in 1872 - over at Disability Studies Temple U.
Victoria Woodhull (1838-1927) ran for president in 1872 as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party (with Frederick Douglass as her running mate). Her campaign biography described her son Byron as a half idiot; predestined to be a hopeless imbecile for life...[there's more over at the original blog post] a daily agony to the woman who bore him, hoping more of her burden; and heightening the pathos of the perpetual scene by the uncommon sweetness of his temper which, by winning every one's love, doubles every one's pity.'
From the blog post:
She never hid Byron, never institutionalized him, always made sure he was well cared for, brought him along when she fled her legal problems and moved to England. But she was no friend of people with disabilities--she was, rather, an early and enthusiastic exponent of eugenics.
Woodhull's run for the presidency was clearly symbolic--generations before American women had the vote in national elections, she had no chance of winning, and to compound the impossibility she was younger than the minimum age specified in the Constitution--but it wasn't frivolous.. And 136 years ago, she was the first woman candidate for the White House AND the first to work a son with developmental disabilities into her campaign.
You can read the rest here.
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