Every person need to be taught disability history
Not the “oh Einstein was probably autistic” or the sanitized Helen Keller story. but this history disabled people have made and has been made for us.
Teach them about Carrie Buck, who was sterilized against her will, sued in 1927, and lost because “Three generations of imbeciles [were] enough.”
Teach them about Judith Heumann and her associates, who in 1977, held the longest sit in a government building for the enactment of 504 protection passed three years earlier.
Teach them about all the Baby Does, newborns in 1980s who were born disabled and who doctors left to die without treatment, who’s deaths lead to the passing of The Baby Doe amendment to the child abuse law in 1984.
Teach them about the deaf students at Gallaudet University, a liberal arts school for the deaf, who in 1988, protested the appointment of yet another hearing president and successfully elected I. King Jordan as their first deaf president.
Teach them about Jim Sinclair, who at the 1993 international Autism Conference stood and said “don’t mourn for us. We are alive. We are real. And we’re here waiting for you.”
Teach about the disability activists who laid down in front of buses for accessible transit in 1978, crawled up the steps of congress in 1990 for the ADA, and fight against police brutality, poverty, restricted access to medical care, and abuse today.
Teach about us.
Oh! Oh! I got one! Meet Edward V. Roberts-
Ed Roberts was one of the founding minds behind the Independent Living movement. Roberts was born in 1939, and contracted polio at age 14, two years before the vaccine that ended the polio epidemic came out (vaccinate your kids). Polio left Roberts almost completely paralyzed, with only the use of two fingers and a few toes. At night, he had to sleep in an iron lung, and he would often rest there during the day as well. Other times of the day, he breathed by using his face and neck muscles to force air in and out of his lungs.
Despite this being the fifties, Roberts' mother insisted that her son continue schooling. Her support helped him face his fear of being stared at and ridiculed at school, going from thinking of himself as a "hopeless cripple" to seeing himself as a "star." When his high school tried to deny him his diploma because he had never completed driver's ed, Roberts and his mother fought the school and won.
This marked the beginning of his career as an activist.
Roberts had to fight the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation for support to attend college, because his counselor thought he was too severely disabled to ever work or live independently. Roberts did go to school, however, first attending the College of San Marino. He was then accepted to UC Berkeley, but when the school learned that he was disabled, they tried to backtrack. "We've tried cripples before, and it didn't work," one dean famously said. The school tried to argue the dorms couldn't accommodate his iron lung, so Roberts was instead housed in an empty wing of the school's Cowell Hospital.
Roberts' admittance paved the way for other disabled students who were also housed in the new Cowell Dorm. The group called themselves "The Rolling Quads," and together they fought and advocated for better disability support, more ramps and accessible architecture like curb cut outs, founded the first formally recognized student-led disability services program in the country, and even managed to successfully oust a rehabilitation counselor who had threatened two of the Quads with expulsion for their protests.
After graduation from his master's, he served a number of other roles- he taught political science at a number of different colleges over the years, served on the board for the Center for Independent Living, confounded the World Institute on Disability with Judith E. Heumann and Joan Leon, and continued to advocate for better disability services and infrastructure at his alma mater of UC Berkeley.
Roberts also took part in and helped organize sit ins to force the federal government to enforce section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which stated that people with disabilities should not be excluded from activities, denied the right to receive benefits, or be discriminated against, from any program that uses federal financial assistance, solely because of their disability. The sit-in occupied the offices of the Carter Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare building in San Francisco and lasted 28 days. The protestors were supported by local gay rights organizations and the Black Panthers. Roberts and other activists spoke, and their arguments were so compelling that members of the department of health joined the sit in. Reagan was forced to acknowledge and implement the policies and rules that section 504 required. This national recognition helped to pave the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990.
Roberts died of cardiac arrest in 1995 at the age of 54, leaving behind a proud legacy of advocacy and activism. Not bad for a "hopeless cripple" whose rehab counselor thought he was too disabled to ever work.
Visit the post for more.
Here is a great online course for disability history!!
“Black Panthers saved the 504 sit-in.” – Corbett O’Toole, participant in the 1977 504 protest in San Francisco
”Along with all fair and good-thinking people, The Black Panther Party gives its full support to Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act and calls for President Carter and HEW Secretary Califano to sign guidelines for its implementation as negotiated and agreed to on January 21 of this year. The issue here is human rights – rights of meaningful employment, of education, of basic human survival – of an oppressed minority, the disabled and handicapped. Further, we deplore the treatment accorded to the occupants of the fourth floor and join with them in full solidarity.” – Black Panther Party media release on the protest, from website Disability Social History (click thru to see pictures of BPP news about the success of the protest!)
According to disability rights activist Corbett O’Toole, these advocates “showed us what being an ally could be. We would never have succeeded without them. They are a critical part of disability history and yet their story is almost never told.”
They were running a soup kitchen for their black community in East Oakland and they showed up every single night and brought us dinner. The FBI [guarding the building entrance] was like, “What the hell are you doing?” They answered, “Listen, we’re the Panthers. You want to starve these people out, fine, we’ll go tell the media that that’s what you’re doing, and we’ll show up with our guns to match your guns and we’ll talk about who’s going to talk to who about the food. Otherwise, just let us feed these people and we won’t give you any trouble” – and that’s basically what they did.
Please read up on the Black Panthers' involvement in the 504 movement, they were integral to the occupation lasting as long as it did and were INCREDIBLY ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS! They are more than a footnote in that part of disability history, and I want more people to know this part of their legacy!
Read about Bradley Lomax (and his aid and fellow organizer Chuck Johnson, who I've struggled finding sources on outside of articles on Mr. Lomax :( ) here and here! Together the two were integral in bringing Black Panther Party organizing and activism to the disability rights movement!
I wish there were more information on Mr. Johnson, as his work is dear to my heart as someone who also requires caregiving. ;3; <3 Considering how little information there even was available online for Mr. Lomax just ten years ago I am hoping we get more coverage of Mr. Johnson's contributions to this important part of disability history sooner rather than later. I do not want his activism ignored!
Do not let the full richness of our history be whitewashed! The Black Panthers kept the protestors fed, they HEAVILY publicized the protests in their paper The Black Panther and agitated on the protest and protestors behalf, and paid organizers' way to Washington to pressure the HEW secretary to actually sign the damn act. In turn, the Panthers did this because the Oakland ILC did outreach to them, and helped Mr. Lomax with transportation. This is solidarity buried under focus on the white organizers. Please please please cherish it. Keep it close to your heart, read about it, celebrate it, share it!
Obviously there were more Panthers who helped but I have already lost the first draft of this and I'm starting to fade -- here's two more detailed sources to read for more, and I highly recommend you do!
The Intersections and Divergences of Disability and Race
Lomax's Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504
