40202, phone (502) 587‑3434.
Those who attended the 1985 convention can testify to the gracious hospitality of the Galt House. This hotel has excellent restaurants, first-rate meeting space, and other top-notch facilities. It is in downtown Louisville, close to the Ohio River and only seven miles from the Louisville Airport.
The 2002 Convention will follow a somewhat different schedule:
Wednesday, July 3 Seminar Day
Thursday, July 4 Registration Day
Friday, July 5 Board Meeting and Division Day
Saturday, July 6 Opening Session
Sunday, July 7 Tour Day
Monday, July 8 Banquet Day
Tuesday, July 9 Business Session
Plan to be in Louisville.
The action of the convention will be there!
Vol. 45, No. 3 April, 2002
Contents
The Individual's Role in a Democracy
by Jacobus tenBroek
Half-Baked
by Karen Alexander
The 2002 Washington Seminar
Learning Braille as an Adult:
Read Until You Bleed
by Jerry Whittle
Getting Around Downtown Louisville
by Dennis Franklin
Making History in Louisville--Federation Style
by Lora J. Felty
2002 Convention Attractions
NFB Camp Preregistration Form
The Serious Work of Play
NOPBC-Sponsored Activities for Parents and Kids
by Barbara Cheadle
NOPBC 2002 Activities Preregistration
Hearing Enhancement and Spanish Translation
Available At National Convention
Spanish Translators Needed
by D. Curtis Willoughby
Recipes
Monitor Miniatures
Copyright © 2002 National Federation of the Blind
[LEAD PHOTO/CAPTION: February 28, 2002, will go down in Federation history as the day we could officially announce that we have met our goal of raising eighteen million dollars toward building the National Research and Training Institute for the Blind. The National Center staff took time out of another busy day to celebrate this impressive victory. Three sheet cakes are pictured here, each bearing one of the three exciting words, "Eighteen Million Dollars." Now the demanding work of fund raising continues since we have already experienced construction cost overruns. Then, of course, there is the challenge of meeting Institute operating expenses. But Thursday, February 28, was a day to savor our long-anticipated victory. ]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jacobus tenBroek]
The Individual's Role in a Democracy
by Jacobus tenBroek
From the Editor: In the process of archiving many of the Federation's historical documents, we recently discovered a tape recording of the following speech which was the last in a series of lectures delivered at East Contra Costa College, probably in December of 1962. At the time Dr. tenBroek was the chairman of the California Social Welfare Board and Professor of Speech at the University of California at Berkeley. The tape is remarkably clear except that the recording system had not been turned on before Dr. tenBroek began speaking. As a result, the first few words are missing. The speech is remarkable for its clarity of thought and delivery. It has nothing to do with blindness, but it certainly demonstrates once again the clarity and elegance of the mind of the man who founded our movement and his deep commitment to equality for all citizens. From the sound of the applause, the audience must have been very large. Here is the speech:
. . . Consideration handed down a landmark decision. That decision was reached in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. "The Constitution," said the Supreme Court, "forbids segregation in public educational facilities. The schools must be racially integrated." The doctrine of "separate but equal" long held to govern such matters was repudiated. The new rule was to be put into effect by the states, not immediately as would normally have been the case, but, as the phrase goes, "with all deliberate speed," in the light of the local circumstances, educational and administrative.
The decision set off a chain reaction: manifestos were issued, declarations of Constitutional principles were propounded, joint resolutions were passed. In the southern states all branches of the government went into action. The legislatures adopted a packaged program. The mix in the ready-made package contained an assortment of laws for the control and closing of the public schools, for repealing compulsory attendance laws, for the assignment and distribution of pupils, for the revealing of present and past organizational membership by teachers, for the establishment of state sovereignty commissions, and for the frustration or annihilation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP] and for state so-called interposition.
Where necessary, state constitutions were amended to sustain these enactments. Governors suited the words to the action and the action to the word. They railed against the Supreme Court. They planted themselves on the Tenth Amendment. They declared their states sovereign and independent. They publicly refused to drink, as they said, from the cup of genocide. Some of them even incited the mob a little. One called out the National Guard to keep nine colored children from attending a white high school. Another erected his person as a physical barrier to the admission of a colored university student.
In reviewing these laws and other actions, the state courts, with some doubts and minor exceptions, lined up with the other state officials rather than with their judicial superiors in Washington. Many old and some new constitutional questions were raised by these reactions in the southern states: is the Supreme Court the final interpreter of the Constitution, or may the states finally determine what powers are reserved to them for themselves? Could the states, following the model of Madison and Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, constitutionally interpose to nullify what they consider to be flagrant, palpable, and deliberate violations of the Constitution by the federal government?
Is education a matter placed by the Tenth Amendment within the exclusive jurisdiction of the states, or are the clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment applicable? Was the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified at the close of the Civil War with the concurrence of federal troops, which established and protected those legislatures, constitutionally adopted? In the face of its fifth section, authorizing Congress to enforce it by appropriate legislation, could the Supreme Court order it carried into effect in the absence of statutory provision therefor? In the existing state of federal statutes, could the President execute the Court decree himself by the use of federalized National Guardsmen and regulars in the armed forces of the United States? Could a lower federal court properly issue an injunction against virtually the entire state of Mississippi? Was a governor criminally liable for violating it? Do private associations have a constitutional right to organize, to hold confidential their lists of members, and to solicit and conduct litigation in the federal courts for the purpose of establishing the equality of the races?
The events have been spectacular. Given the basic decision in the Brown case, however, the legal and constitutional questions have been less so. Some new constitutional law is emerging. No old constitutional law is being overturned. In this respect the most significant lesson to be learned from the post-decision episodes and arguments is the invincibility of constitutional error. No matter how often the doctrine of state interposition, for example, has been put down in our history, no matter how thoroughly repudiated by Congress, blasted by national executive action, finally disposed of by the courts, and buried by the Civil War itself, still is it disinterred and resurrected to reenact again its inevitable fate and be buried once more.
The flaming controversy to which Brown vs. Board of Education gave rise tends to obscure from the public view rather than to clarify its constitutional significance. Perhaps Brown vs. Board of Education does not match some of the more famous decisions of John Marshall or, say, Justice Mansfield's holding in the Somerset case freeing the slaves in England in 1776. Though it only carried out the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, yet that purpose had been subverted and lost sight of in the intervening century, and the Brown decision therefore stands in the same tradition of creativeness with Marshall and Mansfield, and this comparison properly suggests the measure of the Brown decision.
1954 will not stand alone in the annals of the Warren court or in the constitutional history of this century. In April, 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down another landmark decision. This one was reached in the case of Baker vs. Carr. The problem in that case is quite different from Brown vs. Board of Education, and yet in many ways it was quite similar. Apportionment of representation in the state legislatures was held to be a matter within the jurisdiction of the federal courts, and one upon which they would act. The doctrine that this type of controversy was nonjusticiable was repudiated. The representativeness of representatives in the state legislature, therefore, has been made a matter of federal constitutionality. However, in exactly and without necessarily excluding other factors such as geography and the economy, the state legislatures must represent the people. Remarkable disproportionality will no longer be tolerated. The nation will drag the states into the second half of the twentieth century, albeit screaming.
Country life and agricultural activity, sunk to a low estate in society and the economy, cannot maintain their erstwhile representative dominance in the state legislatures by the failure of their representatives to reapportion the legislatures. The industrial, the city, and the suburban masses must be given their due, or at least some part of it.
Neither in the Carr case nor in the Brown do we see the Supreme Court of the United States blazing a trail of social or political progress. Boldly pioneering on the frontiers of democracy is rarely if ever the judicial role. Indeed these two landmark decisions are not at all inconsistent with the theory of the judicial lag--the theory, that is, that the courts confirm progress; they do not create it. Progress in race relations and in adjusting legislative apportionment to the profound reorganization of life and redistribution of the population of the states have long since, as Hamlet said, fallen out of joint with the time, grossly and shockingly so. What was needed was drastic action to bring or make possible progress in these areas to the point where the judges lagging normally behind events could see it without looking backward.
But what branch of the government could take the action? Aye, there was the rub. Congress could not. It was held immobile in the field of race relations by seniority-conferred power on southerners in the committees of the House and by the rules of procedure in the Senate. Likewise immobile were the state legislatures, where the agricultural interests would not, could not indeed be expected to, proceed self-moved to the destruction of their own power and their own strategic position.
With the legislative branches of government hamstrung and impotent, with the executive constitutionally sidelined in the absence of statutory direction and authority, with no issue at stake of nullifying affirmative action taken by coordinate departments of the national government, with the problems being only those of state action and inaction and national corrective power, the Supreme Court was born, or at least grew up, to be the one to set the matter right. The time is still out of joint, but it is less so now.
However, for this occasion our interest in these two cases does not derive from the role of leadership assumed by the court or the factors that stimulated and made that role possible, or even from the importance of these decisions in the life of the nation. Our interest derives from another source, from the constitutional chords that were struck by the court. What were these? What was the constitutional limitation or directive? I have already indicated it was contained in the Fourteenth Amendment. Oddly enough, California was the last state to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and this occurred only very recently. The Amendment was adopted at the close of the Civil War. It was put into effect in 1868. It was not until 1959, five years after the Brown decision, that California finally signified its approval of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. As we Californians contemplate southern resistance to the Brown decision, we might remind ourselves that racist politics played a considerable part in our original rejection of the Fourteenth Amendment.
What is the great constitutional engine in the Fourteenth Amendment, which served as the propulsive force in the Brown and Carr cases? It is the seminal, the pervasive, the multifaceted, the much-misunderstood, the much espoused, the much-criticized notion of equality. "All men are created equal," proclaimed the Declaration of Independence. All men? well not quite all--not Negro slaves, owned by Jefferson among others, not Indians, not taxed and not part of the community. Not the deprived and down-trodden generally, or at least not just yet. Yet this one phrase and proposition sounded the death knell of slavery. That self-evident truth of Jefferson's Preamble eventually made the whole institution untenable. It became the piercing cry of the abolitionist, who linked it with and gave it primacy over the privileges and immunities of national citizenship and the due process protection of life, liberty, and property. These are the source, the foundation, the content, and the rationale of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.
So ninety years after the Declaration of Independence Jefferson's self-evident truth finally made its way explicitly into the Constitution. The form was slightly altered. It gave emphasis to the protection element in the concept of equality: due and full protection of all men in their natural rights. "Nor shall any state deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law." Those are the words that were put into the Fourteenth Amendment. Any person? The equal protection of the laws? Well, not quite any person, not quite full protection--not just yet, anyhow. Indians still were not taxed, and by the amendment itself they were not to be counted. Slavery had been abolished. Its badges and indicia, the long social aftermath of a previous condition of servitude, remained to rack the century that lay ahead. The deprived, the destitute, the diseased, the degraded--for moral pestilence and physical pestilence in Milton's phrase "leaped forth into the world like two twins cleaving together." And race prejudice, "that other sturdy pestilence," in Justice Douglas's phrase, formed a third sibling to the other two. These also were not contemplated by the constitutional command or, better, were not reached by its administration.
Today, another ninety years later, after having been for nearly a century lost and forgotten or shamelessly subverted by the separate-but-equal stratagem, equal protection is again emerging from its relative latency to strike down some of these vestiges, to uproot some of these conditions. "No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," chorused all voices on the Supreme Court in unison in school desegregation cases. "No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws," said a majority of voices on the Supreme Court in the apportionment-of- representation case. And so no state shall. Any person? The equal protection of the laws? Well, not quite any person, not quite full protection--at least not just yet, anyhow.
Beyond the desegregated schools are the schools still segregated. Beyond them hotels, restaurants, theaters, swimming pools, parks, beaches, transportation facilities, housing, policing, protection, voting, and so on. Beyond these are other instances and institutions of race prejudice aimed at the blacks and those aimed at other colored people, and those aimed at some of the whites. As a part of race prejudice, minority status, and many other social and physical factors as well, there is poverty, and there are the victims of poverty. The task of equality indeed is not now done, in truth is never done.
American political and constitutional assumptions and goals, liberty, the dignity of the human person, the right of private property, security, equality intermingle and overlap. They also are fluid and variable in content. To the extent that they are a living reality in a developing democracy, they are constantly growing, maturing, and changing. Every generation, every decade is a formative period in the constitutional life of the nation. Moreover, emphasis on the various elements has shifted at different periods in our history in the documents which have embodied and expressed the different movements, forces, and times, and among the prominent political writers and speakers.
Equality was the dominant note in the Declaration of Independence. Property assumed relatively a stronger position in the Constitution. During the nineteenth century, when fortune and geography gave the nation military safety and free land and the open frontier gave individuals a sense of economic safety, security was taken for granted, and liberty was elevated to a primary position. "When the traditional foundations of culture crumble," wrote Ralph Henry Gabriel in connection with the impact of the world depression of the 1930's and the hot and cold wars of the 1940's, "when government by law gives way to government by irresponsible force, the preoccupation with liberty as an end in itself is replaced by a new search for security: mental, social, economic, and even physical."
Tension can be endured, indeed can be felt, only so long. Eventually, though men live on the threshold of international doomsday, the less spectacular but nevertheless urgent and pressing social, economic, and humanitarian problems of the nation force their way back into the nation's attention. When that happens, considerations of equality move again to the forefront. In some measure this is the constitutional story of the 1950's and the early 1960's in the United States of America.
Any institution or doctrine of importance and vitality has its foes as well as its friends, its detractors as well as its supporters. Such in any event has been the history of the doctrine of equality. Its contemporary experience too has been of this character. Those with an adversary or only an adverse interest, those who have or fancy they have any advantage in a system of inequality, those with contradictory social philosophies, those who think that the observable differences among men are relevant to this problem: all have been articulate in formulation of their opposition.
Read, for example, these choice passages from a Congressional speech by Frances Wilkinson Pickens delivered way back in 1836 in the course of the debate on the power of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. Many of you will remember that Pickens was the governor of South Carolina at the time Fort Sumter was fired upon. These sentiments are at one with others heard then and now from white supremacists, who intone their refusal "to drink from the cup of genocide," as they say. "What was the meaning?" inquired Pickens of the author of the Declaration of Independence, "as he spoke the proposition that all men are created equal. Was it meant that all men are created equally strong and of equal size? Surely not. Was it meant that all men were born free? From the days of the child in the bulrushes up to the present day there never was an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes that was born free. Was it meant that all men were born with equal rights and equal destiny? From the time it was declared that the iniquities of some should be visited unto the third and fourth generations," said Pickens, "from the days of Moses and the children of Israel, the history of mankind proclaims that there is an elect and chosen few, made the peculiar receptacles of the favors and blessings of an all-wise and all-pervading providence."
This is the world as we find it," said Pickens, "and it is not for us to war upon destiny." "What then," continued Pickens, "was the meaning? It was intended to declare the abstract truth that all men were born equally entitled to political privileges. Let us look into this as practical legislators. Throw man back into his state of savage existence, proclaim his physical and brutal propensities triumphant and himself lord of the recesses of the wilderness, and then this abstract truth may have some practical bearing. But let him accumulate property, let his intellectual attributes triumph over his brutal nature, make him civilized, and send him forth erect in the image of his maker with the light of reason and benevolence beaming from his countenance. Then his great character is that he becomes a social being. Organize him into society to act with his fellow man and then proclaim the abstract truth that all men are equal as a great and fundamental doctrine to be practically acted upon, and you do nothing more or less than raise his hand against every other man and every other man's hand against him. And, instead of it becoming a doctrine full of light and peace to a world sleeping in darkness and bondage, it becomes a doctrine of universal discord, confusion, and ruin." So says Mr. Pickens.
Intellectuals, in that day as in this, joined the clamor against the doctrine of equality, though perhaps they may have spoken from different motives. Have you seen an essay, for example, by Aldous Huxley entitled, "The Idea of Equality?" It might better have been entitled, "The Very Idea of Equality." In it Mr. Huxley makes some very strong and, as I think, some very strange statements. "That all men are created equal," says Huxley, "is a proposition to which at ordinary times no sane human being has ever given his assent. A man who has to undergo a dangerous operation does not act on the assumption that one doctor is just as good as any other. Editors do not print every contribution that reaches them, and when they require civil servants, even the most democratic governments make a careful selection among their theoretically equal subjects."
Huxley finds the original assumptions of the theory of democracy to be these: "That reason is the same and entire in all men and that all men are naturally equal. To these assumptions are attached several corollaries," says Huxley, "that men are naturally good as well as naturally reasonable, that they are the products of their environment, that they are indefinitely educable, and the main conclusions derivable from these assumptions and corollaries," says Huxley, "are the following: that the state ought to be organized on democratic lines, that the governor should be chosen by universal suffrage, that the opinion of the majority on all subjects is the best opinion, that education should be universal and the same for all citizens."
"The primary assumptions," concludes Huxley, "are almost certainly false. Reason is not the same in all men. Human beings belong to a variety of psychological types, separated one from another by irreducible differences. Men are not the exclusive products of their environment. A century of growing democracy has shown," says Huxley, "that the reform in institutions and the spread of education are by no means necessarily followed by improvements in individual virtue and intelligence. At the same time," says Huxley, "biologists have accumulated an enormous mass of evidence tending to show that physical peculiarities are inherited in a perfectly regular and necessary fashion. Body being indissolubly connected with mind, this evidence would almost be enough in itself to prove that mental peculiarities are similarly heritable. Mental idiosyncracies are inherited in exactly the same way as physical idiosyncracies": so says Mr. Huxley.
The attacks upon the doctrine of equality by Pickens and by Huxley, which are typical of many, if not almost all others, are infected with a common fallacy. They are classic examples of the straw-man technique. If you set up a man of straw instead of a real one and you make him the target of your artillery, you can easily blow him down. Having stripped the doctrine of equality of its essential qualities, having stood up in its place a flimsy substitute without the strengths of the genuine article, the task of demolition is easy enough.
Contrary to Huxley, the doctrine of equality does not claim or assume that one doctor, one applicant for civil service positions, one speech, or one essay is as good as any other. Indeed the speech of Pickens and the essay of Huxley make it quite clear that some are not very good at all. Contrary to Pickens and Huxley, the doctrine of equality does not claim or assume that reason is the same in all men, whether entire or not, or that they are equally or innately reasonable, or that they are equally or innately good and virtuous. Contrary to Huxley, the doctrine of equality does not claim or assume that men are more or less the products of their environment than of their heredity or that they are equally or indefinitely educable or that the opinions of the majority on all subjects are necessarily the best.
The most important fact about the doctrine of equality is that it presupposes that men are not the same, but that they are different, different in knowledge, different in wisdom, different in mental capacity, different in physical attributes, different in motivation, different in environment, different in heredity, different in moral qualities. We must emphasize the similarities among men and disregard the differences.
Let me state in summary and fairly categorical form the three definitions of equality which have evolved in democratic systems and have had particular applications in the United States. These might be captioned 1) the natural-rights definition, 2) the classification definition, and 3) the one-for-one definition--the natural-rights, the classification, the one-for-one. The first, the natural rights, is that contained in the Declaration of Independence, in the Constitutional arguments of the abolitionists, and therefore also in the original purpose of section one of the Fourteenth Amendment.
In the Declaration of Independence and in abolitionist constitutional theory, the concept of equality was integrally linked to four other common elements in western democratic theory: 1) unalienable rights, 2) the institution of government to protect these rights, 3) government by the consent of the governed, and 4) the right of the people to change government when it fails to fulfill its purpose and to change it either by peaceful means or by revolution.
Thus, in the Declaration of Independence and in abolitionist usage and later as underlying the Thirteenth Amendment and as embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, the clause had almost exclusively a substantive character: protection of men in their fundamental or natural rights was the basic idea. Equality was a modifying condition. The clause was a confirmatory reference to the affirmative duty of government to protect men in their natural rights. This established its absolute and substantive character, though the use of the word "equal" seems to give it a comparative form. Equal denial of protection, that is, no protection at all, is accordingly a denial of equal protection. The requirement of equal protection of the laws in the Fourteenth Amendment cannot be met unless the protection of the laws is given. And to give the protection of the laws to men in their natural rights was the sole purpose in the creation of government.
This being so, the phrase, "No state shall deny," becomes a simple command "each state shall supply," and the whole clause is thus understood to mean, "Each state shall supply the protection of the laws to men in their natural rights, and the protection shall always be equal to all men." It was because the protection of the laws had been denied to some men, the Negro slaves, that the word "equal" was used.
The second definition of equality, the classification definition, contrasts sharply with the natural-rights definition. It is flexible and practical. In a sense it is procedural rather than substantive. It makes no reference to particular rights such as life, liberty, and property, which must be protected by government in all circumstances and at all times and for all people. The contrast here is between general legislation, which applies without qualification to all persons, and special legislation, which applies to a limited class of persons.
Now what groupings and what classifications can be made by the legislature or by the public without violating the requirement of equality? The answer to this question was provided in the famous old San Francisco laundrymen's case, Yick Wo vs. Hopkins. "The equal protection of the laws," said Justice Matthews in that case, "is a pledge of the protection of equal laws. Moreover, though the law itself be fair on its face and impartial in appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand so as practically to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution."
Class legislation, discriminating against some and favoring others, is prohibited. But legislation which in carrying out a public purpose is limited in its application, if within the sphere of its operation it affects alike all persons similarly situated, is not within the amendment. Thus in the Chinese laundryman case itself, if the purpose of the San Francisco ordinance, in drawing a line of distinction between laundries in wooden buildings and those in brick or stone buildings, had been fire control and prevention (and that in a city plagued by many fires and several times nearly wiped out by conflagration), the purpose would have been constitutional and the application properly related to it.
The purpose, however, was to drive the Chinese out of business. Since most of them operated within wooden buildings, the classification was closely related to the purpose of driving them out of business, but the purpose itself was discriminatory and forbidden. These were unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar circumstances material to their rights. The public had proceeded with an evil eye and an unequal hand.
This is the very doctrine applied in Brown vs. Board of Education. The law that shielded the Chinese alien in California in the 1880's at long last in the 1950's came to protect the Negro citizen everywhere in the nation. The law initially developed in a case involving a business or an occupation was held three quarters of a century later to be good enough for education too. "If the purpose in segregating the races in schools is the maintenance of white supremacy and the continued subordination of the Negro," held the Supreme Court of the United States in the Brown case, "the purpose itself is discriminatory and forbidden by the Constitutional command of equality, and this is so, even though the classification might be scrupulously related to the purpose. If the purpose of the public school system is education, then the purpose is desirable and constitutional. But the segregation classification is unrelated to it. Since the public has the same need for an educated citizenry regardless of race, and all children regardless of race have the same need for education and the same potential for benefitting from it, separate educational facilities," concluded the court, "are inherently unequal."
The third definition of equality, the numerical or one-for-one definition is in many ways a particular instance of the classification definition. This definition so far has only emerged in the realm of political participation. Its most common form is the slogan, "One man, one vote." Here universal suffrage is not claimed as an absolute right. Some exclusions from the franchise, for example, are familiar to all of us: aliens, (for me) children, mental defectives, convicted felons, those falling below a minimum standard of literacy and understanding of institutions of government. Certain grounds for exclusion from the ballot have been prohibited by the Constitution itself. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote," says the Fifteenth Amendment, "shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The Nineteenth Amendment added sex to this list of prohibited grounds.
By a state constitutional amendment of 1960 the state of Louisiana excluded these three groups from the ballot: persons who have lived with another in common law marriage within the preceding five years, persons who have given birth to an illegitimate child within the preceding five years, persons who have been proved to be or who have acknowledged themselves to be the fathers of illegitimate children within the preceding five years. (Whether the acknowledgement was within the five years or the birth is not indicated.) The obvious purpose of these provisions is to bar the Negro. As such they violate the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. However, if they were merely non-discriminatory good-character requirements, would they then meet the touchstone of the Constitution? The courts have not yet said the answer, but there would still be equal-protection problems in the provision even if they were not discriminatory against the Negro.
The one-man, one-vote proposition comes down to this. There are few differences among men which may be taken into account when considering their right to participate in the suffrage, and those differences that may be taken into account must be carefully scrutinized for their relevance to the purpose of the suffrage. This in substance was the formula employed by the Supreme Court in the recent case of Baker vs. Carr. Its novelty in that case was its application federally to a state dilution of the right to an equal ballot, which had hitherto been held immune to federal correction. The voter in an agricultural county had a vote which counted far more than the vote of the voter in the urban county. The gross disproportion of representation to voting population was claimed to be arbitrary and capricious and therefore offensive to the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "A citizen's right to a vote free of arbitrary impairment by state actions," said the Supreme Court, "is a right secured by the Constitution of the United States."
Now let me recapitulate briefly. I have pointed to the recent and spectacular re-emergence of equality as a Constitutional and political ideal in America and the violence of the resistance to that trend. I marked the main path of the history of the concept in this country beginning with its primacy in the Declaration of Independence, its transformation by the abolitionists into the principal tenet in the crusade leading to the freeing of the slaves and the extirpation of the institution of human bondage, and its eventual incorporation into the Constitution by way of section one of the Fourteenth Amendment. I have portrayed and commented upon the main lines of intellectual and interested attack upon the concept, and I have detailed the definitions whose application has made it a living reality in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
I should like now in the time remaining, after having thus spoken of constitutional progress, to identify a large field of significant constitutional failure. It may be that this will be the field in which the next great constitutional advance will occur, though as of today I see few signs that this will be the case.
I refer to the general field of poverty and the social and public programs which have been set in motion to relieve its distress and to restore its victims. Strikingly, racial and ethnic minorities are principal occupants of this field. True, they do not dwell there alone. There are Caucasians in great numbers who are socially and economically marginal, who are disabled, sick, aged, unskilled, under-skilled, unemployed, bewildered, confused, and lost. But the incidence of poverty and deprivation is higher by far among the racial and ethnic minorities than among the Caucasian majority. Today one-and-a-quarter million Californians are non-white, about eight percent of the total population. Negroes are the largest and fastest-growing segment. They constitute about 6 percent of the population. About 1 percent are Japanese Americans, and another 1 percent are Chinese or Filipino Americans. About 4 percent of the California population is made up of first- or second-generation Mexican-Americans. Compare these data with the fact that roughly 60 percent of the aid-to-needy-children-program recipients in the state of California is made up of Negro and Mexican-Americans, and you will see immediately that there is an intimate relationship between minority status and deprivation.
Historically the meaning and character of welfare programs in California has been profoundly affected by the size and character of racial minorities in the state. Discrimination against them in governmental welfare programs and, even worse, the perversion of welfare Constitutional and statutory concepts and provisions to control and exclude them have had an immeasurable, but a very great, impact on our welfare ideas and institutions. Enslavement and control of the Indian through the use of the traditional indenture system and vagrancy provisions, in California; exclusion and control of the Chinese through public health, welfare, safety, and morals notions and provisions, in California; attacks upon the present-day aid-to-needy-children program, caring for children--a high percentage of whom are of Mexican-American and Negro parentage with different cultural mores and standards of conduct with respect to sex and marriage, in California: all these have further compounded historical confusion with respect to the purposes of welfare. All these have accustomed Californians to associate welfare with punitive, repressive, discriminatory, and exclusionary goals and instruments, as well as, or side-by-side with, relief and rehabilitation.
Whatever might be said about California in other respects, legally it has never been a melting pot. California has not been a rich amalgam of affirmative elements drawn from the widely varied backgrounds and cultures of the people who have composed the population. That is not to say that the Mexican and the Negro, the native Indian and the Oriental have not left their marks upon our California's legal system. That they have done in abundance. But the marks, however, have been the provisions of exclusion, not of incorporation, the legal manifestations of hostility and discrimination, not the test and affirmation of equality and constitutional principle. In short, Anglo-Saxon precepts and institutions in California did not flexibly yield to or selectively adapt the alien customs and ideas which abounded in their presence. Instead they built a series of protective barriers designed to isolate and keep pure the strain within.
The powers of the Constitution which have been invoked historically to deal with racial minorities and with the poor of all races have been the police powers, not the general welfare powers. The police powers are those that deal with maintaining order, preventing vice and crime, securing safety, and protecting health and morals. When problems of poverty are handled under these police powers of the Constitution, poverty comes to be equated with disease, with immorality, and with disorder. Indeed historically these have proven to be inseparable conditions. The constitutional powers of police have generally been called upon to protect one part of the community against another, the comfortable against the needy.
A classic illustration is to be found in the famous, or rather infamous, case of New York vs. Milne, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1837. "It is as competent and necessary for a state," said the justices in that case, "to provide precautionary measures against (now listen to this) the moral pestilence of paupers and vagabonds (and possibly convicts) as it is to guard against the physical pestilence which may arise from unsound and infectious articles imported or from a ship the crew of which may be laboring under an infectious disease." Accordingly, the court held valid a New York statute designed to exclude the poor and the unwanted brought to New York from other states or foreign countries. The statute was found to be a regulation of police, not of commerce, and therefore within the power of the state.
So by this doctrine the constitutional power of the states to deal with the poor is the police power to preserve public order and to quarantine contagion, to protect morals, and to maintain safety. And poverty entails constitutional, no less than social, degradation. Financial, physical, and mental well-being are tests of entitlement to constitutional rights. Welfare programs founded in these conceptions and sustained by this power focus on problems of behavior, utilize instruments of coercion and restraint, and are oriented towards keeping the peace and maintaining public order. They are designed to safeguard the health, safety, morals, and well-being of the fortunate in the community, rather than directly to improve the lot of the unfortunate.
"Well," you may say, "this case was decided a long time ago." But these ideas survive to plague us today. You've all heard of Newberg. While California yielded the headlines to Newberg, this was not from lack of the same merit. In word and deed California did not lag far behind Newberg. Blood typing and lie detector testing of aid-to-needy-children mothers about the paternity of their offspring; night raiding, with or without probable cause and constitutional safeguards; night-arresting ANC mothers caught with men in the home: these have been discussed in California more than done, but they have been done with alarming frequency.
In one county the full powers of a municipal court judge and a district attorney were combined to institute criminal non-support charges against aid-to-needy-children mothers--not the fathers--but the mothers, to find them guilty or plead them guilty, to place them on probation and threaten them with jail if thereafter they applied for or received aid to needy children, or if they failed to go to work, no matter what their state of health or the need of the children for their full-time attention. In another county aid-to-needy-children mothers found guilty or pleaded guilty to welfare fraud, because payments were made to them when there was an undisclosed man in the home, were put on probation conditioned on their refraining from having relations with men to whom they were not married. One county district attorney urged sterilization of fathers who create multiple families and show deliberate unwillingness to support them, and of ANC mothers who continue to bear illegitimate children. The same authority even thought that it might be intelligent of the legislators to give some thought to euthanasia.
Discontinuance of aid for illegitimates, jailing the mothers or declaring the home unsuitable and removing the children, punitively withholding aid for six months from mothers found cohabiting, sentencing the children of mothers illegally receiving aid to six months without aid, working wayward fathers during the day and locking them up during the night, legalizing voluntary abortions, providing birth control information to relief recipients: all of these are among milder remedies proposed. Fingerprinting and photographing aid applicants of all categories have also been officially sponsored programs.
Let me give one example somewhat more in detail. Effective March 10, 1960, there appeared this language in the ordinance book of one of our California counties. "The Board of Supervisors do ordain as follows: section one, no person shall resort to any office building or to any room, used or occupied, in connection with or under the same management as any cafe, restaurant, soft drink parlor, liquor establishment or similar business; or to any public park; or to any of the buildings therein; or to any vacant lot; or to any room, rooming house, lodging house, residence, apartment house, hotel, house trailer; or to any street or sidewalk for the purpose of having sexual intercourse with a person to whom she or he is not married."[laughter] I guess that wasn't this county since you don't have many sidewalks out here.[more laughter] The attached sanctions were a $500 fine and six months in jail. Now, as you can see, the coverage of this ordinance is comprehensive.[laughter] All conceivable places in towns, city, and park are on the list of possible locations. In fact, so far as I can see, only the fields and irrigation ditches are not included.[prolonged laughter]
Equally engulfing are the elements of the crime. The city fathers were not content with prohibiting the commission of the act itself. Resorting to the specified places for the purpose of committing the act was made the crime. Nor need the purpose be shared by both parties. An intent in the mind of either of them is sufficient. In this county it almost seems a gleam in the eye of youth, summer or winter, or the lightly turning fancy in the spring is no mere topic of song, jest, or poem. It is a heading on the arrest blotter of the district attorney's office.
Almost needless to say, the application of the ordinance was not so sweeping as its geography and psychology: quite the contrary. Its application was selective and discriminatory. Only the aid-to-needy-children mothers and those found with them knew its penal sanctions. The methods of enforcement were those associated with the law of crimes: investigation on nothing more than suspicion or gossip, detectives operating in teams, night raids, simultaneous approaches to the back and the front of the house, guns conspicuously displayed on hips, securing entry, inmates interrogated at length and notes taken, the entire house searched without any particular care to secure permission, men and sometimes aid-to-needy-children mothers hauled off to jail in the middle of the night. All of this in the presence of the children, to many of whom this must have been a most unhappy experience, if not a traumatic one.
All of this too in the presence of the constitutions of state and nation providing for the rights of individuals, the privacy and security of residents and their persons, houses, papers, and effects. All of this in the presence of the Fourteenth Amendment declaring, "No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Any person? The equal protection of the laws? Well not quite any person, not quite the equal protection of the laws--not just yet anyhow.
Justice Robert Jackson in Edwards vs. California, the 1941 counterpart of the Milne case of a century ago, felt the impulse and found the words to capture the constitutional hopes of the underprivileged. "Does indigence," he asked, "constitute a basis for restricting the freedom of citizens as crime or contagion warrants its restriction? We should say now," he answered and in no uncertain terms, "that a man's mere property status, without more, cannot be used by a state to test, qualify, or limit his rights as a citizen of the United States. Indigence in itself is neither a source of rights nor a basis for denying them. The mere state of being without funds is a neutral fact constitutionally an irrelevance, like race, creed, or color. Such distinctions," he said, "are a short-sighted blow at the security of property itself. For property can have no more dangerous, even if unwitting, enemy than one who would make its possession a pretext for unequal or exclusive civil rights." What is most striking about this statement is not its eloquence, though that is priceless. What is most striking is that it was a minority opinion. It could not command the acquiescence or support of a majority of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The task that lies ahead is to elevate this doctrine from a minority plea to a majority command, to transform it from a promise into a reality. When in addition it is enshrined in the hearts of Americans as well as in the edicts of their government, then will the constitutional law of the land truly be brought to the people of the nation. Thank you.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Karen Alexander under sleepshades during the CCB Christmas-tree-cutting expedition]
Half-Baked
by Karen Alexander
From the Editor: Those who have graduated from NFB adult training centers tell lots of funny stories and laugh about their student days. But their small struggles and victories often get lost in all the talk about the important skills landmarks they have passed and the profound philosophical discoveries they have made for themselves. Karen Alexander is currently a student at the Colorado Center for the Blind. She does not yet have the perspective on her experience there that she will acquire when she can look back at the entire experience, but she certainly does have a bird's eye view of and appreciation for the day-to-day challenges facing students in these demanding programs. In the following article she captures the frustrations and exultation of her days at the Colorado Center and the anxiety of her struggle to remain there long enough to acquire all the training she needs. The article is reprinted from the Spring 2002 issue of the Buckeye Bulletin, the publication of the NFB of Ohio. Here it is:
"Karen, your assignment today is to cross Alamo Street and go to the corner of Main and Prince. Get a receipt from the shop there and bring it back to me," said Sumara. I gulped and grinned half-heartedly. Sumara, my orientation and mobility instructor at the Colorado Center for the Blind (CCB), an NFB adult rehabilitation training center, was more confident in my travel skills than I. Sensing my nervousness, she firmly encouraged me by saying, "Ah, you can do it!" and dismissed me.
Stunned that my first solo crossing a major street while wearing sleep shades was finally confronting me, I grabbed my cane and stumbled out of her office. I proceeded to the front desk and signed myself out by typing on the Brailler. Gulping my last taste of security, I found the front doors and clacked my way out. It was a nice day for December--a little windy, but the sun kept trying to appear through the clouds. Sunlight can be an important part of orienting oneself while traveling. As I walked along the side street, the sporadic sun rays gave me unenthusiastic warmth and comfort. Telling myself that this wasn't “Mission Impossible” didn't make a difference to my nervousness because I knew I was on travel assignment.
But I knew that being at CCB was therapeutic for me. The program and the staff were helping me to trust myself again. I knew my self-confidence was beginning to return. But even though I had been there for several months, traveling under sleep shades was difficult. There were other students like me who were legally blind. They seemed to take to traveling under sleep shades like ducks to water. It seemed to me I was able to quack like a duck and waddle like a duck, but I dreaded putting my webbed foot in the water, not like a duck. Learning to travel was not easy. It seemed the other student ducklings could waddle to their pools of water and enthusiastically jump in. I on the other hand waddled around the banks of the pond, dreading to get splashed.
But it is the other ducks that make the difference. The students at CCB encourage each other. Not a day goes by that one does not hear the words, "You can do it!" or "Look what you've learned!" When students go from Grade I Braille to Grade II, the staff announce it over the school's P.A. system, and cheers are heard all over the school. Hearing those cheers is part of what changes people and reinforces their confidence. The philosophy classes are run by the staff to challenge the way we view and approach life as blind people. The wisdom taken from articles in the Braille Monitor, from Kernel Book Stories, and from the life experiences of the staff is important to hear. Perspective and wisdom come from those who walk the walk and not just talk the talk.
Unfortunately too many wounded blind people can spout NFB philosophy but do not apply it in their lives. They remain unchanged and lost in comfortable prisons that protect their egos and pride. Not that they are arrogant, they are just fearful of taking that step of faith to make life-changing decisions. I truly think that deep in their hearts they do not believe the philosophy will work for them. When meeting these wounded people, I say to myself, "Don't tell the world what NFB philosophy is; show the world by using the philosophy in your life."
It is encouraging to participate in a school run by the blind for the blind. Students see others like themselves successfully living their lives. Those who only talk the talk are missing an amazing opportunity to change and better their lives. Because of CCB staff and students I can say with confidence, "Quack, quack, I will learn to swim like a duck."
Well, that day I fondly remember as facing my Alamo was exactly as successful as the original Alamo. Instead of crossing at the corner of Alamo and Prince, I turned the corner and found another corner. Of course that is the one I crossed. I had traveled a way down the street when I came to the conclusion that I had blown it. I turned around and retraced my steps. I was frustrated and scared.
Cars and trucks were zipping by me, and, as I walked over a bridge, a train passed underneath it. When I am wearing sleep shades, something about the sound of trains and trucks drives me crazy. I decided to sit on the ledge there at the bridge and have a good cry. A man came and asked if he could help me, but I waved him off. I just wanted to calm down. I knew I wasn't in danger. I knew I could retrace my steps. I just hated the feeling of being vulnerable and so awkward in traveling under sleep shades.
I said a little prayer, but my shaken and wounded ego was still reluctant to return. The train had sped by, and there was a lull in the traffic. Coming out of my self-absorption, I heard a beautiful sound: a cane tapping the cement of the sidewalk. I called out, and to my delight it was one of the students from CCB. She gave me a hug and let me cry for a while. I decided to allow myself to be rescued and followed her on her route. When we were close to the school, I heard Sumara calling my name. She was looking for her little wandering duckling. I joked about the incident and said that I had faced my Alamo and lost. Sumara said, "Ah, Karen, you're more than able to cross that street," and walked with me back to the building.
Well you know, she was right. At my next attempt I crossed the street and found the bath and candle shop even though I (heavy sigh) got lost in the parking lot of a bank. A woman kept trying to help me, but I was doggedly determined to find that sidewalk. I straightened myself up and said with pride, "I am a student at the Colorado Center for the Blind and am on a travel assignment. I am all right." After watching me for five minutes, she shouted out in exasperation that the sidewalk was in front of me. Trying to appear dignified, I gladly accepted the information and found the sidewalk. Sometimes it is good to accept help even if it is not looked for. This was definitely a grace-growing experience.
At the shop I purchased some inexpensive scented soaps for Sumara. It was Christmas time and the day before I was to leave for home on school break. I was going to place the gift on her desk to prove triumphantly I had done the assignment. But I met Sumara on my way back and decided to give her the gift right then. When I gave her a description of the parking lot incident, she put it into perspective. She reminded me that it takes time and practice to learn skills. I was too hard on myself and needed to relax. Thinking over what she had said, I waddled after her and wondered how one relaxes when facing the crossing of a busy street under sleep shades.
When the school day was over, I walked to the light rail train and got on. I spotted an empty seat and sat down with a satisfied grunt. My sleep shades were resolutely stored in my backpack, and my long white cane was faithfully beside me. I was thinking of what I needed to get done before going to the airport the next day. My regular stop was Broadway Station, where I would get on the bus to Cherry Creek Tennis and Sailing Club apartments. CCB leases apartments there for students to live in. The complex is huge with gigantic buildings encircling a small lake. In the middle is a fountain that shoots water four stories high. When I first saw them, they reminded me of huge dinosaurs encircling a geyser. I now lovingly call the complex Jurassic Apartments.
While riding the light rail, I relaxed. I thought of the day I had had. Even though my success crossing Alamo had not gone the way I wanted, I had done it. For a first-time solo crossing, it hadn't been that bad an experience. I had crossed a major street while under sleep shades and using a cane, something I never dreamt I could do. What an accomplishment! I began to dream of the things I could accomplish and places I could go.
I remembered my feeling of losing independence as I began to lose my sight--the pity in the voices of the doctors, family, and friends. I knew they cared for me, but I could not imagine life without sight. Most of them probably couldn't either. Eventually my eyesight diminished, and I chose to give up driving. By making that choice, I felt I had given up my freedom. Crossing major streets and going places became frustrating and fear-filled. In the sunlight I couldn't see the streetlights. I was afraid to cross streets that I had known since childhood. I felt like an invalid, worthless to others and myself. Freedom became a memory.
My thoughts were interrupted when I heard the announcement that the train was approaching Evans Station. The next stop would be Broadway Station, my stop. I checked to make sure my backpack and cane were ready to grab quickly. I began to make a mental checklist of what I needed in order to finish my Christmas shopping. I wanted to go to Sam's Club when I got back to Ohio to pick up some gifts. I began to plan how to arrange a ride to the store when it suddenly dawned on me that I could go to Sam's Club in Denver. The light-rail train stop after Broadway Station was Alameda Station. I had been told that the commercial complex where Sam's Club was located was near the station.
In fact, the train stopped right behind K-Mart, which was one of the stores in the complex. It was then I decided to go to Sam's Club. I became excited by the thought of trying to do something on my own. I had been to Sam's Club but had not gone by this route. This was an exciting decision. It was like the days when I used to drive a car. I would hear about a store or some place I was interested in visiting. I would get general directions and go by myself to find the spot. I didn't labor over each detail. I knew the major streets in the area and would find the location.
My heart began to beat faster as the light rail approached, stopped, and then left Broadway Station. I had made up my mind. I was going to do it. The train approached and then stopped at Alameda. I got off and looked around, and my heart sank. It seemed I was not exactly behind K-Mart. I was at a station stop, and across the street was a parking lot. But I trusted the information I had and crossed over to the parking lot. To my joy and the health of my heart, on the other side of the parking lot across the street was a building that I knew must be the back of K-Mart. When I got to the street, I heard the sound of traffic to my left. I knew I had found Alameda.
I traveled down to the major intersection. My long white cane was faithfully finding the bumps and curbs. I wasn't afraid. I knew how to cross the street. The training I had received under sleep shades now paid off and gave me confidence to cross a street that I would never have considered crossing before my training. When the parallel traffic took off, I crossed the street. I then hunted for the driveway that would lead me into the complex and eventually to Sam's Club. It was a thrilling moment. I could take care of myself. I could do what I wanted to do on my own. The wind was blowing through my hair, and I felt as if it was a Yorkshire Chocolate Mint moment. I was independent!
I walked through that complex and found Sam's Club, and I was able to purchase some gifts. But I will never forget the thrill of that moment of independence. The crossing of Alamo under sleep shades will never compare to that experience. But the crossing of Alamo gave me the confidence and skills to go by myself to Sam's Club that day.
I am now halfway through my program, and it's been a fight to get the funding needed for my independence training. It seems that those who work at the Ohio Bureau of Services for the Visually Impaired (BSVI) do not understand why I need training. They believed that, since I have some sight, I wouldn't need an intensive training program. I was told that I was intelligent, that I could figure out and learn on my own the skills I needed to return to school and then the work force.
When I arrived at CCB, BSVI had committed to paying for two months of training. I had tried to communicate with my counselor my need to complete the full program. I needed to become literate again by learning Braille. I needed to learn alternative techniques and organization and personal skills to deal with the loss of my sight. But most of all I needed to grow in confidence. She didn't respond positively to my point of view.
I am fortunate to have NFB advocates in Ohio who really care about people. Barbara Pierce and Eric Duffy are treasures that we dearly appreciate and love. They work hard. From helping blind parents keep their babies to wrestling with city metro bus drivers who refuse to announce stops, they have made a difference in many people's lives.
I had a staffing at the end of November with my instructors and BSVI counselor. The staffing conference was done using a speakerphone in order for my counselor to participate. It was useful and gratifying for me to hear the comments of the CCB staff regarding my progress. The last two months had been profoundly challenging, and I was deeply thankful for the opportunity to be at the CCB and participate in the adult rehabilitation program. I hoped we were able to communicate to my counselor some part of the progress I had been making, but she did not think I needed the full training program and said she could not justify paying the additional money needed to complete the program.
From the beginning Barbara and Eric had supported and encouraged my choice for independence training. When the two months were almost completed at CCB, they helped convey my desire and need for additional training at CCB to BSVI supervisors. Because of them I gained three more months of training.
The frustration I now face is that the more progress I make, the more clearly I realize the true distance I still need to go. First of all, if I am going to make a success of college courses, I must be fluent in reading and writing Braille. I must be literate in order to complete my undergraduate degree and successfully re-enter the working world. Frankly, though I am making progress, I am not there yet. I believe blind students should be able to take their own notes, not depend on sighted note-takers. I must also have reasonable command of JAWS and the computer programs I will need to do my work. I am not yet quick or confident in any of these areas.
In addition, if I am to travel efficiently to and from campus, around the university, and in my personal circles, I want to master cane travel thoroughly. I now have almost within my grasp the ability to use a cane with a facility that is virtually unknown outside of the community of people trained at NFB centers. I am still some distance from achieving this degree of independence, but it is coming.
I am beginning to understand that the confidence in all areas of my life that I am gaining here at the Center will sustain me wherever I go in future. One of the most important things this program does is to allow me to look my fear of blindness in the face and realize that it does not have to mean the end of my useful life. With the skills I am beginning to master, I can become a productive citizen and create a fruitful life for myself.
I fear it is unlikely that I will ever have another opportunity to be part of a program like this one. Therefore I believe strongly that I need to complete the six-to-nine-month program now, before I have to face the academic demands of college and the challenge of traveling independently around Ohio and wherever else my career leads me.
I am thankful that BSVI has believed in me thus far, but I hope they can understand why I feel compelled to point out my pressing need for full support. The sad truth is that I am now nearing the condition of being half-baked, and like a cake beginning to rise in the oven, I fear that I will fall flat if I am forced to move on to the next stage of my life without full mastery of and confidence in the skills I have begun to learn. I am working as hard as I know how to, but acquiring life-changing skills and attitudes does take time.
I hope my training will allow family, friends, and those who work in the Bureau of Services for the Visually Impaired to see what can happen to those who complete NFB training programs so that other blind people can have the same opportunity that I have had. I give many thanks to my family, friends, and church who have supported me with their prayers, encouragement, and finances. I thank the BSVI for their financial support. I thank the National Federation of the Blind for its belief in me, and I thank the students and staff at the CCB, who are making a difference in their own lives as well as mine.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Those at the Sunday-afternoon-briefing head table were (left to right) James McCarthy, NFB Assistant Director of Governmental Affairs; Diane McGeorge, President of the NFB of Colorado and coordinator of seminar arrangements; Joanne Wilson, Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration; NFB President Marc Maurer; and James Gashel, NFB Director of Governmental Affairs.]
[PHOTO/CAPTION: As usual it was standing room only at the kick-off briefing for the 2002 Washington Seminar.]
The 2002 Washington Seminar
From the Editor: Nearly 500 Federationists gathered in Washington, D.C., beginning Friday, February 1, for the 2002 Washington Seminar of the National Federation of the Blind. The first event of the week was the mid-winter conference sponsored by the National Association of Blind Students. Joanne Wilson, Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration, keynoted the day-long conference on Saturday, and Ever Lee Hairston, First Vice President of the NFB of New Jersey, spoke at the banquet that evening. As always the conference was inspiring to the students who came from across the country to take part and to get to know other members of NABS.
Sunday saw tours of the National Center for the Blind and several workshops and committee and division meetings. The newest of these was a workshop for those interested in writing their own Individualized Plan for Employment. It was conducted by the National Association of Blind Rehabilitation Professionals.
Late that afternoon the first briefing of the Washington Seminar took place. President Maurer discussed a number of current issues of interest to the gathering. Then Jim Gashel and Jim McCarthy of the NFB's Governmental Affairs Department described and briefly discussed the three legislative issues about which we would be talking to Members of Congress during the week. The fact sheets and legislative memorandum were available in print and on cassette, so participants had been talking about the issues all weekend. Here are the documents that we took to Capitol Hill:
Legislative Agenda of Blind Americans
Priorities for the 107th Congress, Second Session
Public policies and laws affecting blind people have a profound impact throughout our entire society. Most people know someone who is blind, and seventy-five thousand Americans become blind or visually impaired every year. The blind population in the United States is estimated to exceed 1.1 million with several million more classified as visually impaired. In addition, the social and economic consequences of blindness directly touch the lives of each blind person's family members, co-workers, and friends.
Public policies and laws that result from misconceptions or lack of information about blindness are often more limiting than the loss of eyesight itself. This is why we have formed the National Federation of the Blind. The Federation's leaders and the vast majority of its members are blind, but anyone is welcome to join in the effort we are making to win understanding and equality in society.
Our priorities for the second session of the 107th Congress reflect an urgent need for action in three key areas of vital importance to the blind. (For an explanation of these issues, please see the attached fact sheets.)
1. Congress should enact mandated increases in the earnings limit for blind people, under Title II of the Social Security Act, similar to those enacted for seniors in 1996. This proposal would help reduce the harsh work disincentive of the Social Security earnings limit as it now affects blind beneficiaries.
2. Congress should amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to include Medicare coverage for rehabilitation services provided to older blind individuals. This proposal would ensure that older blind Medicare beneficiaries have access to the critical rehabilitation services they need to remain independent and in their homes, rather than being forced into costly long-term care facilities.
3. Congress should pass legislation requiring publishers of elementary and secondary textbooks to provide electronic copies which are capable of producing texts in specialized formats, including Braille. This proposal would provide textbooks simultaneously in print and Braille editions, assuring that no student, blind or sighted, is left behind.
People who are blind are asking for your help to address these priorities in the present session of Congress. By acting in partnership with the National Federation of the Blind, each member of Congress can help build better lives for the blind, both today and in the years ahead. The legislative actions recommended in this memorandum will benefit the blind, but they will also help create a better future for all Americans.
PROMOTING WORK AND FAIRNESS FOR THE BLIND
COMMON-SENSE WORK INCENTIVES FOR BLIND
SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFICIARIES
Pending Bills
H.R. 498, "Blind Empowerment Act," by Congressman Robert Ehrlich, S. 682, "Blind Persons Earnings Equity Act," by Senator John McCain
Purpose
To amend title II of the Social Security Act to increase the level of earnings under which no blind individual is determined to have demonstrated an ability to engage in substantial gainful activity for purposes of determining disability.
Background
By increasing the Social Security earnings limit in 1996, Congress provided a powerful incentive for seniors age sixty-five and older to work. Advocates for this change made the case that seniors would continue to work, earn, and pay taxes since they could do so without fearing loss of income from Social Security. Now the need for a higher earnings limit for the blind is even more compelling because of an all-or-nothing penalty for working above it. However, Congress has disregarded this fact in the case of the blind while encouraging seniors to work by removing the earnings limit altogether.
As a result, earnings exceeding $15,600 for a blind person who is age sixty-four or younger cause the complete loss of Social Security benefits until that individual attains age sixty-five. At that point there is no limit on the amount that same individual can earn. This is the inequity that now exists.
Existing Law
Like "retirement age," "blindness" is specifically defined in the Social Security Act and can be readily determined. By contrast "disability" is not precisely defined and is determined on the basis of an "inability to engage in substantial gainful activity," a highly complex and rather subjective determination.
Although blindness is precisely defined, monthly benefits are not paid to all persons who are blind but only to those whose earnings (from work) are below the annually adjusted earnings limit. Personal wealth arising from all sources, except present work, is not counted as earnings and does not affect eligibility. Only work is penalized, and recognition of this fact led to the increased earnings limit for seniors and its eventual elimination. The situation for seniors prior to 1996 is precisely the same for blind people today.
Need to Remove Work Disincentives
An increase in the earnings limit would be cost-beneficial. With a seventy-four-percent unemployment rate, the vast majority of working-age individuals who are blind are already beneficiaries. Providing them with a meaningful work incentive would allow them to become taxpayers as well. Members of Congress supported raising the exempt earnings threshold for seniors, and it is only appropriate that they do the same for blind people of working age. The chance to work, earn, and pay taxes is a constructive and valid goal for senior citizens and blind Americans alike.
Increasing the earnings limit will allow blind people to work without being penalized financially for doing so, providing more than 100,000 blind beneficiaries with a powerful work incentive. At present a blind individual's earnings must not exceed a strict monthly limit of $1,300. When earnings exceed this threshold, the entire sum paid to a primary beneficiary and dependents is abruptly withdrawn after a trial work period. The economic risk resulting for a blind head of household is far greater than any economic benefit derived.
When a blind person finds work, there is absolutely no assurance that earnings will replace the amount of lost disability benefits after taxes and work expenses are paid. Usually they do not. Therefore few beneficiaries can actually afford to attempt substantial work. Those who do often sacrifice income and the security of a monthly check.
Action Needed
Congress should enact mandated increases in the earnings limit for blind people similar to those enacted for seniors in 1996. This proposal would be a step towards equity for blind people and reduce the harsh work disincentive policy now in effect. Under this proposal blind individuals would eventually be able to work and earn up to $30,000 without fearing the loss of benefits.
Legislation for this purpose has been introduced as H.R. 498 by Congressman Robert Ehrlich and S. 682 by Senator John McCain. These bills enjoy broad bipartisan support with 251 members of the House and 30 Senators as cosponsors.
Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring H.R. 498 or S. 682 and request action on this legislation before this session is adjourned.
MEDICARE EQUITY FOR OLDER BLIND PERSONS
Pending Bills
H.R. 2674, "The Medicare Coverage Equity Act for the Blind," by Congressman Martin Frost
Purpose:
To amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to permit state rehabilitation agencies serving blind persons age fifty-five and older to be reimbursed by Medicare.
Existing Law:
The Medicare program--Title XVIII of the Social Security Act--provides health insurance coverage for people age sixty-five and older and for persons who have received Social Security Disability Insurance cash benefits for at least two years. This program pays for reasonable and necessary services to prevent illness, maintain health, and restore functioning after injury or disease. Part A of Medicare--Hospital Insurance--covers hospital services. Part B--Supplementary Medical Insurance--covers a wide range of outpatient services such as physician's services; physical, occupational, and speech therapy; mental health services; a variety of rehabilitation services; the purchase of durable medical equipment (including wheel chairs); and home health care services. Despite Medicare's coverage of these and many more services, coverage of rehabilitation services for older blind individuals is not included.
Chapter II of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, authorizes grants to designated state vocational rehabilitation agencies to provide independent living rehabilitation services to older persons who are blind and visually impaired. These services include visual screening; independent living skills training, such as orientation and mobility and daily living skills; and other appropriate rehabilitative services needed for older individuals to live independently. This program is currently funded at $25 million for fiscal year 2002. While funding has grown significantly in recent years, the program will only serve approximately five percent of those in need.
Need for Legislation
Costs associated with age-related vision loss are substantial. For example, the Alliance on Aging Research reports that visual impairment is one of the top four reasons why seniors lose their independence, contributing to medical and long-term care costs of $26 billion annually. In addition, the Framingham Eye Study (ongoing) reports that eighteen percent of all hip fractures among seniors can be attributed to age-related vision loss. At $35,000 for treatment and care in each case, the total annual cost attributable to hip fractures due to visual impairment exceeds $2 billion.
Rehabilitation services for older blind persons teach safe travel, daily living skills, and use of adaptive aids and devices. Individuals who receive these services are able to continue living independently in their own homes and communities. This is consistent with the goals of Medicare. By receiving these services covered by Medicare, seniors who become blind can regain self-reliance and self-worth. This will allow them to remain active and valued members of their communities for as long as possible. Without these services older blind individuals often become dependent and isolated.
Recent growth in the appropriation made for the Title VII Chapter II program shows that Congress recognizes a significant need to be met. At $25 million annually, these funds are helping to lay the foundation for a state-administered service delivery system. However, current and future appropriations are not likely to be large enough to pay the entire cost of services for the growing population of seniors who become blind. The solution is to permit state agencies which already serve older blind people to be eligible for reimbursement of direct service costs from Medicare.
Proposed Legislation
Congress should amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to include Medicare coverage for rehabilitation services provided to older individuals who are blind. This proposal is designed to ensure that older blind Medicare beneficiaries have access to critical rehabilitation services. H.R. 2674, introduced by Congressman Martin Frost, would do this. Efforts are underway for similar legislation to be introduced in the Senate. The proposed amendments define rehabilitation services as those services furnished or supervised by a designated state vocational rehabilitation agency to an older blind individual under Chapter II of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act and approved pursuant to regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The state vocational rehabilitation agency or other provider chosen by the beneficiary and supervised by the state would provide services. The term, "older individual who is blind" means "an individual age fifty-five or older whose severe visual impairment makes competitive employment difficult to attain but for whom independent living goals are feasible." This is identical to the definition currently in Chapter II of Title VII of the Rehabilitation Act.
As with Chapter II of Title VII, only state vocational rehabilitation agencies could receive payment for services provided in this program. This approach uses a well-established and accountable system for the delivery of rehabilitation services to older blind Medicare beneficiaries while also allowing beneficiaries to exercise choice when selecting among service providers. Title XVIII allows hospitals, community rehabilitation centers, home healthcare centers, and other entities enrolled as Medicare service providers to receive payment for services. Under this proposal state vocational rehabilitation agencies could also enroll as Medicare service providers. Once approved by a state Medicare carrier, these agencies could submit claims and receive payment for the rehabilitation services they provide.
Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring H.R. 2674 or its Senate companion, when introduced, and request action on this legislation before this session is adjourned.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Representatives of the Connecticut affiliate visited with Senator Dodd in his office. This picture appears on Senator Dodd's Web site. Left to right are Jim Gashel, NFB of Connecticut President Betty Woodward, Senator Dodd, Junerose Killian, and Gary Allen.]
ACCESS TO INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS
LEAVING NO BLIND CHILD BEHIND
Background
In the mid-nineteenth century states established centralized schools for the blind to educate blind and visually impaired students. To support this, Congress authorized the American Printing House for the Blind (APH) in Louisville, Kentucky, to produce educational materials in alternative formats, including Braille. Today APH continues to fulfill this function, receiving annual appropriations for this purpose.
In the 1960's blind children first began to attend schools in their home communities in significant numbers, and today the vast majority do so. As a result Braille, audio, and large-print books must be obtained or created by any local school district having one or more blind children. Converting printed instructional materials into "specialized formats" such as Braille is often time-consuming, labor-intensive, and costly, taking six or more months and several thousand dollars to complete. Relying on APH alone cannot fulfill the need. Therefore it is the exception--not the rule--for blind students to have access to required textbooks at the same time as their sighted classmates.
Existing Law
The Americans with Disabilities Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and other federal laws clearly establish the policy that individuals with disabilities are entitled to equal treatment in all areas of society. However, the successful implementation of these laws does not occur without clear, specific, and practical standards and systems in place to anticipate accessibility needs. Currently there are no federal laws that create standards to facilitate the production of textbooks in Braille.
Twenty-six states have responded to this need by requiring publishers to provide electronic copies of print editions of textbooks. However, no consistent file format is used among the states, and the electronic copies provided by publishers are frequently not usable for Braille reproduction at all. Therefore inconsistent and often conflicting state requirements place burdensome obligations on publishers without efficiently facilitating more timely production of books in accessible formats. An agreed-upon, uniform electronic file format would reduce the burden to publishers and significantly reduce the cost of creation, while helping to provide materials to blind students at the same time they are provided to others.
Proposed Legislation
Congress should enact the "Instructional Materials Accessibility Act," which has been negotiated by textbook publishers, the National Federation of the Blind, and other affected groups. This legislation will ensure that blind and visually impaired students will not be left behind in having the textbooks they need in a form they can use.
Prepared for introduction in Congress, the draft legislation would:
* require state plans to ensure that students who are blind or visually impaired have access to instructional materials in formats they can use at the same time the materials are provided to students who can see;
* develop a uniform electronic file format for instructional materials prepared by publishers;
* require publishers to produce a copy of each textbook in the uniform electronic file format and furnish it to a National Instructional Materials Access Center for distribution to schools; and
* fund capacity-building initiatives to assist state and local educators in using electronic files supplied by publishers.
Benefits and Cost
The principal benefit of this legislation will be a uniform electronic file format. This will allow rapid creation of textbooks in the desired format for each student, sighted or blind. For students who read Braille, their books can be presented through the use of synthetic speech or stored and read with small computers, which display Braille dots.
Without this legislation local school districts will continue to bear the burden and cost of converting printed books into Braille. However, modern technology can now support shifting much of this responsibility to publishers without placing an undue burden on them. This legislation does not remove the school's responsibility to provide materials but will institute a shared burden between the schools that teach the children and the publishers that create the books. This will be the effect of having a uniform electronic file format and national distribution center.
This shared obligation between school and publisher has been carefully crafted with publishers fully engaged in the effort to create it. The cost anticipated and authorized to operate the National Distribution Center will be $1 million annually, with $5 million needed to fund training and technical assistance programs for local schools. Although publishers have agreed to provide electronic books, nothing can happen without federal legislation to establish procedures and create the Center.
Introduction of the "Instructional Material Accessibility Act" is expected to occur early in the second session of the 107th Congress. Anticipating this, members are being asked to become original cosponsors and to request prompt enactment of this bill.
Please support blind Americans by cosponsoring the "Instructional Materials Accessibility Act" and request action on this legislation before this session is adjourned.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Jerry Whittle speaking from Braille notes]
Learning Braille as an Adult:
Read Until You Bleed
by Jerry Whittle
From the Editor: Jerry Whittle has taught Braille at the Louisiana Center for the Blind for over fifteen years now, and he has learned a lot about his calling. Among other things he knows what works and what doesn't for adults trying to master this invaluable code. In the following article he describes frankly what one has to do to gain reading speed as an adult. Here is what he says:
For the past fifteen years, while teaching Braille at the Louisiana Center for the Blind, I have had the opportunity to work with some excellent Braille readers. Over thirty of them read Braille at rates exceeding three hundred words a minute. The average college student reads print at between two and four hundred words a minute. I also timed two students who read Braille at a rate exceeding five hundred words a minute. All of these students, except one, read Braille using both hands, starting the line with the left hand and finishing it with the right while the left tracks down to the next line. One reader who exceeds three hundred words a minute using only one hand reads in a most unorthodox style. He turns the book so that he can use his entire right index finger to read down the line in the direction of his stomach, quickly snapping the hand up to the next line. All of these excellent Braille readers learn Braille either in preschool or in first grade. None of those exceeding three hundred words a minute learn to read as an adult or even in upper elementary school or high school.
Over the same period I have also timed many Braille readers between two and three hundred words a minute and many more between one hundred and two hundred words a minute. Most of these people use only one hand, are eighteen to twenty years old, or have learned Braille in grammar school.
This recounting of reading rates brings me to the point of this article. During my fifteen years of teaching Braille, I have observed that no student who came to the Center as an adult and did not know Braille previously exceeded eighty words a minute during the six to nine months of training. Several students who did not know Braille when they entered the Center achieved more than sixty words a minute during their training--all excellent achievements; however, most, if not all, of the students who learned Braille at the Center did not increase their reading speed after leaving the program. If anything, many of them lost some of their speed even though most of them vowed to work hard and improve on the foundation they had built at the Center.
Let it be understood that all of these students were diligent and dedicated to improving their Braille literacy, and many of them are quite bright; however, the demands of life after Center training prevented them from increasing their reading rates. Moreover, since most of them needed to read a minimum of thirty-five pages a day in order to increase--about two hours a day of concentrated effort--most of them lost speed.
Thus one can conclude that once a person has achieved a rate of sixty words a minute, he or she must dedicate two hours or more each day to make increases. The problem does not lie in the lack of dedication or enthusiasm or in an unwillingness to work sedulously to accomplish this goal. The problem is that hardly anyone facing the press of life's demands can find the time to read that much each day.
An active social life, the demands of a job or of academics, child-rearing, and many other demands make it virtually impossible to improve the reading rate. This point has not been substantiated from studies but from sixteen years of observation and commiseration with former students who are sometimes exasperated because they cannot seem to improve.
The answer to this problem appears to be finding a way to work on Braille reading in a concentrated way for a prolonged period of time--three to six months. Fortunately, I can make this observation because two of my former students convinced their counselors to sponsor them at the Center for periods of six weeks and three months to do just that. The first student, aged thirty-seven, learned the Braille code at the Center and reached a rate of forty words a minute before graduation.
He went back to work and did not increase his reading rate; in fact, it dropped to twenty-seven words a minute. After convincing his counselor that his ability to read was very important to him in his work, he returned to the Center for six weeks of intensive reading. He started by reading thirty-five pages a day between the hours of eight A.M. and five P.M. with occasional breaks. He continued to read steadily and began to build speed; therefore he increased his reading goals to fifty pages a day. After six weeks he increased his reading rate to sixty-seven words a minute.
Another student, aged twenty-one, had learned Braille in our summer training program at the age of thirteen. She returned to the adult training program at eighteen and increased her reading rate to ninety-two words a minute before graduation. She attended college and maintained a very active social life; thus her reading rate diminished to approximately sixty words a minute. Recognizing how much she needed to increase her speed in order to read aloud fluently, she convinced her counselor to allow her to return to the Center for three months after graduation from college.
She, like the other student, read steadily from eight to five with appropriate breaks, and she read one hundred pages a day at first. She also read at night when she did not complete the one-hundred page goal during class hours. She began to increase steadily, and she increased her page goal to one hundred fifty pages a class day. She maintained a high degree of motivation throughout the three-month period. At the end of three months she had more than doubled her reading rate to one hundred twenty-three words a minute. Incidentally, she reached an ideal reading rate to read aloud, and, for the first time in her life, she read a paper she had prepared in Braille before an audience of over two hundred people--a lifelong dream.
Without a doubt, the answer for someone who has learned Braille as an adult and who has not exceeded sixty to eighty words a minute is to find a way to dedicate three to six months of intense reading in a place where Braille books are readily accessible. One of the advantages of coming back to the Louisiana Center for the Blind is that we have a substantial collection of Braille books on every subject; students are apt to read more if they can find books to their liking. After observing this intensive dedication to reading for a prolonged period, I am convinced that this is the answer for blind people who have learned Braille as adults and who have been frustrated because they cannot find the time or the readily-accesible Braille library to improve reading rates.
Furthermore, the old myth about Braille reading being slow can also be dispelled. No person, Braille or print reader, who has learned to read as an adult can gain high reading rates without prolonged, sustained reading. Like the blind student trying to gain speed as an adult, a print reader will need the same type of regimen to attain adequate literacy skills. In other words, the problem is not the method; it is finding the time in a demanding adult schedule to read the number of pages necessary to go beyond the sixty-word-per-minute plateau.
With research analysis perhaps we can prove scientifically that these conclusions are true and find better strategies to improve Braille literacy for hundreds of adults who have the motivation but find it difficult to budget the time. Literacy is extremely important for every blind person, for it means cultural enrichment, upward mobility, and future employment. With this research analysis, perhaps rehabilitation counselors will be convinced of the importance of extra months of training, concentrating on reading speed for motivated users of Braille who have had the misfortune to learn Braille later in life.
Have you considered leaving a gift to the National Federation of the Blind in your will? By preparing a will now, you can assure that those administering your estate will avoid unnecessary delays, legal complications, and substantial tax costs. A will is a common device used to leave a substantial gift to charity. A gift in your will to the NFB can be of any size and will be used to help blind people. Here are some useful hints in preparing your will:
• Make a list of everything you want to leave (your estate).
• Decide how and to whom you want to leave these assets.
• Consult an attorney (one you know or one we can help you find).
• Make certain you thoroughly understand your will before you sign it.
For more information contact the National Federation of the Blind, Special Gifts, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230-4998, (410) 659-9314, fax (410) 685-5653.
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[PHOTO/CAPTION: The skyline of Louisville]
Getting Around Downtown Louisville
by Dennis Franklin
From the Editor: Dennis Franklin is First Vice President of the Kentucky affiliate and a long-time Louisville resident. Here he takes the time to conduct a walking tour of the area around our headquarters hotel. This is what he says:
Getting around downtown Louisville is relatively easy with a few simple directions. The streets are laid out in a grid pattern running either north/south or east/west. Traveling south on Fourth Street from the Galt House, you cross these streets: Main, Market, Jefferson, Liberty, Muhammad Ali Boulevard, Chestnut, and Broadway. Traveling east on any of these streets from Fourth Street, you cross Third, Second, First, Brook, Floyd, and Preston. Traveling west, you cross Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth.
If you were doing all this traveling, what might you see along the way? Let's walk south along the east side of Fourth Street. After we cross Main, we come to a trolley stop, where we could board a trolley going to the Riverfront Wharf, which I will tell you more about later. Continuing south, just before we reach Market Street, we pass Kunz's Restaurant, a longtime favorite for lunch and dinner. Before crossing Market Street, we can turn left and travel one block east, cross Third Street, and arrive at the Old Spaghetti Factory.
Crossing Market Street on the east side of Fourth Street brings us to the Kentucky International Convention Center, which covers that entire block. Crossing Jefferson, we find the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Continuing south across Liberty Street, we pass an office tower and a Dooley's Bagels and come to the entrance of the Galleria. This downtown shopping center lies on both sides of Fourth Street with a glassed-in atrium crossing above the street to connect the two sides. In the Galleria you will find Dillard's Department Store, a card shop, a candy store, and CVS pharmacy. There is also a food court with several choices for your dining pleasure.
Passing through the Galleria and crossing Muhammad Ali Boulevard brings us to the Seelbach Hotel, located on the west side of Fourth Street. Continuing south on the east side of Fourth Street, just before you reach Chestnut Street is a Walgreen's Drug Store. A half block after crossing Chestnut Street, we pass the Palace Theater and then come to the Theater Square area, where several restaurants particularly good for lunch can be found. Beyond Theater Square and before you reach Broadway is the Brown Hotel with its restaurant, the English Grill, where a local favorite, the famous Hot Brown, was created.
Another way to travel Fourth Street is using the Toonerville II Trolley, which is free. It operates on weekdays from 7:15 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. and on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. It travels along Fourth Street from the Galt House to Theater Square, except that on its southward trip it travels along Third Street between Liberty and Muhammad Ali Boulevard, and on its northward trip it travels along Fifth Street between Muhammad Ali Boulevard and Liberty Street. After 10:30 a.m. every other trolley leaving Theater Square circles the Riverfront Wharf instead of going to the Galt House. If you want to go to the Riverfront Wharf, you can board this Trolley at any northbound trolley stop, up to and including Main Street. You can ask the driver if he is going to the Galt House or the Riverfront Wharf, to be sure you are boarding the one you want.
The Belle of Louisville is docked on the wharf at the foot (north end) of Fourth Street. Just east of the Belle is the Star of Louisville, which offers daily dinner cruises. Continuing east, we find Joe's Crab Shack, featuring excellent seafood in a casual atmosphere. Just past Joe's we arrive at the Waterfront Park, a large open space, where festivals or fireworks sometimes take place, but it's always a nice place to take a walk or let the kids enjoy the playground equipment.
As I said earlier, you can reach this area on the trolley or, if you prefer, you can walk. Go to the north end of Fourth Street on the lobby level of the Galt House, go down the steps, and follow the pedestrian walkway, which passes under I-64, and down more steps to the Wharf.
Now let's travel west on Main Street. On the north side, just west of Fifth Street, is the Kentucky Center for the Arts. Continuing across Sixth Street are a couple of blocks of restored nineteenth-century buildings. After crossing Seventh Street and going about a half block further, we come to the Louisville Science Center, which boasts many interactive displays for young and old alike. After crossing both Eighth and Main Streets, we find the Louisville Slugger Museum. Be sure to check out the world's largest bat, located outside this building.
By traveling east on the south side of Main Street, about a half block from Fourth Street, we come to Actors Theater of Louisville. About six blocks farther east, on the north side of Main Street is Slugger Field, the home of the Louisville Riverbats.
You can al