“I’m not Afflicted, I Just Can’t See”: How Social Definitions of Disability in Progressive-Era South Carolina Influenced the Personal and Political Identities of John Eldred Swearingen

John Eldred Swearingen (1875-1957) was elected South Carolina State Superintendent of Education for the first time in 1907 and held the office until 1922. Throughout his fourteen years in office, Swearingen great strides in improving the state's education for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, or income.  In accomplishing his goals, he conflicted with textbook vendors, state legislators, a Governor, the General Education Board, and even the Ku Klux Klan. Swearingen willingly battled local, state, and national officials.  Swearingen did more for the hitherto undereducated populations in South Carolina—children of the mills and African-American students—than any superintendent before, and many after.  Swearingen was adventitiously blind, born sighted but blind later in life.  He became one of the mettlesome souls that broke out of these confining molds of what the blind were thought to be capable, who made places for themselves in the world at large” (Koestler, 1976, 191). Swearingen was born in 1875 during Reconstruction—or, more specifically, South Carolina’s resistance to Reconstruction—to a plantation family who fought for the Confederacy.  Southern society of the time viewed those that were “other” in terms of race, economic status, or ability as inferior.  Indeed, while many who are adventitiously blind interpret their lack of vision as “an actively repressed memento mori ” (Michalko, 10), Swearingen refused to believe himself disabled by his blindness and spent his career proving himself.  His son John recounted a story typifying this attitude:  one afternoon while out walking, Swearingen was approached by a beggar.  Fumbling in his pocket to find a coin, the beggar noticed his blindness and apologized, saying “Oh I’m sorry mister, I didn’t realize you was afflicted.”  Swearingen’s response:  “Here, take your money.  I’m not afflicted, I just can’t see” (Swearingen, tape 1 side 1). As Swearingen was himself “othered”, he spent his career working to benefit those otherwise marginalized. This paper explores how various temporal and social factors impacted Swearingen’s personal and professional identities and how, in turn, this identity formation led to his innovative work. Utilizing James Garraty’s typology of biographical subjects, Swearingen’s life was that of a forceful individual” who “change[d] the trend of events” (Garraty, 1957, 4-6).Swearingen’s legacy as State Superintendent is profound:  raising awareness and funding dedicated to African-American education; passing compulsory attendance laws; gaining extensions of the length of the annual school term for both white and Black schools; beginning a systemic statewide accreditation of schools; and increasing funding for white and Black school systems.  However, his legacy of career firsts for a blind public figure in the South was equally profound:  the first student who was blind admitted to the University of South Carolina; the first candidate who was blind to run for public office; and the only superintendent who was blind in the state’s history. Indeed, Swearingen’s life and career is proof that disability is a social construct that can be transcended. Sources Cited Dreyfuss, James. John Eldred Swearingen: Superintendent of Education in South Carolina 1909-1922 . Columbia: University of South Carolina College of Education, 1997. Garraty, James. The Nature of Biography . New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957. Gittings, Robert. The Nature of Biography . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978. Janak, Edward. Adventitiously blind, advantageously political: John Eldred Swearingen and social definitions of disability in progressive-era South Carolina. Vitae Scholasticae 27, no. 1 (2010): 5-26. Klages, Mary.  Woeful Afflictions: Disability and Sentimentality in Victorian America . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Koestler, Francis. The Unseen Minority: A Social History of Blindness in America .  New York: David McKay Company, 1976. Michalko, Rod. The Difference that Disability Makes .  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002. Swearingen, Mary Hough.  A Gallant Journey: Mr. Swearingen and His Family .  Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1983. Swearingen, John Jr. Unpublished interview #1.  Saratoga, WY: November 1, 2002. Townsend, Lucy Forsyth and Gaby Weiner.  Deconstructing and Reconstructing Lives: Auto/Biography in Educational Settings . London, Ontario: The Althouse Press, 2011.

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