Badger Association's History

For over 80 years, the Badger Association has been offering a wide spectrum of programs and services designed to help people living with vision loss buildconfidence in their abilities so that they can live their lives more fully and independently. The Badger Association was created in 1919 due to inadequate living and working conditions people who were blind were facing at that time in Milwaukee.

September 20, 1919 will always be a memorable day in the history of the Badger Association of the Blind. It was on that day that Adam Zepp, blinded at age16 as a result of an accident, called together a small group of people who were blind and made the decision to form an organization dedicated to improving the unacceptable socioeconomic conditions under which most people who were blind were forced to live. Incorporation of the Badger Association of the Blind followed in March of 1920 and Adam Zepp was elected as the first president, a position he held most of the time until his death in 1928.

In 1919, the social and economic deprivation which people who were blind were compelled to bear almost defies description. Extreme prejudice was intensely prevalent and the stigma of blindness was impossible to escape. The greatest obstacle that the Association had to overcome was the cruel discrimination that resulted in the denial of individual rights to demonstrate the fact that blindness does not necessarily impair people’s ability to function as effective members of society.