The murky history behind municipal laws criminalizing disability
In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, municipal laws
targeting "unsightly beggars" sprang up in cities across America.
Seeming to criminalize disability and thus offering a visceral example
of discrimination, these "ugly laws" have become a sort of shorthand for
oppression in disability studies, law, and the arts.
In this watershed study of the ugly laws, Susan M. Schweik uncovers the
murky history behind the laws, situating the varied legislation in its
historical context and exploring in detail what the laws meant.
Illustrating how the laws join the history of the disabled and the poor,
Schweik not only gives the reader a deeper understanding of the ugly
laws and the cities where they were generated, she locates the laws at a
crucial intersection of evolving and unstable concepts of race, nation,
sex, class, and gender. Moreover, she explores the history of resistance
to the ordinances, using the often harrowing life stories of those most
affected by their passage. Moving to the laws' more recent history,
Schweik analyzes the shifting cultural memory of the ugly laws,
examining how they have been used--and misused--by academics, activists,
artists, lawyers, and legislators.