The Northern Kentucky branch of the NAACP and the Covington Human Rights Commission hosted a community event at 6th District Elementary School on Friday in honor of Women’s History Month. Called “Community Speaks: Life of the Vision Impaired,” the event highlighted the accomplishments of Covington women who either had some degree of visual impairment or who have been integral in advocating for people with visual impairment.
“We don’t really understand what it is to not be fully-sighted,” said former Covington Commissioner and member of the Covington Human Rights Commission Pam Mullins.
As such, Mullins said, addressing the problems pertinent to people with visual impairment inevitably entailed political action.
“You need to understand that in order for changes to happen, generally, some type of advocacy has to take place because folks don’t necessarily want things to change,” Mullins said.
The event highlighted the accomplishments of four women: Teresa Meyer, who prefers to go by Teri, Gerry Slusher, Diane Elizabeth Jennings and Helen Hutchins.
Meyer spoke first. Meyer’s notable accomplishments include the writing of a bill enabling access to service dogs of all kinds–not just seeing-eye dogs–in businesses throughout Kentucky, which was passed into law in 2002.
She also penned, along with former Covington Commissioner Michelle Williams, a local version of the Crown Act, which protects people from employment discrimination based on the texture and style of their hair. That ordinance passed in Covington in 2020, the first Kentucky city to pass such a policy, and Meyer later advocated for similar version of the law at the state-level.
The bill passed in the House but later stalled in the Senate. Finally, she wrote a bill that mandated the addition of white cane safety into the Kentucky Driver’s Manual, which states that drivers must yield the right of way to pedestrians using white canes and service animals. The law passed in 2020 after three years of advocacy.
“If you want something done, and nobody’s doing it, do it yourself,” Meyer said at the end of her statement.
Meyer is also an artist, in spite of being legally blind. Four of her art pieces were raffled off to attendees as door prizes at the end of the event.
The next speaker was Gerry Slusher. Slusher serves on the Covington Human Rights Commission and formerly served as the executive director for the Disabilities Coalition of Northern Kentucky. Today, she serves as the president of the Northern Kentucky Council of the Blind. She also wrote a grant that funded the purchase of a braille printer in Covington, which is currently housed at the Center for Great Neighborhoods and is open to community use.
Slusher talked about her life growing up, especially her experience traveling to be educated at specialized schools for the blind, which weren’t common when she was growing up. It was an experience that inevitably meant leaving home for long periods.
“We were children that were sent away from home,” Slusher said. “We had to leave our homes at five years, go to the school and learn to meet new people, make new friends, be with house parents who really weren’t our parents, and we had to adapt and overcome.”
Lastly, mother and daughter pair Hutchins and Jennings spoke. Both are accomplished musicians.
“I’m self-taught,” Hutchins said, “but I played 55 years at my church and played 27 years at the funeral home.”
Jennings is also a novelist and spent a portion of her time talking about her series of romantic novels, which focus on the life of Antoinette Hunter, a blind piano musician of color who falls in love with with a white folk guitarist. Jennings’ music has been featured on several news outlets, and she even sang the national anthem at a Cincinnati Reds game in 1987.
Jennings sang an a capella rendition of her original song “Hey, summer” before the talks began, which you can watch below.
Hutchins talked about the challenges of raising a child with visual impairment in a society not built with them in mind; Jennings went through similar challenges growing up blind as Slusher in that she frequently had to travel to get specialized education. In spite of her challenges, Jennings eventually graduated from Thomas More with a degree in English in 1977.
“As a parent, you do what you have to do to help your child,” Hutchins said.
“Their stories are not just stories of the past,” said Shena Thompson of the NAACP. “They are narratives that continue to inspire, empower and ignite change.”