No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 October 2020
Many rights struggles have promoted education and learning as proof of citizenship and capacity, and disability rights movements are no exception. Blanche Van Leuven Browne, one early twentieth-century polio survivor, reimagined the possibilities of education for “crippled children” by approaching schooling as not only preparation for vocational work but as a sign of disabled children's social worthiness. This article explores the role of education in Browne's life and work, from her childhood in the 1880s to the Detroit hospital-school for physically disabled children she operated from 1907 to 1918. Browne's educational approach emphasized writing and citizenship to (re)define the identity of the “crippled child,” envisioning each as an intelligent future citizen. This approach contrasted with predominant contemporary medical, philanthropic, and educational approaches, which emphasized medical care and vocational training for children with orthopedic disabilities. It also distanced physically disabled children from intellectually disabled children, who were key cultural targets of eugenic fears.
1 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, “Writing for Kindergarten Children,” Detroit Free Press, May 28, 1911, pt. 5, 5.
2 Originally mildly supportive of surgery for disabled children but seeing it as outside of her purview, over the years Browne developed an antipathy toward surgical cure for children with orthopedic disabilities. See Blanche Van Leuven Browne, “On the Vivisection of Crippled Children,” 1918, n.p., folder 4, box 2, Blanche Van Leuven Browne Papers 1898-1981, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, (hereafter cited as Browne Papers). For more on medical and/or vocational approaches to care of children with physical disabilities, see Rogers, Naomi, Dirt and Disease: Polio before FDR (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Byrom, Brad, “A Pupil and a Patient: Hospital-Schools in Progressive America,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Longmore, Paul K. and Umansky, Lauri (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 133-56Google Scholar; and Linker, Beth, War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Osgood, Robert L., The History of Special Education: A Struggle for Equality in American Public Schools (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008)Google Scholar; Patterson, Lindsey, “Points of Access: Rehabilitation Centers, Summer Camps, and Student Life in the Making of Disability Activism, 1960-1973,” Journal of Social History 46, no. 2 (Winter 2012), 473-99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meckel, Richard A., Classrooms and Clinics: Urban Schools and the Protection and Promotion of Child Health, 1870-1930 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Danforth, Scot, “Becoming the Rolling Quads: Disability Politics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s,” History of Education Quarterly 58, no. 4 (Nov. 2018), 506-36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Williamson, Bess, Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (New York: New York University, 2019)Google Scholar.
4 As John Rury discusses, historians of education as well as other disciplinary historians necessarily prioritize the current concerns of their attached discipline in addition to historiographical concerns. See John L. Rury, “The Curious Status of the History of Education: A Parallel Perspective,” History of Education Quarterly 46, no. 4 (Dec. 2006), 571-98.
5 One interesting exception to this scholarly trend is the history of D/deaf education, in which debates over manualism and sign language both became a matter of public discourse and reflected particularly trenchant concerns about religion and personhood. See Douglas C. Baynton, Forbidden Signs: American Culture and the Campaign against Sign Language (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and R. A. R. Edwards, Words Made Flesh: Nineteenth-Century Deaf Education and the Growth of Deaf Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2012). For schooling as a reflection of broader trends of access, see Clif Stratton, Education for Empire: American Schools, Race, and the Paths of Good Citizenship (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). On housing as a reflection of social and political access, see Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009); and Richard Henry Sander, Yana A. Kucheva, and Jonathan M. Zasloff, Moving toward Integration: The Past and Future of Fair Housing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). On transit, see Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (New York: Vintage Books, 1999); and Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power (New York: Vintage Books, 2010). On recreation, see Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); and Erin D. Chapman, Prove It on Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).
6 John L. Rury, Education and Social Change: Contours in the History of American Schooling (New York: Routledge, 2016), 98, 111, 113-15. See also James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); and Frederick E. Hoxie, A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880-1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2001).
7 Writer, educator, and wheelchair user Joe F. Sullivan was one such person, who appears later in this article. Brad Byrom, “Joseph F. Sullivan and the Discourse of ‘Crippledom’ in Progressive America,” in Disability Discourse, ed. Mairian Corker and Sally French (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), 159.
8 For racialized and gendered behavior as markers of citizenship during this period, see Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).
9 Molly Ladd-Taylor, Fixing the Poor: Eugenic Sterilization and Child Welfare in the Twentieth Century (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017), 25. For further discussion of perceptions of “feeblemindedness” as a danger to society, see James W. Trent Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
10 Ladd-Taylor, Fixing the Poor; and Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind.
11 Among Browne's papers is a letter from Elbert Hubbard II, who, in response to a manuscript (likely Skimmings) that she had sent for his review, gently suggested that “you perhaps can make more progress in other lines than writing.” Despite this critique, Browne continued to use writing as an outlet and a platform, although she never published another novel. Elbert Hubbard II to Blanche Browne, June 19, 1922, Correspondence 1916-1928, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
12 For example, see Allan H. Pasco, “Literature as Historical Archive,” New Literary History 35, no. 3 (Summer 2004), 373-94; and Mario T. Garcia, Literature as History: Autobiography, Testimonio, and the Novel in the Chicano and Latino Experience (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2018).
13 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, The Skimmings of the Cauldron, or That Which Boiled Over, unpublished, n.d., folder 3, box 2, Browne Papers.
14 “A Story of the Children's Ward,” Detroit Free Press, July 14, 1906, 10.
15 Untitled narrative, Plans and Notes before 1918, circa 1918, 108, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
16 “Aids Helpless Maimed,” Detroit Free Press, Oct. 20, 1907, 13. For overwork, see Meckel, Classrooms and Clinics, 31-33.
17 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, A Story of the Children's Ward (Detroit: Van Leuven Browne Publishing, 1906), 68-69, 239, 251.
18 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, Easter in the Children's Ward (Detroit: Van Leuven Browne Publishing, 1906).
19 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, A Story of the Children's Ward, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Van Leuven Browne Publishing, 1911), n.p. A version of this story also appears in Blanche Van Leuven Browne, “My Work for Crippled Children,” The World's Work 26, no. 1 (May 1913), 77-81.
20 Osgood, The History of Special Education, 24; and Judith Sealander, The Failed Century of the Child: Governing America's Young in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 259-65. For more on histories of schools and institutions for these groups, see Trent, Inventing the Feeble Mind; Steven Noll, Feeble-Minded in Our Midst: Institutions for the Mentally Retarded in the South, 1900-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Baynton, Forbidden Signs; Kim E. Nielsen, The Radical Lives of Helen Keller (New York: New York University Press, 2009); and Edwards, Words Made Flesh.
21 For examples, see Byrom, “Joseph F. Sullivan and the Discourse of ‘Crippledom,’” 157; Brad Byrom, “The Progressive Movement and the Child with Physical Disabilities,” in Children with Disabilities in America: A Historical Handbook and Guide, ed. Philip L. Safford and Elizabeth J. Safford (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 51; and Mathilda Saylor, “The Story of My Life,” Crippled Child 2, no. 6 (March-April 1925), 7.
22 Louise Eberle, “The Maimed, the Halt, and the Race,” in Children and Youth in America: A Documentary History, vol. 2, 1866-1932, ed. Robert H. Bremner (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 1026; and Edith Reeves, Care and Education of Crippled Children in the United States (New York: Survey Associates, 1914), 6.
23 “Aids Helpless Maimed.”
24 US Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census of the United States: 1910; Census Place: Detroit Ward 3, Wayne, Michigan; Roll: T624_681; Enumeration District: 0046, 1A, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives, Washington, DC.
25 Clipping, Writer's Monthly, circa 1916, Clippings, 1916-1933, n.p., folder 5, box 1; “The President Praises Work of Magazine,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Dec. 1915, Van Leuven Browne National Magazine, 1911-1915, 2-3, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; and Woodbridge N. Ferris, “A Plea for Crippled Children,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Dec. 1915, Van Leuven Browne National Magazine, 1911-1915, 4-5, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
26 Blanche Browne, “Every One of Them are Worth It,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 1914, in Scrapbook, n.d., 4, folder 10, box 2, Browne Papers.
27 Browne, “Every One of Them are Worth It,” 4.
28 “Aids Helpless Maimed.”
29 Blanche Van Leuven Browne to Esther Martin, April 5, 1928, Correspondence 1916-1928, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers; and Blanche Van Leuven Browne, Record Book, n.d., 31, 38, 54, 59, folder 6, box 1, Browne Papers.
30 Table 23, “Michigan—Race and Hispanic Origin for Selected Cities and Other Places: Earliest Census to 1990,” in Campbell Gibson and Kay Jung, Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities and Other Urban Places in the United States (Washington, DC: Population Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Feb. 2005), https://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0076/MItab.pdf.
31 Van Leuven Browne Magazine, July, Aug., Sept. 1911, 13-14, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
32 For example, see Daniel Perlstein, “Community and Democracy in American Schools: Arthurdale and the Fate of Progressive Education,” Teachers College Record 97, no. 4 (Summer 1996), 637.
33 Browne, A Story of the Children's Ward; US Census Bureau, Thirteenth Census, of the United States, 1910.; and Record Book, 67.
34 Perhaps this could also be seen through the lens of “optimistic” assimilation, though this does not entirely fit with the time in which Browne was living and working, as discussed in Hoxie, A Final Promise.
35 “Says Detroit Is Generous City,” Detroit Free Press, Oct. 15, 1911, 3.
36 Blanche Van Leuven Browne to Jo Labadie, June 24, 1919, folder 61, box 1, Jo Labadie Papers, 1880-1931, Special Collections Archival and Manuscript Collections, University of Michigan Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (hereafter cited as Labadie Papers).
37 Browne, Record Book, 67.
38 Browne, Record Book.
39 Browne, Record Book, 39.
40 Browne, “On the Vivisection of Crippled Children.” See also Blanche Van Leuven Browne to Mr. Jackson, December 20, 1916, Correspondence 1916-1928, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
41 Van Leuven Browne Magazine, June 1917, folder 10, box 2, Browne Papers.
42 For example, see Van Leuven Browne Magazine, March 1916, 19, 24, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
43 “The Daily Life,” Hospital School Journal, April, May, June 1910, n.p., folder 2, box 2, Browne Papers.
44 “Van Leuven Browne Hospital School Will Raise $200,000,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Dec. 1915, 6, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
45 Rury, Education and Social Change, 127.
46 For example, Flora Bangs Jackson referenced Montessori positively in one article. Flora Bangs Jackson, “Something About the School Work,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 1913, 15-16, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
47 Brad Byrom, “A Pupil and a Patient,” 135-36.
48 Browne, “My Work for Crippled Children,” 81.
49 Siegel-Myers School of Music to Blanche Browne, April 24, 1915, folder 2, box 1, Browne Papers; and Siegel-Myers School of Music to Blanche Browne, Oct. 11, 1915, folder 2, box 1, Browne Papers.
50 Reeves, Care and Education of Crippled Children, 165.
51 Jackson, “Something About the School Work,” 15-16.
52 “The Daily Life,” n.p.
53 This schedule was also distinct from many other institutions, which were equally regimented, but with more time devoted to maintenance work for the institution and less to educational or unstructured play. Osgood, The History of Special Education, 31.
54 Flora Bangs Jackson, “The First Day in the Kindergarten,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Oct.-Nov. 1914, 3, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
55 Jackson, “Something About the School Work,” 15.
56 Browne, “Writing for Kindergarten Children,” pt. 5, 5.
57 Browne, “Writing for Kindergarten Children,” pt. 5, 5.
58 “Aids Helpless Maimed.”
59 Many of these appear in Plans and Notes before 1918, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
60 For example, Browne, “Writing for Kindergarten Children”; and Browne, “My Work for Crippled Children.”
61 “Aids Helpless Maimed”; and “Blanche Van Leuven Browne, Crippled, Wan, Asks for Aid,” Detroit Free Press, Feb 26, 1911, 2.
62 In an unusual divergence, Hazel's mobility issues were attributed not to orthopedic causes but to hysteria to explain why they cleared up so easily; it was perhaps also a nod to why the doctors were so mystified. “Dances Gleefully in Dress Prepared to Be Her Shroud,” Detroit Free Press, Oct. 23, 1909, 1; and Browne, “My Work for Crippled Children,” 80.
63 Browne, “My Work for Crippled Children,” 79.
64 Browne, “Writing for Kindergarten Children,” pt. 5, 5.
65 “Van Leuven Browne Hospital-School Balance Sheet,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, June 1913, 24-25, Scrapbook, folder 10, box 2, Browne Papers, n.p.; and “Van Leuven Browne Hospital-School Balance Sheet,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, July 1914, 29, Scrapbook, n.d., n.p., folder 10, box 2, Browne Papers.
66 “What the Children Say,” Hospital School Journal, April, May, June 1910, n.p., folder 2, box 2, Browne Papers; and “Recess Talk,” Oct., Nov., Dec. 1910, Hospital School Journal, n.p., folder 2, box 2, Browne Papers.
67 Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Sept. 1913, 4-6, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; “Scraps from the Children's Note Books,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Nov., Dec. 1913, 10-11, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
68 “Scraps from the Children's Note Books,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Jan.-Feb. 1914, 10, folder 4, box 2, Browne Papers; and “Scraps from the Children's Note Books,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, March-April 1914, 32, folder 4, box 2, Browne Papers. Browne's commitment to Burbank is particularly revealing given Burbank's interest in improving crops (and people) through scientific/eugenic means as well as his democratization of scientific practice and education. See Katherine Pandora, “Knowledge Held in Common: Tales of Luther Burbank and Science in the American Vernacular,” Isis 92, no. 3 (Sept. 2001), 484–516.
69 Zella Berry, “The Children's Department,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, July, Aug., Sept. 1911, 26, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; and Browne, Record Book, 6.
70 Jean Osborne Browne, “People and Things We Ought to Know About,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, July 1914, 18, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
71 “The Do It Well Club,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Sept. 1913, 4, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
72 “The Do It Well Club,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Sept. 1913, 4, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
73 “The Do It Well Club,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, May-June 1914, 25-26, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; “The Do It Well Club,” May-June 1915, 32, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; “From One of Our Friends,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, May 1916, 25, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; and “A Letter Worth Reading,” Hospital School Journal, July-Aug. 1919, 5, folder 2, box 2, Browne Papers.
74 In addition to featuring a pleasant place to camp, Port Huron was Earl Casey's hometown. Browne, “The First Van Leuven Browne Camp,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Nov. 1915, 24, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers; and “Echoes from the Crippled Children's School Room at the Van Leuven Browne Hospital School,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, Oct.-Nov. 1914, 20, folder 7, box 2, Browne Papers.
75 His talents apparently proved acceptable; by the fall of 1915, Casey was employed as a VLBHS teacher. “School for Crippled Children Start Year,” Detroit Free Press, Sept. 15, 1915, 5.
76 “Too Busy Having Good Time to Think of Their Physical Ailments,” Notes on V.L.B. Work, July 18, 1915, n.p., folder 9, box 2, Browne Papers.
77 Browne, “More Facts about the Van Leuven Browne Camp,” Van Leuven Browne Magazine, July 1916, 17, folder 10, box 1, Browne Papers.
78 Byrom, “The Progressive Movement,” 55.
79 For example, see Ladd-Taylor, Molly, “Hull House Goes to Washington: Women and the Children's Bureau,” in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, ed. Frankel, Noralee and Dye, Nancy S. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), 110–26Google Scholar.
80 Browne, The Skimmings of the Cauldron, 194.
81 Blanche Van Leuven Browne, Want Book, circa 1918, 23, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
82 Browne, The Skimmings of the Cauldron, 160.
83 Browne, The Skimmings of the Cauldron, 160.
84 Browne, untitled personal narrative, 7, circa 1918, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
85 Browne, untitled personal narrative, 7, circa 1918, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
86 “The Moral Platform on Which the Van Leuven Browne Boys Stand,” Plans and Notes since 1918, n.d., 18-19, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
87 For examples of the intersection of gender and disability, see Nielsen, The Radical Lives of Helen Keller; Jennings, Audra, “Engendering and Regendering Disability: Gender and Disability Activism in Postwar America,” in Disability Histories, ed. Burch, Susan and Rembis, Michael A. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 345-63Google Scholar; and Catherine J. Kudlick, “The Outlook of The Problem and the Problem with The Outlook: Two Advocacy Journals Reinvent Blind People in Turn-of-the-Century America,” in Longmore and Umansky, The New Disability History, 187-213.
88 Bederman, Manliness & Civilization, 25. The contradictions and manipulations of this conflict in the lives of white women reformers and activists are explored in Newman, Louise Michele, White Women's Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.
89 Bederman, Manliness & Civilization, 13-14.
90 Bederman, Manliness & Civilization, 171.
91 “Theodore Roosevelt Sends Message to Boy Scouts,” Day Book, n.d., 25, folder 9, box 1, Browne Papers.
92 Untitled personal narrative, n.d., 7, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
93 Browne, “One of the Discarded,” Plans and Notes before 1918, circa 1917, 17, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
94 Browne, “Conscription for Cripples,” n.d., 82, folder 8, box 1, Browne Papers.
95 Browne, The Skimmings of the Cauldron, 147.
96 Byrom, “A Pupil and a Patient,” 142.
97 Browne, “One of the Discarded,” 15; and Untitled narrative, Plans and Notes before 1918, 6.
98 Board of Trustees of the Van Leuven Browne School for Crippled Children, A Great Civic Movement, 1915, n.p., folder 5, box 2, Browne Papers.
99 Osgood, The History of Special Education, 35.
100 Untitled list, Plans and Notes before 1918, 50.
101 Browne, “On the Vivisection of Crippled Children.”
102 “Friend of Cripples Will Take Up Greater Work in New School Along Hudson,” circa 1918, in Scrapbook, folder 9, box 1, Browne Papers; and Browne, “On the Vivisection of Crippled Children.”
103 “Friend of Cripples Will Take Up Greater Work in New School Along Hudson,” circa 1918, in Scrapbook, folder 9, box 1, Browne Papers
104 Untitled document, Plans and Notes before 1918, 7.
105 Want Book, April 20, 1918, 68; and Blanche Van Leuven Browne to Jo Labadie, Nov. 27, 1918, Folder 61, Box 1, Labadie Papers.
106 Want Book, Feb. 27, 1918, 98.
107 “Haunted By Fear of Separation from Her Adopted Cripples, Miss Blanche Browne Brings Seven Little Ones to Lancaster,” Lancaster Examiner, September 30, 1919, Clippings, 1916-1933, folder 5, box 1, Browne Papers; Letter from Blanche Van Leuven Browne to Jo Labadie, November 16, 1918; Letter from Ethelyn Browne to Jo Labadie, October 13, 1922; both folder 61, box 1, Labadie Papers; and “Browne Funeral Held at Milford,” Detroit Free Press, November 14, 1930, 5.
108 Ethelyn Van Leuven Browne to W.E. Blodgett, May 5, 1954, Correspondence 1916-1928, folder 1, box 1, Browne Papers.
109 For example, “As They Were and As They Are Now,” Hospital School Journal, May-June 1919, 2-3.