Professor Jenifer Barclay discusses how disability and ablism helped shape American ideas of slavery, black bodies, and the medical practice. She explains how the antebellum South justified slavery by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Both proslavery and abolitionists used disability as a frame to further their arguments about the innate “feebleness” of slaves or the “insanity” of slavery’s defenders. Disability played a defining role the invention and popularity of Blackface Minstrel Shows as the spectacle of physical disability provided much of the humor. Professor Barclay ends with a brief overview of how disability history fits into tthe intersectionality of slavery studies.
Jenifer Barclay is an associate professor and the Associate Director at the Center for Disability Studies at the University of Buffalo.
