Indiana Special Olympics and Its Portrayals of People with Intellectual Disabilities, 1969-1989

Abstract

On July 20, 1968, the first-ever International Special Olympics Games took place in Chicago, Illinois. The following year, two Indiana State University (ISU) professors established Indiana Special Olympics (ISO) and took on the task of not only planning an annual competition, but also developing training programs and smaller events throughout the state. The organization maintained headquarters on the ISU campus before relocating to Indianapolis in 1989. Over ISO’s first two decades, its small staff expanded its sports programming in the face of financial and logistical challenges. Despite being an athletics organization, ISO focused on more than improving the physical fitness of its participants. The organization intended to change society’s negative views of people with mental disabilities by increasing public awareness and societal inclusion of such individuals. In this effort, how ISO depicted people with mental disabilities had significance. This thesis explores ISO’s growth from 1969 to 1989 and argues that ISO did not create a consistent image of people with intellectual disabilities during this time period. Instead, it conveyed and implied multiple depictions that sometimes contradicted each other. The divergent portrayals reveal that ISO developed at a time when people were both maintaining historical conceptions of disability and creating new ones.