Picturing Disability

During the second half of the nineteenth and continuing into the early years of the twentieth century, organizations whose goal was either to serve people with disabilities or to prevent disability or both prospered, grew, and proliferated. Religious institutions supported some of these organizations, but charities increasingly turned to fund-raising. At first, they relied primarily on gifts from the well-to-do, but as the middle class grew, charities launched widespread campaigns designed to appeal to the general public.¹¹ In this chapter, I look at how disability-related organizations used photography in these fund-raising drives.

Charity campaigns featuring disability became so ubiquitous as the twentieth century progressed that it is impossible to cover the variety and extent of the publicity that was produced. Many charities became national organizations with branches across the country. Each branch participated in both the national and local fund-raising campaigns for their own chapter. In most cases, a percentage of what the branch raised went to the national organization, and the rest remained with the local. Some charities were affiliated with a local group that had no national organization, and there were regional charity organizations. Masonic organizations such as the Shriners and the Elks focused on children with disabilities and engaged in rigorous fund-raising, too.

Further enlarging the fund-raising pool were organizations such as the Community Chest that were established to coordinate services and fund-raising in communities across the country.22 The Community Chest, later called the United Way, was effective in tapping funds from corporations and in getting corporations to sponsor fund-raising among their employees with the offer of matching funds. By 1948, one thousand communities had United Way–type organizations. With the growth of advertising agencies, charity organizations increasingly relied on marketing companies to design their appeals.

Year-round fund-raising was typical, but certain charities concentrated their efforts at particular seasons of the year. The National Lung Association Drive begun in 1907 and keyed its drive around the Christmas holiday season and the sale of Christmas Seals. The March of Dimes major fund drive was during the month of January to coincide with the birth date of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, founder of the organization. Labor Day weekend became the time for the Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon.³³

The images used in early disability charity fund-raising were similar to those employed in begging cards. Both featured real people, individuals to whom potential donors could relate. Many charity campaigns employed pity as their major draw. Some were heavily laced with religious themes.

The similarities can be seen in the 1909 fund-raising postcard shown in illustration 4.2, produced and distributed by the Good Shepherd’s Home in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as part of its campaign to support a residential facility for “crippled orphans.” It features two well-dressed boys using crutches. The message on the card emphasizes that the crippled children served are the neediest, yet they are the very ones other orphanages turn away. They are “too much trouble” for other facilities “to take care of and exercise.” The text makes its appeal by evoking the Lord and using phrases from the Bible.

As America moved into the twentieth century, crucial and deliberate differences emerged between begging cards and disability charity pictures with regard to who was pictured, how they were depicted, and the nature of the appeal. I address most of these differences later in the chapter, but two overriding distinctions should be clarified up front. With begging cards, the person pictured was the same individual who directly received the donation. In charity campaigns, the people depicted, sometimes in groups and other times alone, were soliciting for the organization’s clients in general or a particular category of people with disabilities—“crippled children,” for example. In other words, the people pictured stood for the charity; they were symbols or icons. Crucial for the designers of charity campaigns was choosing the right people to feature. The ones they chose were quite different from the individuals who appeared in begging cards. Also, children as opposed to adults were most often featured in charity drives, whereas adults dominated begging cards.

Begging cards had limited distribution; charity solicitation pictorials found a larger audience. Although the latter did sometimes appear on postcards and other handouts, they more commonly appeared on posters, on collecting cans, in magazines and newspapers, and in privately published booklets as well as on other forms of ephemera (see Hevey 1992; Garland-Thomson 2009). Charity images were more prolific than any other genre of disability representation.

New charity imagery emerged starting in the 1930s. Relying on the rapidly evolving Madison Avenue advertising techniques, one image, the poster child, came to dominate.

The most popular approach to charity fund-raising after 1940 was the poster child.⁴⁴ The phrase poster child refers to a child with a disease or disability whose picture was used on posters and other media in the campaign for a particular charity to encourage people to give.⁵⁵ Adults, with the exception of veterans, were underrepresented as charity symbols. The use of children was pervasive even when the specific condition the funds were being raised for was predominately an adult impairment—for instance, in blindness and even arthritis campaigns (Scott 1969). Although the United Way represented organizations that serve people of all ages, the most common images in its fund-raising were of the child with a disability. Using children in their appeals, charity promoters believed, would be a most effective money-raising strategy.

Nine-year-old John Fitzpatrick became a poster child in 1958. The photograph of him shown in illustration 4.4 was taken for a local newspaper in a Meet the Press Luncheon that was part of an Easter Seals fund-raising campaign. John, wearing a bow tie and a pleasant smile, sits in his wheelchair and holds artist-drawn “Help Crippled Children” posters that were part of the campaign.

Fund-raisers banked on the assumption that potential donors would see a child with a disability as a greater tragedy yet more likely to benefit from services than an adult. Although children evoked pity, they also, if photographed in a particular way, expressed hope. Pictures could be constructed in ways that promoted the idea that children could best benefit from rehabilitation and even be “cured” by means of contributions to a charity organization (Garland-Thomson 2004, 86; Siebers 2010, 21–23).

Various Easter Seals affiliates used postcard mailings to remind potential donors to give. The 1963 card in illustration 4.5, sent by the Dade County Society for Crippled Children, confronted would-be donors with a picture of a toddler holding a sign saying, “You Can Help.” He is surrounded by Easter Seals stamps and posters urging patrons to “Help Crippled Children.” The text to the right of the picture promotes the idea that through donors “this child and hundreds of local children will learn to walk, talk and use their hands.”

In 1946, Donald Anderson became the first March of Dimes national poster child.⁷⁷ In a 1949 Join the March of Dimes campaign, the organization produced a folded heavy postcard to distribute to patrons. The inside featured twenty slots into which contributors could insert dimes. A larger space, the width of a dollar, was provided to insert bills, checks, or money orders. The outside featured a picture of a five-year-old poster child, Linda Brown, a pretty girl dressed in a frilly dress (illus. 4.6). She is shown pushing herself out of the wheelchair into a standing position. The message above her, set off in quotation marks, reads, “Look! I can walk again,” suggesting that donations would produce cures.

This approach continued to be used. The widely distributed Easter Seals promotional “Set a child free this Easter” from around 1971 is another example of a charity promising cures for contributions (illus. 4.7). The image consists of a series of five superimposed photographs of the same attractive child, wearing the braces, moving across the page from right to left, gradually dropping her crutches, and finally standing unassisted.

Beyond those poster child ads promising donors that their contributions would set children free, some ads asserted that the poster child’s disability could be eliminated altogether. A contribution could save future generations of children from suffering. Some even suggested that donors could create a miracle.

I am not suggesting that organizations making such campaign promises did not deliver. Many organizations were successful in rehabilitation, and some supported research that diminished the symptoms of disease and even helped to prevent them. For example, the March of Dimes was central in funding development of a potent vaccine for polio. I am not saying, either, that organization ads were not effective. As stereotypic and demeaning as these Madison Avenue images are, they worked, and the results helped millions of people.

Most poster children were local notables, but many represented national organizations and were countrywide celebrities. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later called the March of Dimes, was launched in 1938 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Established to support the care of people with polio and carry on research for prevention and treatment, it became the most successful and well-known foundation in the country. Its success came in part from its innovative fund-raising strategies. The March of Dimes approach was to get millions of people to give small amounts of money—hence, the organization’s name (Rose 2003, 43). It relied extensively on the poster child for fund-raising.⁸⁸ As the illustrations suggest, most poster children were photographed wearing braces, using wheelchairs, or in some way making their disability evident. Most were cheerful if not jubilant. The organization was so successful in its fund-raising that after it had reached its initial goal, the eradication of polio (an effective vaccine became available in 1955), it continued its campaigns and in 1958 changed its focus to the prevention of “birth defects.”⁹⁹

Using theme songs such as “Smile” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and an array of appealing poster children, the show became a national event. Lewis’s maudlin approach was extremely successful. By 1999, the total amount of money raised by the Labor Day Telethon reached more than one billion dollars.

Jerry Lewis and the other film and television stars who assisted him in his muscular dystrophy campaigns were part of a long line of celebrities who gave their time and names to disability charities’ fund-raising. From its beginnings, the March of Dimes built a close association with the entertainment industry. Eddie Cantor, a popular movie and radio star in the 1930s, was an early supporter and is credited with coining the organization’s name.¹¹¹¹ March of Dimes volunteers, in conjunction with movie house owners, raised money by regularly stopping films in the middle, turning up the lights, and passing out collection canisters bedecked with pictures of poster children.¹²¹²

During the era covered in this book, movie, theater, and radio stars from Mary Pickford to Marilyn Monroe made regular public appearances with March of Dimes poster children. Campaign publicity included the most popular stars of the day: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Louie Armstrong, Liberace, Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Jane Powell, Lucille Ball, and Robert Young to name a few.

Marilyn Monroe was a March of Dimes regular, making appearances at various fund-raising events, including the fourteenth annual March of Dimes New York City fashion show with poster children Sandra and Linda Solomon (illus. 4.11).

Celebrity-conscious Americans responded to stars, who drew crowds and press coverage. Photographers came to get images to publish in newspapers and other news sources. Entertainment personalities at events increased a charity’s visibility and importance. Celebrities provided fund-raising campaigns with a better chance for publicity and added legitimization to the charity as well. The commonsense logic was that if people of national prominence backed a campaign, the cause must be just and deserving. The celebrities’ benefited, too. They got publicity, and their personal profile was enhanced by their presentation as caring citizens.

Politicians were ahead of movie stars in being photographed with people with disabilities. From early in the twentieth century, officials from presidents to local officeholders maximized their visibility and appeal by being photographed with people with disabilities. As was the case for movie stars, their appearances were beneficial to both the politicians themselves and the charities.

The White House was often the site where presidents were photographed with war veterans with disabilities. Illustration 4.13 shows President Coolidge on the White House lawn in an awkward pose. He apparently is confused about whether to offer to shake hands with a World War I veteran who appears to be a quadriplegic.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the thirty-second president of the United States (1933–45), was involved in disability-related fund-raising far beyond starting the March of Dimes. In illustration 4.14, he and his wife, Eleanor, appear at another Walter Reed charity campaign for veterans with disabilities on the lawn at the White House.

As the poster child came to dominate fund-raising, presidents began regularly appearing in photographs with that symbol of charity. Richard Nixon, the thirty-seventh president (1969–74), was actively involved in March of Dimes campaigns throughout his political career. In illustration 4.15, we see him participating in a national campaign where customers at gas stations could donate to the organization when buying gas. This photo is one of many news photos that show Nixon actively participating in March of Dimes campaigning.

Some “thank you” messages were produced to give the impression that the message was actually handwritten by the child who is pictured and had benefited from the organization’s services. A series of postcards sent by the Philadelphia Society for Crippled Children and Adults, an affiliate of the national Easter Seals, thanked donors for contributing to Camp Daddy Allen, a summer camp for children with disabilities. (The camp was named after the founder of the Easter Seals, Edgar Allen.) The society produced postcard images of many different groups of campers, but all the messages were written by the same cursive hand.

Illustration 4.17 shows the front and back side of one of these cards. The picture side shows the campers with braces and crutches. On the extreme left of the picture, one girl’s head is circled by a dark line. To the right of the circle is the word me. The idea was to single out a child in the crowd to suggest that she wrote the message that appears on the back of the card. The fact that the cursive handwriting on different cards is the same suggests that an organization staff member or publicity designer wrote it.

Fund-raisers for organizations that lay claim to helping the people with disabilities often used the visual convention of “before and after” in their appeals.¹³¹³ I have already addressed a modified version of the approach in my discussion of poster children where the pictures show how the children were cured through the organization’s efforts (they leave their crutches or leave their wheelchairs). In a purer use of the before-and-after visual, the presentation juxtaposes two pictures of the same person, one taken before the intervention, the other after he or she has been under treatment. The idea is to show the changes in that person’s condition brought about by the charity.1414

“Before-and-after” charity photography has a long history.¹⁵¹⁵ One organization that used this approach extensively in its fund-raising was the Shriners, a national Masonic group. In 1920, members of the organization voted to focus their philanthropy on building and supporting hospitals for “crippled children.” That designation included those afflicted with orthopedic disabilities such as scoliosis, limb discrepancies, clubfoot, juvenile arthritis, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida, to name only a few. The goal was “to rehabilitate children, who, were it not for the Shriners’ Hospitals, would never receive the necessary treatment to relieve deformities.”¹⁶¹⁶

How did the Shriners pay for the hospitals that they eventually established and maintained? Membership dues provided some support, but the organization launched a campaign to raise additional funds not only from members, but from business organizations and the general public. Its main organ for fund-raising was what became an annual yearbook titled Real House of Magic. Every temple was given a large supply of these booklets to distribute to potential donors. As the booklet states, “Many people, after reading about the Hospitals and studying the cases shown therein, have become so interested that they have mentioned Hospitals in their wills and many liberal contributions have resulted.”

By 1937, with the help of this booklet, the Shriners were funding fifteen hospitals around the country. The heavily illustrated booklet includes pictures of buildings and staged photos of happy people actively engaged in recreational or therapeutic activities. The building and group images do not dominate the booklet, however. The featured graphics, fifteen pages of them, consist of a series of before-and-after photographs of children served by the different Shriners hospitals.¹⁷¹⁷ The first is of the Shreveport Louisiana Hospital patient “Glenn,” a boy then approximately ten years old (illus. 4.18).

In the first picture, Glenn is shown helpless, seminude, and held in a standing position by a staff member. In the second picture, the after portrait, he stands fully clothed under his own power and sporting a smile. The accompanying text states that his handicapping condition was the result of “creeping paralysis” and points to his transformation as resulting from his treatment at the Shriners facility so that now he can use “his limbs and be able to walk like the other boys.”

Those who produced and selected charity campaign images were pragmatic. People I interviewed in the early 1970s who were attached to disability organizations knew that their imagery was inaccurate or only one part of the story of the people they served. Some even acknowledged that the imagery presented an impression of their clients that was demeaning and harmful to public perception of them. But the images worked. People dug into their pockets to get the dimes and dollars that the organizations depended on. The organizations’ clients were dependent on their services. The fund-raisers were concerned with clients’ immediate needs and cures, not with long-term abstract issues connected to negative imagery.

1. Some of the earliest charity fund-raising involved providing for Civil War soldiers who were injured during the war. In 1917, giving was sanctioned by the US government, when charitable gifts were made a tax deduction. For a general history of philanthropy in the United States, see Bremner 1988.

2. The United Way had its beginnings in 1887 in Denver, Colorado, where church leaders began the Charity Organization Society, which coordinated services and fund-raising for twenty-two agencies. The first Community Chest was founded in 1913 in Cleveland, Ohio, and that organization served as a model for “federated giving.” The number of Community Chest organizations in the United States increased from 39 to 353 between 1919 and 1929 and had surpassed 1,000 by 1948. By 1963, the name “United Way” was adopted, but not everyone chose to use it. In 1970, the organization was renamed the United Way of America. In 2007, United Way of America was the largest charity in the United States, with 1,285 local branches reporting more than $4.2 billion in contributions, a 2.2 percent increase over 2006.

3. The Muscular Dystrophy Association campaign originated in the 1950s, but it did not become a national phenomenon until 1966.

4. Although the poster child approach to fund-raising is still popular today, it does not dominate as it once did.

5. The original meaning of the term poster child has expanded to include informal and sarcastic use in referring to any person who is an exaggerated personification of a particular role, activity, or category of person (e.g., Angelina Jolie is the poster child for celebrity adoption).

6. The treatment for polio espoused by the Kenny Foundation was one that Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian nurse, introduced around the world in the 1930s and 1940s. It involved more active intervention, physical therapy, for patients rather than immobilization. She came to the United States in 1940, where she demonstrated her approach; some people embraced it, and others mocked it. Although Kenny was initially financed by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, this foundation later withdrew its support, prompting her backers to start their own foundation.

7. This information comes from the website http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/howpolio/march.htm.

8. Donald Anderson in 1946 was the first in a long line of March of Dimes poster children. Anderson is currently a retired postal worker living in Seattle (from http://americanhistory.si.edu/polio/howpolio/march.htm).

9. The March of Dimes has more recently turned its attention to the prevention of premature births. See Rose 2003 for a pictorial review of the organization’s accomplishments.

10. See the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s website at http://www.mda.org/JerryLewis/JLBodyOfWork.htm.

11. The name “March of Dimes” was at first applied just to the organization’s fund-raiser campaign, but was later adopted to designate the organization itself.

12. The same cans were placed on store counters.

13. The before-and-after visual cliché is common in medical photography.

14. Some organizations that used this approach skipped the before shot and showed the person only after intervention, restored to being a healthy, happy human being. As a substitute for the before picture, a statement describes the person’s prior condition.

15. Dr. Thomas Barnardo, an English doctor, provided the most famous examples of such photos. In the early 1870s, he commissioned a series of before-and-after photographs of children who were residents of his street shelter, Home for Working and Destitute Lads, as part of a fund-raising campaign for that charity. His fame among photo historians stems from the fact that his portraits were fraudulent. He was brought to court and found guilty of fabricating and manipulating the pictures; he dressed the before shot children in rags, posing them as disheveled and blank faced, then posed the same children on the same day cleaned up and engaged in productive activities (Goldberg 1991, 163).

16. From a 1937 Shriners pamphlet I found.

17. Twelve hospitals and three mobile units attached to host hospitals were featured.