When the World Watched the "Indispensable" Ones Run

On July 20, 1968, one thousand athletes with intellectual disabilities stood on the infield of Soldier Field in Chicago, blinking under the summer sun. Most had never heard a crowd cheer for them. Eunice Kennedy Shriver — sister of a president, daughter of privilege — had spent years watching the world look past people like her sister Rosemary, who had been quietly institutionalized decades earlier.…