Able to Lead: Disablement, Radicalism, and the Political Life of E.T. Kingsley

Eugene T. Kingsley led an extraordinary life. Born in mid-nineteenth-century New York, by 1890 he was a railway brakeman in Montana. An accident left him a double amputee and politically radicalized, and his socialist activism that followed took him north of the border where he eventually was considered by the government to be "one of the most dangerous men in Canada." Able to Lead traces Kingsley's political journey from soapbox speaker in San Francisco to prominence in the Socialist Party of Canada. Ravi Malhotra and Benjamin Isitt illuminate a figure who shaped a generation of Canadian leftists during a time when it was uncommon for disabled people to lead. They examine Kingsley's endeavours for justice against the Northern Pacific Railway, and how Kingsley's life intersected with immigration law and free speech rights. Able to Lead brings a turbulent period in North American history to life, highlighting Kingsley's profound legacy for the twenty-first-century political left. --Publisher's description. Contents: Kingsley in Context: Labour History, Legal History, and Critical Disability Theory -- Incident at Spring Gulch: Disablement, Litigation, and the Birth of a Revolutionary -- California Radical: Fighting for Free Speech and Running for Congress in the Socialist Labor Party -- Crossing the Line: Kingsley Arrives in British Columbia -- No Compromise: Kingsley and the Socialist Party of Canada -- Kingsley and the State: Clashes with Authority in Early-Twentieth-Century Canada -- The Twilight Years: Kingsley and the 1920s Canadian Left.

OCLC: 1162520318