 Eleanor Smith Papers
Collection DescriptionBiographical NoteEleanor Smith founded and directed Concrete Change, an Atlanta-based, national organization focused on establishing home construction practices that welcome people with disabilities. The aim is to move away from the construction norm of steps at all entrances and narrow interior doors to a new, universal standard -- a zero-step entrance and wide doors in all new houses. With the slogan "Every New Home Visit-able" and the informal catchphrase "Get in and pee," Smith generated a grassroots movement across the United States and Canada, popularizing the term "Visitability" while pressing for policies. Strategies included education, street theater, and civil disobedience. At advocates' strong prompting, the Atlanta Habitat for Humanity affiliate became the first organization in the United States to build every home with access. Through a nationwide direct action campaign in the late 1980's, the Visitability network helped establish meaningful federal construction standards that mandate basic access in all new multi-family housing. In 1992, Smith wrote and helped pass the Atlanta ordinance, which was the first law in the U.S. requiring basic access in some private, single-family houses. She helped advocates in numerous locales across the country pass similar ordinances, with some municipalities eventually requiring basic access in every new house. By 2014, the movement had sparked the development of more than 80,000 Visitable houses. These home-access policies continue to generate new accessible houses year after year. The network has remained active after Smith's 2013 retirement as advocates pursue new initiatives. Smith received a Best Practices award from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service award from Emory University and an Advocacy Award from the American Public Health Association. She has presented on home-access policy at national conferences of the American Planning Association, the American Institute of Architects, and the Congress for the New Urbanism; testified to a U.S. Congressional committee; and given more than 200 other presentations. She co-authored a 2008 Visitability paper commissioned by the AARP Public Policy Institute and articles in Urban Land magazine and the Journal of the American Planning Association. Besides her housing work, Smith was active nationally and locally with the national, direct-action organization, ADAPT (1987-2009). The group advocated first for disability access to public transportation. After achieving that goal, ADAPT focused on the right of people with disabilities to live at home with government support, rather than being forced into institutions by funding and policy biases. Smith also has been active opposing legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia. She helped found the Atlanta organization Life Worthy of Life, which was active from 1989 to 2002, and shortly thereafter helped form the national organization Not Dead Yet. She provided Georgia leadership in the cases of Larry McAfee (1989), Andy and Randy Scott (2002), and Mae Magouirk (2005), and she participated in national Not Dead Yet actions. She travelled to Florida in 1997 to advocate that the Florida Supreme Court decline to permit physician-assisted suicide in the Charles Hall case, and in 2003 to participate in the effort to secure feeding and hydrating for Terri Schiavo. Smith was born in 1943 into a family with several siblings, in a small central Illinois town surrounded by farms. She contracted a severe case of polio in 1946 during a sweeping national epidemic and has used a wheelchair since then. She earned an M.A. in American Literature from the University of Illinois in 1966, and taught at the elementary, high school and college levels in Kansas, Puerto Rico, Indiana and Georgia before becoming a full-time disability rights activist in 1988. Source: Eleanor Smith Scope and ContentThe Eleanor Smith Papers document her work, both as director of Concrete Change and as an individual, to create visitable homes, in a move towards universal basic access, as well as her activism across a wide range of disability rights and justice issues, and include correspondence, clippings, flyers, photographs, audiovisual materials and items used as part of protests and actions. Organization and ArrangementThe papers are arranged in four series: I. Concrete Change and Visitablity, II. Subject Files, III. Artifacts and Memorabilia, and IV. Audiovisual Materials. Administrative InformationAccess RestrictionsThis collection is open for research. Series I. Concrete Change and Visitability and Series II. Subject Files contain digital files. To access these files, please request the folders you would like through the finding aid using your research account. An archivist will be in contact with you to explain how to access the files. Please note that not all file formats are currently supported by the library for research use. Reference copies of the audiovisual recordings in Series IV. Audiovisual Materials are available upon request. Research requests will be filled as soon as possible and will be dependent upon the condition of the recordings. Preferred CitationEleanor Smith Papers, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641. Processing NoteBooks and serials, including the magazines The Disability Rag, This Brain Has a Mouth, and its successor, Mouth, have been separated and cataloged individually. Copyright InformationBefore material from collections at the Richard B. Russell Library may be quoted in print, or otherwise reproduced, in whole or in part, in any publication, permission must be obtained from (1) the owner of the physical property, and (2) the holder of the copyright. It is the particular responsibility of the researcher to obtain both sets of permissions. Persons wishing to quote from materials in the Russell Library collection should consult the Director. Reproduction of any item must contain a complete citation to the original. User RestrictionsLibrary acts as "fair use" reproduction agent. Finding Aid PublicationFinding Aid prepared by Mat Darby, 2015. Related Materials and SubjectsSubject TermsRelated Collections in this Repository
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