The history of disability rights is often told as a recent one, but it is not. In this talk, Sari Altschuler tells the story of how this dramatic transformation occurred. Tracing a literary, legal, and cultural history of the relationship between disability, race, and citizenship, Altschuler will show how disability helped to shape US citizenship and, in turn, how the formation of US citizenship shaped disability. The stigmatizing ways race came together with mental and physical difference to deny Americans rights were, however, not inevitable. As we seek to imagine the relationship between disability and citizenship more equitably and expansively for ourselves, we should begin by remembering that many disabled and nondisabled Americans before us did, too.