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neared, people with disabilities—though no longer viewed as having inexplicable illnesses—found themselves subject to stereotypes, possessing few legal protections, and often confined to medical facilities. On May 29th, 1935, six people with various physical impairments launched a sit-in protest at a government building in New York City, occupying the office of Emergency Relief Bureau director Oswald W. Knauth. These individuals—in perhaps the first instance of civil disobedience pertaining to disability rights—had banded together to fight existing standards that classified those with disabilities as “physically handicapped” and hampered their efforts to find employment. The demonstrators grew in number on the following day, and attracted a large
ganizations for PWD, such as the American Foundation for the Blind. However, most early efforts to change the prevailing conditions faced by PWD were largely unsuccessful, as they simply failed to resonate or gain legitimacy among most Americans. In a remarkable irony, the government that—according to the protesters—was discriminating against those with disabilities was headed by wheelchair user Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a polio survivor. As evidenced by the conduct of President Roosevelt, who went to great lengths to hide the extent of his condition, having a disability was still a source of stigmatization and social handicap during that time. According to Barnartt and Scotch, it would take the emergence of the civil rights movement, years later, to provide a frame of reference through which PWD
We all felt beautiful. We all felt powerful. It didn’t matter if you were mentally retarded, blind, or deaf. Everybody who came out felt, We are beautiful, we are powerful, we are strong, we are important.
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amount of media coverage before they ended their protest on June 6th. The resulting publicity helped the demonstrators rent office space, elect officers, and formally unite under the name “League of the Physically Handicapped”. According to sociologists Sharon Barnartt and Richard Scotch, the formation of the LPH was just one of numerous events during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that laid the necessary groundwork for more extensive future protests. Barnartt and Scotch discuss the emergence of a “collective consciousness” among some people with disabilities that took place over this period, representing their increased sense of a shared identity as well as a heightened awareness of discrimination aimed at them. The World Wars, Barnartt and Scotch claim, contributed notably to this development by vastly increasing the ranks of the disabled (due to the return of wounded veterans) and heightening feelings of deprivation among those with disabilities. Many PWD experienced the frustration of employment discrimination firsthand, as they were asked to work during the wars due to the need for labor, only to lose these jobs once the fighting had ceased. In addition to the LPH, these years witnessed the founding and development of numerous other or-
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could gain public acceptance of their actions. In the fall semester of 1962, a quadriplegic polio survivor named Ed Roberts enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley. Roberts had been a healthy child until the disease left him unable to walk and dependent on an iron lung. At first he felt helpless and ashamed, but after months of treatment, he obtained his high school diploma and decided to seek a political science degree. Encouraged by his activist mother and a sympathetic adviser, Roberts chose Berkeley, a school with a top program in the field. Though the school initially refused to take Roberts due to his condition, it ultimately backed down, leaving it up to him to make arrangements for himself. The campus was filled with rooms inaccessible to wheelchair users, and since Roberts’ iron lung was too heavy to be placed in a dormitory, he was forced to live in the university’s hospital. Still, Roberts thrived, and as word got out, other students with severe disabilities joined him. Encouraged by the civil rights and antiwar protests that were taking place, Roberts and other disabled students formed a political group called the Rolling Quads. Anxious to end his hospital confinement, Roberts flew to D.C. to lobby for students with disabilities,