Disability Was Treated Like A Crime For Many Years
The Ugly laws made life difficult for people
Laws are made to protect and safeguard the rights of individuals, but in certain societies, they were used against disabled and underprivileged people. There was a dark time in American history when poor people and persons with disabilities were punished because of their physical appearance.
Indeed, history has records of these strange laws that belittled humans. The laws were known as the “Ugly laws”.
The term “ugly laws” was first coined by disability authors and activists, Robert Burgdorf and Pearce Burgdorf. The use of the word “ugly” simply depicts the harshness, cruelty, and evil intent of the laws.
Eugenics archive explains that ugly laws were mostly municipal statutes in the United States that outlawed the appearance in public of people who were “diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object”.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, ugly laws were mostly used against people that were financially unstable, homeless and disabled. The reason for making such laws was to discourage those with visible disabilities from staying in public spaces and begging for money. Back then, it was believed that by begging in the streets, these…
