In the 1800's up to the middle of the 1900's, if a person was different from the norm or had an intellectual disability, they would be put into a residential home. This then separated them from the real world. The residential housing was overcrowded and really didn't care for the people residing inside them. One historical residential house that was documented was Willowbrook and that was an eye opener to people. This historical event could be compared to separating the African Americans and the whites during the Civil Rights Movement. Instead, they separated the people with intellectual disabilities from people functioning on a normal level. They thought that by putting "these" people in a separate place, it would prevent them from having offspring's, which would decline the number of people with an intellectual disability, also known as eugenics. …show more content…
Smith and N. Tyler (2010) talk about the history of intellectual disabilities and presents "Such negative attitudes contributed to the terrible conditions that prevailed in institutions for people with intellectual disabilities - conditions that were hidden from the public until 1965 when Burton Blat published the horrific photographic essay 'Christmas in Purgatory' " (p.