History Note
Each month of 2008,
Access Press will feature an important person or persons in disability
history: local, regional or national
Operation Citizenship
State Hospital residents
support
Johnson/Humphrey in 1964
by Luther Granquist
David Vail started Operation
Citizenship in 1964 as part of his campaign against dehumanization
in the state institutions. As medical director of the Minnesota Department
of Public Welfare, Vail directed the state hospital staff to encourage
voluntary patients to vote. He urged the institutions to ask candidates
to speak at rallies. For those not eligible to vote, he asked the
institutions to conduct a straw vote. The Lyndon Johnson/Hubert Humphrey
ticket received 85% of the state hospital residents’ vote,
defeating Barry Goldwater and William Miller by far more than the
61% of the vote they received nationwide.
In his 1966 book Dehumanization
and the Institutional Career, Vail noted that the 1964 election polarized
liberals and conservatives along the “axis of privilege” and that the Democratic
party appealed to “those without property, those in deprived
and lonely circumstances, those hoping for a better day—like
those in mental hospitals.” But Vail did not create Operation
Citizenship to support one party or another. Rather, he wanted to
enable state hospital residents to play an active role in politics
and to expand the civil rights movement to include persons with disabilities.
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