Lost in a Desert World

Roland Johnson spent half his childhood at Pennhurst State School and Hospital for the Mentally Retarded, where he was sexually abused and, essentially, enslaved. When he'd won his freedom as a young adult, he spent several years putting his life back together and learning to control the anger his experience at Pennhurst had kindled in him. And then he happened upon the Philadelphia-based group Speaking For Ourselves. He quickly rose to the presidency and, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose career he'd followed and whose death he learned of at Pennhurst, was soon traveling across the US and to Canada and England to speak to other fledgling self-advocacy groups and at conferences of professionals, and to work toward establishing a US national self-advocacy organization. Originally published after Johnson's death by Speaking For Ourselves, the group Johnson headed up for much of the 1990s, the book sold out its first small printing. One reviewer called it ". . .a work of pioneering authenticity." Karl Williams has also written a play of the same title, based on the book. "Roland Johnson was a friend and a hero of mine. He was a great pioneer of the frontier of human being. Read his book." - Justin Dart, "Father of the of the ADA” (Americans With Disabilities Act)