On 5 April 1977 a group of roughly 150 disability rights activists took over the 4th floor of a federal building in San Francisco and refused to leave until Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (which had been signed into law in September 1973 by President Richard Nixon) was implemented, protecting the rights of people with disabilities.
While Section 504 stated, “No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States shall solely on the basis of his handicap, be excluded from the participation, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” it had not been implemented under Nixon or President Gerald Ford. President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), Joseph Califano, assembled a task force to review the regulations, which prompted the 25-day sit in, as protesters demanded the law be implemented without delay and without changes.
According to organizer Judith Heumann, “Blind people, deaf people, wheelchair users, disabled veterans, people with developmental and psychiatric disabilities and many others, all came together.” The experience created a strong sense of solidarity. “We overcame years of parochialism.”
The demonstrators received support from outside groups, such as the Black Panther Party, which provided them with food throughout the sit-in.
On 28 April 1977, Califano signed the Section 504 regulations unchanged and according to organizer and participant Kitty Cone (who celebrated her 33rd birthday on the 2nd day of the sit-in), “for the first time, disability really was looked at as an issue of civil rights rather than an issue of charity and rehabilitation at best, pity at worst.“
