Few archives document disability activists and advocacy groups from New York. Many have led the way in fights for equal access to employment, education, transportation, healthcare, and more.
We are actively collecting and preserving documents, photographs, media, and objects that tell these histories. Collections are housed in the College of Staten Island (CSI), CUNY archives and special collections, some of which are now available for research and study.
The goal of the project is to identify, collect, and maintain documentation of the civil rights movements for disability rights in New York City and the surrounding region. This includes records of:
- Activities such as protests, organizing, campaigns, lobbying, or lawsuits conducted by disabled people, their parents and caregivers, professionals, individual advocates, disability advocacy organizations, groups, and clubs,
- Records of organizing by people who were physically disabled, blind and low-vision, d/Deaf or with hearing loss, and people with psychiatric, intellectual, and/or developmental disabilities, before a coordinated movement for disability rights and activism in the years since
- Records of institutional practices that disabled people were trying to change.
We are looking for:
- Documents (in print and digital formats)
- Photographs (in print and digital formats)
- Video or audio recordings of events or oral histories (on tape or in digital formats)
- Other objects of relevance to this history
Let us know if you have something you want to contribute to the archive. You can also sign up for updates, offer to volunteer to help with the project, or tell us about existing archives we may not know about.
This project was made possible in part by a grant from the Documentary Heritage Program of the New York State Archives, a program of the State Education Department.
