"With Minds Fixed on the Horrors of War" examines the expansion of federal disability policy in the wake of World War II by focusing on the rise and decline of the major activist organization for disabled civilians, the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH).
During World War II, with labor shortages threatening production and concerns for the disabled soldier playing heavily on their thoughts, federal officials launched a campaign to expand employment opportunities for people with disabilities. Indeed, many employers developed elaborate plans for employing people with disabilities during the war, and 83 percent of the nation's factories had disabled workers on their payrolls. At the end of the war, liberal policy makers, organized labor, and disability activists in the AFPH, as well as officials in the federal government, all played important roles in fashioning disability policy. These groups did not always work in concert; their differences did much to limit the reach of the disability policy of the postwar decades. Liberals em-braced disability policy as a crucial component in the postwar legislative expansion of the welfare state, but could not agree on the underlying purpose of disability policy and its administration. Social welfare professionals, and the liberals that aligned with them, wanted disability policy in the hands of medical professionals in the Federal Security Agency, who could provide treatment and care for people with disabilities, while labor liberals argued that people with disabilities deserved the dignity of work and that the proper administrative home for disability policy was in the Department of Labor. For their part, disability activists in the AFPH exposed widespread discrimination and the failings of disability policy, while pushing for increased employment opportunities in the postwar economy.
Based on archival research in government, union, and AFPH documents and extensive reading of contemporary periodicals, my dissertation first and foremost treats an important but heretofore neglected topic in the history of postwar liberalism and the evolution of the welfare state: the rise of disability activism and its role in shaping federal disability policy.