> Copr. (C) West 1998 No Claim to Orig. U.S. Govt. Works
>
> Citation Rank(R) Database
> Mode
> 10/14/98 NYT (No Page) R 1 OF 42 ALLNEWS
> Page
> 10/14/98 N.Y. Times News Serv. (Page Number Unavailable Online)
> 1998 WL-NYT 9828700400
> (Publication page references are not available for this document.)
>
> New York Times News Service
> c. 1998 New York Times Company
>
> Wednesday, October 14, 1998
>
> Kenneth Jernigan, 71, Advocate For The Blind
> By RICHARD SEVERO
>
> Kenneth Jernigan, who was a forceful advocate for the blind in gaining
> access to jobs and to public places during his longtime leadership of the
> National Federation of the Blind, died Oct. 12 at his home in Baltimore.
> He was
> 71.
>
> The cause was lung cancer, said Barbara Pierce, director of public
> education
> for the federation and editor of its Braille Monitor magazine.
>
> The current president of the federation, Marc Maurer, said Jernigan
> "has
> reshaped thinking about the blind in this country and his writings have
> been
> translated into 100 languages."
>
> Jernigan, who was blind at birth, started volunteering for the
> federation,
> based in Baltimore, in 1951 and was president of the organization from
> 1968 to
> 1986. During his unpaid tenure, the federation, which was founded in 1940
> by
> Jacobus tenBroek, became one of the nation's most influential advocacy
> organizations.
>
> Jernigan was in the vanguard of a successful effort in the 1980s to
> persuade
> the State Department to revise its policy excluding unsighted people from
> the
> diplomatic service. He was also instrumental in litigation that sought to
> stop
> what the federation regarded as discriminatory practices among airlines
> in the
> accommodation of the blind, one of which was that the airlines did not
> want
> them sitting in rows near emergency exits.
>
> Jernigan appeared before a Senate subcommittee in 1989 and showed a
> video
> demonstrating that sighted and blind people could make an orderly
> evacuation of
> aircraft with equal ease.
>
> "The real problem of blindness is not the loss of eyesight," he said in
> 1992. "The real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of information
> which
> exist. If a blind person has proper training and opportunity, blindness
> can be
> reduced to the level of a physical nuisance."
>
> Over the years, he made it clear that he took exception to various
> statements
> he heard about blindness, which included the suggestion that true
> Christians
> never lost their sight and that blind people were not equal to sighted
> people
> because of their "inability to see atoms." He called such statements
> "gibbering
> insanity."
>
> Above all, he loathed expressions of pity for the blind, who, he
> maintained,
> did not want pity and were quite capable of taking care of themselves and
> competing with sighted people in the job market.
>
> Among his accomplishments was the creation of the Newsline for the
> Blind
> Network, in which the daily reports of The New York Times, The Washington
> Post
> and other major American newspapers are scanned and recited by a computer
> voice
> over telephone lines available to blind people all over the country.
>
> Jernigan also created the International Braille and Technology Center
> in
> Baltimore, which researches and promotes technology to aid the blind and
> maintains a job information bank for the blind that can be accessed by
> telephone.
>
> In recognition of his work in creating the Newsline for the Blind
> Network,
> Jernigan received the Winston Gordon Award for Technological Advancement
> in the
> Field of Blindness and Visual Impairment this year from the Canadian
> National
> Institute for the Blind. Among his many other awards was a citation from
> the
> American Library Association in 1967 that praised him for his efforts in
> making
> the contents of libraries available to the blind.
>
> Kenneth Jernigan was born in Detroit on Nov. 13, 1926. When he was
> quite
> young, his parents, Jesse and Novella Inez Trail Jernigan, moved near
> Beech
> Grove, Tenn., where they were farmers. Their son was educated at the
> Tennessee
> School for the Blind in Nashville. After high school, he ran a furniture
> store
> in Beech Grove for a time, but then went on to college, earning his
> bachelor's
> degree from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, where he
> majored
> in social sciences.
>
> He originally wanted to be a lawyer, but his college counselor told him
> that
> without sight, he should seek a more realistic goal. In that era, many
> blind
> people were shunted off into such jobs as piano tuning or teaching the
> blind.
> He decided to become a teacher and got his master's degree in English
> from
> Peabody College in Nashville in 1949.
>
> There he became active in the Tennessee chapter of the National
> Federation of
> the Blind. He then went to California and taught at the California
> Training
> Center for the Blind in Oakland from 1953 to 1958. In 1958, he became
> director
> of the Iowa Commission for the Blind, which he reorganized and
> strengthened. He
> remained in that post until 1978, running the federation as a volunteer
> at the
> same time. Then he moved on to Baltimore and became the paid executive
> director
> of the American Action Fund for Blind Children and Adults, a sister
> organization of the National Federation of the Blind. He held that post
> from
> 1978 to 1989.
>
> His other activities included work for the National Advisory Committee
> on
> Services for the Blind and Visually Handicapped; special consultant to
> the
> executive director of the White House Conference on the Handicapped, and
> consultant to the Smithsonian Institution, advising on museum programs
> for
> blind visitors.
>
> In retirement, he continued to write essays and booklets, many of them
> of an
> inspirational nature, that were widely distributed to sightless people
> all over
> the world.
>
> Among Jernigan's survivors are his wife, the former Mary Ellen Osborn,
> who
> assisted him in his work for the federation; a daughter from a previous
> marriage, Marie Antoinette Jernigan Cobb of Baltimore, and three
> grandchildren.
>
> 00:06 EDT OCTOBER 14, 1998
>
> ---- INDEX REFERENCES ----
>
> NEWS SUBJECT: Biography; New York Times News Service; Obituaries
> (BIO NYTM
> OBT)
>
> REGION: Maryland; North America; United States; Eastern U.S.
> (MD NME
> US USE)
>
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