History doctoral student wins national fellowship
Bess Williamson

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10:09 a.m., April 2, 2010----Bess Williamson, a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Delaware, has won a highly competitive national fellowship to study how Americans with disabilities waged an ultimately successful struggle to make physical access a civil right.

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They were able to obtain such access improvements as wheelchair ramps, curb cuts, automatic doors and beeping elevators, she said, and those seemingly mundane changes helped them enormously in their efforts to enter the mainstream of society.

“This has been an exciting project to work on,” said Williamson, who hopes to defend her dissertation in 2011. “Though we don't often think of disability when we talk about 'civil rights,' signs of this movement are all around us.”

She has been awarded a Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Only 70 such fellowships, all in the humanities, were awarded this year nationwide.

Williamson said wheelchair ramps and similar access improvements were relatively rare as recently as 1980, while people with disabilities were expected to look after themselves with little societal help. She gave the following summary of her research:

Change had begun after World War II, when disabled veterans returned to society and to colleges and universities. Often in wheelchairs or otherwise challenged, the veterans took the lead in demanding architectural and design changes that would permit them to move about with greater freedom.

In the 1960s, a civil rights movement arose in Berkeley, Calif., to assert the rights of people with disabilities. It rose to national prominence and lobbied successfully for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Along the way, it changed the design of products, streetscapes, buildings and basic household utensils.

A student of material culture and design history, Williamson has worked with UD's Center for Material Culture Studies and has conducted research at Winterthur Museum and at the Hagley Museum and Library. She has also worked at facilities across the country and plans a research trip to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, N.Y. Roosevelt, paralyzed after a case of adult polio in 1921 at age 39, designed his house so he could move about independently, using a wheelchair.

On one of her expeditions in Berkeley, Williamson was able to locate some of the houses and community buildings that early disability rights participants had altered to provide wheelchair access. After more than 30 years, the simple wood and concrete ramps remain intact, she said.

“They were often overgrown with weeds or patched up -- some had fallen out of use when renters moved out -- but they showed me how people had improved their own access before the coming of federal regulations,” Williamson said.

Arwen P. Mohun, associate professor of history and Williamson's dissertation adviser, noted that the Mellon/ACLS fellowship is a prestigious recognition. Williamson's research, Mohun said, “is a very innovative and interesting project, and she's done a great job with it.”

Article by Ann Manser
Photo courtesy of Bess Williamson


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