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I am too pretty for some ‘Ugly Laws’
Date: Dec 8, 2020
Caption: Lateef McLeod reads his poem “I am too pretty for some ‘Ugly Laws.’”
Where are you allowed to be? Where can you exist? Where is your body, your physical presence, welcomed, or prohibited, and how? These are some of the questions that Lateef McLeod explores in his poem “I am too pretty for some ‘Ugly Laws.”
These are questions that have been very important in the lives of Disabled people in the United States across many periods of time. Disabled people experienced various forms of segregation and exclusion from spaces designed for non-disabled people, including in education.
The Ugly Laws that McLeod refers to in his poem were real. In 1867 San Francisco passed a law banning “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” from being present on the streets or other public spaces of the city. Other cities adopted similar laws in the late 1800s and early 1900s.1 In this period of time, cities were growing rapidly, and many people in power worried about how to keep “order,” especially among people who did not fit their idea of a disciplined and productive industrial worker. Passing laws was one of their responses; they also helped build numerous new institutions where Disabled people would live, separate and out of view of non-disabled communities.2
McLeod’s poem is a primary source about his life as a Black Disabled person and artist in the late 20th and early 20th century. His poem shows us that one of the ways McLeod understands his world is through history. He recognizes historical injustices like the Ugly Laws, and rejects them in favor of his own sense of his life, beauty, and meaning.
Item Details
Date: Dec 8, 2020
Creator: Lateef McLeod
Source: Courtesy of Lateef McLeod and Disability Lead
Copyright: Under copyright. Used with permission.
How to cite: “I am too pretty for some ‘Ugly Laws’” by Lateef McLeod in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/lateef-mcleod.
Questions to Consider
- What is a passage from the poem that stood out to you?
- What choices did McLeod make as a writer to emphasize the idea of place - where people can be, where they can’t be, where they want to be?
- Why do you think McLeod, living as a Black Disabled person today, chose to write a poem about these laws from more than one hundred years ago?
- What has changed since the era of the Ugly Laws? What remains the same?
References
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