1. The Social Security Board was renamed the Social Security Administration in a reorganization of the executive branch in 1940. In this article, for the sake of clarity and consistency, I refer to the agency as the Social Security Administration unless quoting a document or person who refers to the Social Security Board.

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60. Evelyn C. McKay, “The Blind under the Social Security Act,” in What of the Blind? ed. Lende, 144. For criticism of blind benefit programs run by the blind, see Best, Blindness and the Blind, 248; Irwin and McKay, Blind Relief Laws, 46.

61. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 24; Gayle Burlingame, “Introduction to an Address by Jacobus tenBroek, 1940,” reprinted in the National Federation of the Blind, The Blind and Social Security: A Collection of Addresses, Letters, and Other Documents Published by the National Federation of the Blind, 1944, 2, Place 21, File Cabinet 1, Drawer 4, National Federation of the Blind Institutional Records, Subcollection: National Federation of the Blind (NFB), 1940-2011: NFB Publications, Jacobus tenBroek Library, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD (hereinafter, NFB, The Blind and Social Security).

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69. Congressional Record, 74th Congress, 1st Sess., 1935, 11328; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 59; Jacobus tenBroek, Blindness: Legislative History of Social Security, no date, Place 21, File Cabinet 1, Drawer 4, National Federation of the Blind Institutional Records, Subcollection: National Federation of the Blind (NFB), 1940-2011: NFB Publications, Jacobus tenBroek Library, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD.

70. Congressional Record, 74th Congress, 1st Sess., 1935, 9269.

71. Congressional Record, 74th Congress, 1st Sess., 1935, 11324; Koestler, Unseen Minority, 191–92; Witte, The Development of the Social Security Act, 191–92; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 60–61; McKay, “The Blind under the Social Security Act,” 139–41. According to Koestler, Irwin blamed state welfare directors for the defeat of the Wagner amendment; Witte, however, attributes its demise to the conferees’ skepticism about social work.

72. ADC grants were for children, not their adult caregivers. Congress amended the program in 1962, renaming it Aid to Families with Dependent Children and making adult caregivers formally eligible for grants. When Congress established Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled in 1950, it made impoverished working-age people with disabilities other than blindness eligible for cash assistance. According to Anne E. Geddes, “Who Are the People Receiving Aid to the Blind and How Much Assistance Are They Receiving?” Social Security Bulletin 3, no. 9 (September 1940): 16–18, states preferred moving their aged onto OAA because if they left them on AB, they would need to conduct an eye exam to demonstrate eligibility.

73. For instance, nationwide, in December 1939, approximately 1.9 million individuals were aided by OAA; 757,000 children or 315,000 families received ADC, but only 70,000 persons were enrolled in AB. Bureau of Research and Statistics, Social Security Board, Trends in Public Assistance, 1933–1939, Bureau Report No. 8 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940), 11Google Scholar.

74. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 26–27, 105–106; Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 60; McKay, “The Blind under the Social Security Act,” 144; “Blind Pensions in Wisconsin, 1907–1934,” Outlook for the Blind, 30, no. 2 (April 1936): 119Google Scholar. There were two kinds of state flat grants that the Social Security Board found objectionable. In the first, states paid a flat monthly grant to any individual who was blind or aged and needy. For instance, Missouri and Illinois simply gave a uniform annual payment of $300 and $360, respectively, to any poor individual who met those states’ categorical definition of blindness. In the second, states provided a grant to individuals under a certain income threshold sufficient to bring them up to the threshold. Rather than treating these forms of payment as mutually exclusive, some states combined them. Blind pensions in Pennsylvania, the state with the most generous blind pension in the nation, was an example of this kind of combined flat grant. Pennsylvania set an income threshold of $840. Any recipient with an annual income below the threshold received a payment of $360. Individuals with an income over $840 but less than $1,200 received a payment sufficient to raise their annual income to $1,200. Generous states also combined flat grants with a showing of “economic blindness,” meaning, rather than undergoing a thorough investigation of need, the applicant simply showed that he or she was not working and had limited income. Many states also allowed recipients to keep what earnings they could secure from intermittent jobs or low-wage work in sheltered workshops to supplement their assistance checks. The SSA objected to how need was determined and how grants were calculated, as well as to the disregarding of income derived from earnings or gifts, even if these occurred only sporadically.

75. Davis, Kenneth D., FDR: The New Deal Years, 1933–1937: A History (New York: Random House, 1979), 401–404Google Scholar; Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 225–34.

76. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 60–61; Correspondence from Robert Beasley, Regional Public Assistance Representative, to the Executive Director, “Attn: Bureau of Public Assistance, Denver, CO,” 4 May 1937, Box 235, Record Group 47: Records of the Social Security Board, Central File, Master File, 1935–1947, National Archives, College Park, MD.

77. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 80; Correspondence from Edwin E. Witte, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, to Merrill G. Murray, Director of Unemployment Compensation Division, Social Security Board, 11 December 1935, Box 273, Record Group 47: Records of the Social Security Board, Office of the Commissioner, Executive Director's File Unit, 1935–1940, National Archives, College Park, MD.

78. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 26–27; Tani, States of Dependency, 10, 88–89.

79. TenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 74–75; American Public Welfare Association, Suggested State Legislation for Social Security: Administrative Organization, Old-Age Assistance, Aid to the Needy Blind, Aid to Dependent Children, Drafts and Explanation, Chicago, IL, November 15, 1935. Blindness professionals resented the SSA's use of APWA model legislation for Aid to the Blind, which they believed undercut their sheltered workshops by presuming that the blind were incapable of work. Correspondence from Jane Hoey to Frank Bane, “Program for the Blind,” 12 May 1936, Box 232, Record Group 47: Social Security Board Central File, Master File, 1935-1947, National Archives, College Park, MD; Correspondence from Ivan Asay to Ruth Blakeslee, “Current Misconception of the Meaning of ‘Budgeting’ in Relation to Aid to the Blind,” 9 November 1936, Box 236, Record Group 47: Social Security Board, Central File, Master File, 1935-1947, National Archives, College Park, MD. Nonetheless, blindness workers also opposed flat grants and accepted the need for casework. “Principles of Relief Administration,” 29–30.

80. Tani, States of Dependency, 71–80.

81. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 79. On social workers and their desire for a scientific system of resolving questions of redistribution and applying a distinctively maternal approach to helping the poor, see Hopkins, Harry Hopkins, 58; Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled, 96–97, 102–104; Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 63–64, 137–39; Abramovitz, Regulating the Lives of Women, 198–200.

82. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 108–109.

83. During debate over the Social Security Act in 1935, Senator Harry Byrd (D-VA) had struck references to need in the operative sections of the law though they remained in the preamble of the legislation. Between 1935 and 1939, the SSA relied on audits of state decisions conducted by its Bureau of Public Assistance to overturn cases in which the state had not conducted a proper investigation of need. In some states, audits overturned thousands of individual cases, but the reasons remained hidden from public scrutiny. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 110; Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 60–61, 79; Correspondence from Emmett P. Delaney, Office of the General Counsel, to Thomas H. Eliot, Office of the Executive Director, “Memorandum re: Power of Social Security Board in Approval of State Plans for Old-Age Assistance,” 19 November 1935, Box 232, Record Group 47: Social Security Board Central File, Master File, 1935–1947, National Archives, College Park, MD.

84. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 129; Cates, Insuring Inequality, 117; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 83–92.

85. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 118–19; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 93–94.

86. Because of these restrictive provisions, even in states with liberal pension laws, only half of blind residents had received benefits. “Blind Pensions in Wisconsin,” 114.

87. Koestler, Unseen Minority, 199–200; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 68–72.

88. “The Social Security Act and the Blind,” Outlook for the Blind 30, no. 4 (October 1936), 152–56Google Scholar. For documentation of the SSA's disapproval of liberal provisions related to need and family responsibility in Missouri, Washington, California, Iowa, and Illinois prior to the 1939 amendments, see “Insecurity under the Social Security Act,” University of Chicago Law Review 9, no. 1 (December 1941), 129–33Google Scholar.

89. TenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 94–95; Burlingame, “Introduction to an Address by Jacobus tenBroek,” 1. Other states with high benefit levels, flat grants, and earnings disregards included California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Illinois Washington, Wyoming, and Colorado. In terms of the amount of the grant, California was the most liberal state, with an average monthly check of $48 per month; the second most generous state was Washington, with $34. By comparison, the national average was $26. McKay, Evelyn C., “Statistics on Aid to the Blind,” Outlook for the Blind 32, no. 2 (April 1938): 42–43Google Scholar. Following the 1939 amendments, the SSA found several states with previously approved Title X plans were no longer in compliance with the Social Security Act. These included Pennsylvania and California. “The Social Security Act and the Blind,” 148.

90. The other three states represented at the founding meeting of the NFB were Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. In a letter to Perry two months after the inaugural NFB convention, tenBroek wrote that chapters from Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and California formed the “closely knit nucleus” of the new organization and were committed to ensuring that the organization attained permanence. Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Newel Perry, 4 January 1941, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/nfnf/id/39; Floyd W. Matson, Walking Alone and Marching Together: A History of the Organized Blind Movement in the United States, 1940-1990 (Baltimore, MD: National Federation of the Blind, 1990), 24.

91. The CCB went by the name the California Council for the Blind until 1956, when it changed its appellation to the California Council of the Blind.

92. Minutes of the First Meeting of the National Federation of the Blind, 16 November 1940, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nfnf/id/38 (hereinafter NFB Minutes, November 16, 1940); Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 39–42, 39 n. 1; Matson, Walking Alone, 16, 23. Age 50 at the time of the NFB's founding, Burlingame was significantly older than tenBroek and initially had some doubts about the utility of a national organization, which may have been a reason why tenBroek, who was 29 years old, assumed the presidency. Burlingame also seemed reluctant to assume leadership. Although he had opened the meeting at which activists discussed the formation of the NFB, he promptly suggested that tenBroek serve as chair in his place. When Burlingame was nominated for the vice presidency, he declined.

93. NFB Minutes, November 16, 1940, 2–3.

94. Perry, Oral History, 112–14, 116–18, 119–20, 126–28.

95. NFB Minutes, November 16, 1940, 2.

96. Jacobus tenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” Presidential Address to the 1940 Convention, reprinted in Matson, Walking Alone, 18.

97. Raymond W. Henderson, “The Social Security Board Against the Blind: An Open Letter to Congressmen,” 1942, reprinted in NFB, The Blind and Social Security, 9.

98. Matson, Walking Alone, 10.

99. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “State of the Union Address,” January 7, 1943, in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16386; Amenta, Edwin and Skocpol, Theda, “Redefining the New Deal: World War II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Weir, Margaret, Orloff, Ann Shola, and Skocpol, Theda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), 81–122Google Scholar.

100. Mittelstadt, Jennifer, From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101. Arthur J. Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 785; Arthur J. Altmeyer, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Social Security Amendments of 1949: Hearings on H. R. 2892, 81st Congress, 1st Sess., 1949, 11–12 (hereinafter, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments).

102. Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare, 30–39; Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 8–9, 91–92.

103. Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 7.

104. Cates, Insuring Inequality, 29–30.

105. Jacobus tenBroek, “A Bill of Rights for the Blind,” Presidential Address to the 1948 Convention, reprinted in Matson, Walking Alone, 39–40. On the ways in which disability “emasculates” men, see Russell P. Shuttleworth, Nikki Wedgwood, and Nathan J. Wilson, “The Dilemma of Disabled Masculinity,” Men and Masculinities 15, no. 2 (June 2012): 174–94; Serlin, David Harley, “Crippling Masculinity: Queerness and Disability in U.S. Military Culture, 1800-1945,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9, no. 1/2 (2003): 149–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shakespeare, Tom, “The Sexual Politics of Disabled Masculinity,” Sexuality and Disability 17, no. 1 (March 1999): 53–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

106. Koen, Ross M., “Handicap Compensation Needed instead of Present Social Security Act,” Outlook for the Blind 39, no. 6 (June 1945), 175Google Scholar, reprinting Koen's pamphlet, Proposed Handicapped Compensation for the Blind and Amendment to the Social Security Act. Koen was a Wisconsin activist and a fundraiser for the NFB, having originated its White Cane Week.

107. Jacobus tenBroek, “Memorandum of Legislative Proposals before the Ways and Means Committee House of Representatives, Attached: Suggested Draft Amendments to Title Ten, Social Security Act,” March 1946, Place 21, File Cabinet 1, Drawer 4, National Federation of the Blind Institutional Records, Subcollection: National Federation of the Blind (NFB), 1940-2011: Legislation Files, Jacobus tenBroek Library, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD.

108. Ferguson, We Know Who We Are, 67–69; Koestler, Unseen Minority, 15; Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 19, 25–26.

109. Matson, Walking Alone, 26.

110. Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1017. A similar sentiment is echoed in Earl Wilcox, “Social Insecurity,” reprinted in the NFB, The Blind and Social Security, 16: “Only the blind can lead the blind.”

111. Perry, Oral History 39–40, 68, 76; “Dr. Perry Retires from California School for the Blind,” Outlook for the Blind 41, no. 9 (November 1947), 246Google Scholar. Most colleges accepted the blind, but made little provision for their learning, such as recorded or Braille books or sighted readers. Perry wrote and then lobbied for the New York reader stipend, which was enacted in 1907. He did the same once he moved to California in 1912, and by 1938, 29 states had similar stipends in place. Irwin, “The Blind and Resources for their Aid,” 5; Stroup, Herbert H., “The Practices of American Colleges in Regard to Blind Students,” Outlook for the Blind 40, no. 6 (June 1946): 151–58Google Scholar.

112. Clemens, Elisabeth S., “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890–1920,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 4 (January 1993): 755–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

113. Perry, Oral History, 60, 124. Other organizations of the disabled felt similar animosity to social workers, rehabilitation counselors, and other professionals who “cared” for them. See Jennings, Out of the Horrors of War; Buchanan, Robert M., Illusions of Equality: Deaf Americans in School and Factory, 1850–1950 (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

114. Jacobus tenBroek, “Newel Perry: Teacher of Youth and Leader of Men,” reprinted in Matson, Walking Alone, 1035–37.

115. Wilcox, “Social Insecurity,” 12.

116. Allen Jenkins, “Allen Jenkins on the Attitudes and Activities of the Organized Blind,” an oral history conducted in 1955 and 1956 by Willa Baum in Organizations and Issues of the Blind, 1880s–1950s, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1956, 31, 37–39, 43–44 (hereinafter, Jenkins, Oral History).

117. TenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” 13–14, 18.

118. Matson, Walking Alone, 24; Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Newel Perry, 28 November 1940, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/nfnf/id/39; Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Newel Perry, January 4, 1941, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nfnf/id/29; Matson, Walking Alone, 31.

119. Matson, Walking Alone, 28.

120. Jacobus tenBroek, “The Work of the National Federation of the Blind,” Presidential Address to the 1944 Convention, reprinted in Matson, Walking Alone, 31. Among the last to join the NFB as affiliates were states in the Deep South, mid-Atlantic, and Southwest, where assistance programs for the blind did not exist before the Social Security Act or where organizations that featured cooperation between blindness professionals, charitable workers, and the blind were prevalent.

121. Kessler-Harris, Alice, In Pursuit of Equality: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

122. Matson, Walking Alone, 23.

123. TenBroek, “A Bill of Rights for the Blind,” 39.

124. TenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” 33; tenBroek, “The Work of the National Federation of the Blind,” 38.

125. Jenkins, Oral History, 22.

126. TenBroek, “Newel Perry,” 1028–29.

127. Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 508.

128. Matson, Walking Alone, 41. See also Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 510; Jenkins, Oral History, 16.

129. TenBroek, “A Bill of Rights for the Blind,” 40–41. Sports metaphors were common in Federationist discussions about rehabilitation. See, for instance, tenBroek, “The Work of the National Federation of the Blind,” 31, 32; Henderson, “The Social Security Board Against the Blind,” 8.

130. “Constructive” is how tenBroek and Matson described the NFB's approach to rehabilitation and public assistance. TenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 100–101.

131. Matson, Walking Alone, 24–25; the episode is recounted in Wilcox, “Social Insecurity,” 13–14. As early as December 1940, one month after the inaugural convention, the NFB prepared legislation to overturn the needs provisions of the 1939 amendments with respect to the blind, legislation that had been modeled on CCB proposals to protect California's earning exemptions for the blind. Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Raymond W. Henderson, 13 December 1940, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nfnf/id/26.

132. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 54.

133. Perry, Oral History, 135–37; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 94–95; Archibald, U.S. House, Committee on Ways and Means, Hearing on the 1946 Amendments, 1019; “California Council Marks Legislative Gains,” Outlook for the Blind 39, no. 9 (1945): 267Google Scholar. Illinois also had a blind pension plan very similar to those in California, Pennsylvania, and Missouri; however, rather than fight the SSA, the state legislature capitulated and enacted a blind assistance plan that met with SSA approval.

134. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 462–96. For the activists’ criticism of the SSA over the Missouri and Pennsylvania plans, see U.S. Senate, Committee on Finance, Social Security Revision, Hearings on H. R. 6000, Part 2, 81st Congress, 2nd Sess., 1950, 348, 382. In 1950, Congress enacted a compromise allowing the Missouri and Pennsylvania plans to receive federal funds on a temporary basis, which lawmakers repeatedly extended until 1967. No Author, Blindness: Legislative History of the Social Security Act, no date, Place 41, File 1, Drawer 1, National Federation of the Blind Institutional Records, Subcollection: National Federation of the Blind (NFB), 1940–2011: NFB Publications, Jacobus tenBroek Library, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD; “End of the Missouri Compromise,” Braille Monitor, September 1967, https://nfb.org/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm67/bm67-sept.html#a19.

135. Mittelstadt, From Welfare to Workfare, 21–39.

136. Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 785; Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 11–12.

137. Harry S. Truman, “Message to the Congress on the State of the Union and on the Budget for I947,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, Volume 2, January 21, 1946, 36; Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 155.

138. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 159–63.

139. Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 813.

140. Aime Forand, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1045–47; Loula Dunn, President of the APWA, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1115. See also Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 7, 109; Elizabeth Wickenden, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 225, 230; Jane Hoey, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 396–98, 405. “Dependency” is the word Wickenden used; see U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 225.

141. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 232, 236. See also Forand, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1047.

142. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 798–99.

143. On the animosity between general social workers and workers for the blind, see Koestler, Unseen Minority, 257–61. Blindness workers saw the Forand bill as an APWA bill designed to enhance the power of social workers at the expense of blind professionals and state commissions of the blind. See testimonies of Helen Reinhardt and Roma S. Cheek, Secretary, National Council, State Executives for the Blind, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1099, 1101. Meanwhile, social workers agreed that the Forand bill represented much of what the APWA considered good policy. Loula Dunn, Commission, Alabama State Department of Public Welfare, and President of the APWA, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1115. On the arguments for specially trained blindness social workers, see Magdiel, E. R., “The Need for Special Workers for the Blind in Social Security Administration,” Outlook for the Blind 30, no. 5 (December 1936): 173–76Google Scholar; McKay, “Functions of a State Agency for the Blind,” 102–108; Irwin, Robert B., “Amendments to Social Security Act Endanger Welfare of the Blind,” Outlook for the Blind 40, no. 4 (April 1946): 109–11Google Scholar.

144. Roma S. Cheek, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1101.

145. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1099. Similar arguments were made by Judge Sam M. Cathey, Chairman of the State Commission for the Blind, Ashville, NC, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1058–60; McKay, “The Blind under the Social Security Act,” 146.

146. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1066, 1068. The AFB amendments can be found in U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 1078–87.

147. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1099.

148. TenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” 21. On NFB opposition to unified blindness programs, see Jenkins, Oral History, 46–47, 178, 180–81.

149. TenBroek, “The Work of the National Federation of the Blind,” 33; tenBroek, “A Bill of Rights for the Blind,” 36, 39.

150. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1018. See also tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 135–42, for criticism of the means test as an attack on the dignity of the blind and antithetical to rehabilitation.

151. Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1018.

152. Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 509–10.

153. Wickenden, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 235, 236, 238.

154. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 396–97, 398, 405.

155. Altmeyer, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 15; Tani, States of Dependency, 32–33, 67–69, 71.

156. Wickenden, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 232; also voiced by Thomas J. S. Water, Director, Baltimore Department of Public Welfare, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1118. SSA officials hoped to incorporate a recognition of employment among the poor through the needs test rather than earnings exemptions. They noted that individuals who worked had increased expenditures for transportation, meals, and clothing, and that these expenses can and should be taken into account during budgeting to offset a portion of their earnings. Correspondence from Oscar M Powell, the Office of the Executive Director, Federal Security Agency, Social Security Board, Washington, DC, “To State Agencies Administering Approved Public Assistance Plans,” 11 February 1941, Box 1, Record Group 47: Bureau of Public Assistance, State Letters, Policy, and Regulations Relating to Public Welfare Programs, 1942–1971, National Archives, College Park, MD; Correspondence from Oscar M Powell, the Office of the Executive Director, Federal Security Agency, Social Security Board, Washington, DC, “Facilitating Employment of Assistance Recipients Through Means of Sound Determination of Need,” 11 February 1941, Box 1, Record Group 47: Bureau of Public Assistance, State Letters, Policy, and Regulations Relating to Public Welfare Programs, 1942–1971, National Archives, College Park, MD; Board Minutes, 17 November 1942, Box 18, Record Group 47: Minutes of the Social Security Board, 1935–1946, National Archives, College Park, MD. The NFB found this proposal unacceptable because it still left welfare caseworkers in charge of budgeting and needs assessment.

157. Correspondence from Frank Bane, Executive Director, to H. Z. Lauffer, 17 June 1938, Box 273, Record Group 47: Office of the Commissioner, Executive Director's File Unit, 1935–1940, National Archives, College Park, MD. The SSA had also encountered situations in which states, under pressure from the senior citizen lobby, had abolished either ADC or AB, or both, in order to fund OAA without increasing overall state spending on the poor. Correspondence from Geoffrey May to Helen R Meter, Expenditures for Public Assistance from State and Local Funds Before and After Plans Approved by the Social Security Board Became Effective,” 14 September 1936, Box 234, Record Group 47: Social Security Board, Central File, Master File, 1935–1947, National Archives, College Park, MD; Bureau of Public Assistance to Office of the Executive Director, “Policy Concerning the Adequacy of State Public Assistance,” 31 December 1936, Box 234, Record Group 47: Social Security Board, Central File, Master File, 1935–1947, National Archives, College Park, MD.

158. NFB presidential bulletin of February 28, 1949, quoted in Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 60.

159. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1020. See also Irving Selis, President, Associated Blind of New York, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1032.

160. TenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” 20.

161. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 62.

162. The bill can be found in U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1029-1030. Several organizations of the blind (but not organizations for the blind) endorsed the Voorhis bill; see U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1017, 1029, 1087.

163. Quotes from Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1018, 1019; Burlingame, “Introduction to an Address by Jacobus tenBroek,” 2; Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 513. The same sentiments were voiced by Victor W. Buttram, Treasurer, Central Committee of the Blind of Illinois, affiliate of the NFB, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1062; Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 510–11; tenBroek, “Have Our Blind Social Security?” 20; Henderson, “Future Congressional Legislation for the Blind,” 37.

164. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 509.

165. Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 1018.

166. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 803.

167. U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 803.

168. Koestler, Unseen Minority, 206–207; tenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 96–97; Wilbur J. Cohen and James L. Calhoon, “Social Security Legislation, January–June 1948: Legislative History and Background,” Social Security Bulletin, July 1948, 12–13.

169. Truman, Harry S., “Memorandum of Disapproval of Bill Relating to the Social Security Coverage of the Blind,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, Vol. 4, July 2, 1948, 395Google Scholar; Koestler, Unseen Minority, 206.

170. “Statement by U.S. Senator Irving M. Ives re: H. R. 6818 on June 18, 1948, on the Floor of the Senate,” Outlook for the Blind 42, no. 8 (September 1948), 221Google Scholar.

171. Correspondence from Robert Irwin, Executive Director of the American Foundation for the Blind; Jacobus tenBroek, President, and A. L. Archibald, Executive Secretary, National Federation of the Blind; and Alfred Allen, Secretary General, and Peter J. Salmon, Chair of the Legislative Committee, Association of Workers for the Blind, to Representative Robert L. Doughton, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 17 March 1949, Place 41, File Cabinet 1, Drawer 1, National Federation of the Blind Institutional Records, Subcollection: National Federation of the Blind (NFB), 1940-2011: NFB Publications, Jacobus tenBroek Library, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD; Robert Irwin, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 488–89.

172. Koestler, Unseen Minority, 207.

173. Altmeyer, The Formative Years, 163, 169.

174. Wickenden, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 225, 244; Hoey, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1946 Amendments, 396–97.

175. Indicative of the NFB's militant stance, the organization had wanted to hold out for an additional discount of half of all earnings above the $50. After Altmeyer told Salmon he was ready to walk away from their deal, the NFB relented lest it derail the measure. Koestler, Unseen Minority, 207. Nonetheless, the NFB was pleased; another provision temporarily allowed Pennsylvania and Missouri to receive federal matching grants even though the SSA had not certified their AB programs. Yet even after the enactment of the 1950 amendment, animosity between the NFB and the SSA continued, as the NFB challenged the SSA's rules interpreting and implementing the earnings exception. TenBroek and Matson, Hope Deferred, 97–99.

176. Koestler, Unseen Minority, 210-211; Bertram, Eva, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 35–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

177. On growing opposition to federally developed limits on state and local administrative discretion and the casework practices of the social work profession, see Tani, States of Dependency, 109–11, 155–60.

178. tenBroek, Jacobus, “A Declaration of Independence by the Blind,” Outlook for the Blind 44, no. 8 (October 1950): 211, 213Google Scholar.

179. tenBroek, Jacobus, “The 1956 Amendments to the Social Security Act: After the New Look—The First Thought,” Journal of Public Law 6, no. 1 (Spring 1957): 125, 134, 136Google Scholar.

180. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 110–11, 116, 120.

181. Perry, Oral History, 116–17.

182. Kornbluh, “Disability, Antiprofessionalism, and Civil Rights,” 1023–47.

183. tenBroek, Jacobus, “The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts,” California Law Review 54, no. 2 (May 1966): 841–919CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

184. Best, Blindness and the Blind, 204–205.

185. Jacobus tenBroek, “On the Organization and Philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind,” an oral history conducted in 1955 and 1956 by Willa Baum, in Organizations and Issues of the Blind, 1880s-1950s, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2012, 45–47; Matson, Walking Alone, 30.

186. Jennings, Out of the Horrors of War, 112.

187. TenBroek, “A Declaration of Independence by the Blind,” 212, 213.

188. George Card, “The Greeting Card Program in Review,” The Braille Monitor, March 1960, https://nfb.org/Images/nfb/Publications/bm/Abm/bm1960/BrailleMonitorMarch1960.html.

189. On the labor feminists and the differences between them, social feminists, and equal rights feminists, see Cobble, The Other Women's Movement, 3–4, 11–49. On the exclusion of blind men from the world of wage work as constituting “idleness,” see Archibald, U.S. House, Hearings on the 1949 Amendments, 510.

190. TenBroek, “The Work of the National Federation of the Blind,” 34.

191. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 60.

192. Crenshaw, Kimberle, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review, 43, 6 (July 1991): 1241–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCann, “Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Politics of Rights Mobilization,” 116; Spade, “Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform,” 1037.

193. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 77 (emphasis original), 207.

194. TenBroek, “A Declaration of Independence by the Blind,” 214.

195. Perry Sundquist became the head of rehabilitative services in California, and Kenneth Jernigan was appointed the director of the state commission for the blind in Iowa. Jacobus tenBroek became head of the California board on social welfare. On the tensions these appointments created within the NFB, see Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 213.

196. Megivern and Megivern, People of Vision, 231.

197. Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Edward V. Sparer, 22 October 1965, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/nfjt/id/10/rec/4.

198. Tussman, Joseph and tenBroek, Jacobus, “The Equal Protection of Laws,” California Law Review 37, no. 3 (September 1949): 341–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar. His scholarship also informed the NAACP's argument in Brown v. Board of Education concerning the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Kornbluh, Felicia, “Turning Back the Clock: California Constitutionalists, Hearthstone Originalism, and Brown v. Board,” California Legal History 7 (2012): 287-318Google Scholar. On the ways in which the NFB's organizing strategy informed the strategies of California welfare rights groups in the 1960s, see Kornbluh, Felicia, The Battle for Welfare Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 30–32Google Scholar.

199. TenBroek, “A Declaration of Independence by the Blind,” 213. When crafting his Bill of Rights for the poor in the 1965, Edward Sparer consulted extensively with tenBroek and his writings. See Smith, Gary F., “Remembering Edward V. Sparer: An Enduring Vision for Legal Services,” Clearinghouse Review 39, no. 5–6 (September–October 2005): 331Google Scholar. See also Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Edward V. Sparer, 23 July 1965, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/nfjt/id/15/rec/3; Correspondence from Jacobus tenBroek to Edward V. Sparer, 1 June 1965, Digital Maryland Collection: Jacobus tenBroek Library, National Federation of the Blind, Jernigan Institute, Baltimore, MD, http://collections.digitalmaryland.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nfjt/id/71/rec/8.