8/10/2023 2 Comments Ray charles blind![]() ![]() In 1937, the seven-year old Charles was sent to St. Charles later recounts that, “When I got to feeling sorry for myself, she’d get tough and say, ‘You’re blind, you ain’t dumb you lost your sight, not your mind.’ And she’d make me.see I could do almost anything anyone else could do.” This determination and rejection of his blindness stuck with Charles for the rest of his life. While neighbors in Charles’s hometown of Greenville, Florida pitied the boy, Charles’ mother Retha had no patience for sympathy. ![]() To maintain Jim Crow laws and practices, southern African Americans were not offered consistent health care, but white physicians began to prognose African Americans, as they knew it could be useful for the general population.Ĭharles himself was not born blind, but slowly started losing his vision at the age of four, due to what was later diagnosed as glaucoma. However, Charles was born in a time when blind and visual impairment was becoming less common in the United States. This formulation casts blindness as the mark of a cruel fate which caps the singer’s degradation and alienates him from his community.”Īn albumen silver print of Blind Tom Wiggins.īorn into slavery, Wiggins performed throughout the United States. Adding the word “blind” to these musicians’ names served to make them stereotyped “others.” One form of a “blindness myth,” Joseph Witek observed, “is that of the suffering blues singer begging with a tin cup. However, the word “blind” functioned as a professional nickname used to market and exploit their disability. Before Charles was even born, many blind African American musicians established national reputations, including pianists Blind Tom Wiggins and singer-guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson. As many African Americans were living in insufficient conditions, there were a significant number of blind African Americans during this period. In general, blindness was closely linked with poverty. The number of blind and visually impaired Americans greatly varied across race and economic class. Throughout the mid-19th century and continuing well into the 20th century, medical treatment and information were not equally available to Americans. Perhaps that’s in part because he disregarded his own disability he stalwartly refused to let it limit him. However, not much has been written on Charles’ advocacy for people with disabilities. Martin Luther King, Jr., and even refused to play for segregated concerts in 1961, after receiving a letter from Paine College’s student president. Charles also lent his voice to the civil rights movement: he provided financial support to Dr. ![]() He defied genre categorization and frequently intertwined R&B, pop, gospel, and country music in various combinations. Ray Charles broke down many barriers both as a musician and an African American. ![]()
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