[Nfbwv-talk] National Representative

[charlene]

It is with great pleasure that I announce that Parnell Diggs of South Carolina will
be the national representative at the convention of the National Federation of the
Blind of West Virginia to take place at the McLure House in Wheeling the weekend
of September 10, 11, and 12, 2010.  To learn more about Parnell, read the following:
Parnell Diggs
(Attorney, Musician, Family Man)
Parnell Diggs was part of the initial generation of Braille-reading students to enter
first grade in the public schools of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was 1975, and
the president of the United States had just signed into law the Education for All
Handicapped Children Act, known today as the Individuals with Disabilities Education
Act (IDEA), the landmark legislation guaranteeing all disabled children the right
to a "free, appropriate, public education in the least restrictive environment."
Diggs had been born blind because of detached retinas, and two things were absolutely
certain. First, public school officials in Charlotte at the time did not want to
admit him to a classroom with sighted children, and second, they had no choice but
to do so if the school system was to qualify for public funding. Further complicating
the matter was the fact that Bill and Nancy Diggs simply refused to accept the limitations
for their son that society ordinarily placed on blind children.
Young Diggs did not disappoint. He unequivocally demonstrated that he could acquire
the skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic alongside his sighted peers. But he
always looked forward to the end of the school day. In the yards, woods, and streets
of his childhood, he climbed trees, rode bikes, shot BB guns, and played quarterback
on the neighborhood Pop Warner football team after his family relocated to Columbia,
South Carolina.
He taught his younger brother Holland how to play first base, how to step out of
the batter's box until he was ready for the pitch, and how to wrestle. Holland was
sighted, and he taught Parnelli--his family called him Parnelli-the things in life
most of us take for granted: how to dance, shrug his shoulders, and give the thumbs-up
sign. They remained close until Holland's untimely death in 2005 at the age of thirty-three.
In high school Diggs participated on the varsity wrestling team and made the South
Carolina Honors All-State Chorus, and, while his friends were earning spending cash
bagging groceries, he was earning good money singing and playing the guitar in Columbia
area restaurants.
In 1989 Diggs met Kenneth Jernigan and Donald Capps, two leaders who had dedicated
their lives to helping their blind brothers and sisters. Jernigan and Capps shared
a message of promise and achievement for the blind and talked about how the blind
could accomplish more through collective action. Diggs quickly embraced their reasoning
and passion. Before long he recognized that the full integration of blind people
into society would be his life's work; and though he was busy double-majoring in
political science and religious studies, working, and maintaining a social calendar,
it seemed to him that the best way to help himself as a blind person was to become
a member of the National Federation of the Blind.
In 1991 Diggs was invited to participate in an NFB leadership seminar, where he received
intensive instruction from NFB President Marc Maurer. Diggs was strongly influenced
by Maurer's leadership style and has put much of what he learned during that seminar
into practice in carrying out his own leadership responsibilities since that time.
It was also in 1991 that Diggs attended his first National Federation of the Blind
convention during the week of July 4. Before arriving in New Orleans that summer,
he had read Dr. Floyd Matson's eleven-hundred-page history of the first fifty years
of the National Federation of the Blind, Walking Alone and Marching Together, in
its entirety and any other related materials he could find.
Diggs was learning that other blind people thought as he did: that blind people could
exceed society's expectations. But the key to full integration was acceptance by
society to the places where sighted people lived and worked. In short, he came to
know that complete social acceptance of the blind lies at the intersection of training
and opportunity.
By the summer of 1992 Diggs had completed his first year of law school and was working
as a law clerk at the South Carolina Office of Appellate Defense, the state agency
responsible for handling criminal appeals and post conviction relief applications
for indigent defendants. There he acquired the skills of legal research and oral
argument and learned to interact with clients in the facilities of the South Carolina
Department of Corrections. Walking into the Edisto Unit of the Broad River Correctional
Institution was perhaps the most memorable experience for Diggs during his time at
Appellate Defense.  This was where they housed death row inmates in the early nineties,
recalls Diggs. "There is nothing like walking through five or six sets of heavy metal
electronic doors, each set slamming behind you as you move deeper into the facility,
and never more than one set is open at a time. It created the feeling that any attempt
to escape would be futile."
Diggs accepted a position as a law clerk in a private firm in 1993 and continued
to hold this position after he was hired as a page in the South Carolina Senate.
At one point in 1994 Diggs, a newlywed, was juggling his final semester of law school
with two part-time jobs. He had married Kimberly Dawn Gossett (his high school sweetheart)
on May 22, 1993. In 1995 the couple relocated to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when
he accepted a full-time position with the South Carolina Commission for the Blind,
where he had responsibility for administering rehabilitation programs for the agency
in a four-county area. In 1997, at the age of twenty-eight, he opened a private law
practice in Myrtle Beach, where he remains in practice today.
Diggs was first elected to the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina
board of directors in 1992, and he has been reelected every two years since. He was
appointed by Governor Jim Hodges to the governing board of the South Carolina Commission
for the Blind in 1999 and again in 2002 and was twice confirmed by the state senate.
This appointment made him the only person ever to have been a client, an employee,
and a member of the governing board of the South Carolina Commission for the Blind.
In 2000 Donald Capps announced that he would not seek reelection as president of
the National Federation of the Blind of South Carolina and recommended that Diggs
be elected in his stead. He was elected unanimously and has held the presidency ever
since. In 2007 the nation's blind community elected him unanimously to the board
of directors of the National Federation of the Blind.  In 2010 NFB President Maurer
appointed Diggs to serve as national chairman of the NFB Imagination Fund, where
he inaugurated the Race for Independence, a campaign to make mainstream technology,
including a vehicle, fully accessible to blind people.
As a private practitioner Diggs has argued before the United States Court of Appeals
in the 4th and 8th Circuits and has represented some three hundred clients in federal
administrative proceedings. While he is no longer playing requests in local restaurants,
music continues to be an important part of his life. He sings first tenor in the
Carolina Master Chorale in Myrtle Beach and serves on the organization's board of
directors. Diggs sang the role of Remendado in the Carolina Master Chorale's production
of Georges Bizet's opera Carmen in June of 2006.
The Diggses have one son, Jordan, born on January 12, 2000. As he pondered his son's
future, Diggs made the following observation: "Jordan will be told that he is less
fortunate than other children because his dad is blind-but, thanks to the National
Federation of the Blind, he won't believe it. Blindness is not a tragedy. With proper
training and opportunity, blindness can be reduced to the level of a physical nuisance.
I am determined that this is the message of blindness that my son will hear most."


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