On 5 April 1977, about 150 people with disabilities and their allies streamed into the federal building at 50 United Nations Plaza in San Francisco. They had come with little more than toothbrushes and their medicines, and they did not leave for 26 days.
A law with no teeth
Four years earlier, Congress had passed the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. One short passage, Section 504, said that no qualified person could be excluded from, or discriminated against in, any programme that received federal money solely because of a disability. It was a landmark civil rights protection for disabled Americans. But a law needs regulations to be enforced, and for four years the government did not issue them.
Disability groups lost patience. They warned the new Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, that if he did not sign the regulations unchanged by 4 April 1977, they would act. The deadline passed. The next day protesters occupied the department's offices in Washington and in regional offices across the country. Most protests ended within a day or two. In San Francisco, they stayed.
The girl called a fire hazard
One of the leaders inside was Judith Heumann, then 29. She was born in Philadelphia in 1947 and grew up in Brooklyn. Her parents, Werner and Ilse, were German Jews who had been sent to America alone as teenagers to escape the Nazis, and both lost their parents in the Holocaust. At 18 months Judy caught polio and used a wheelchair for the rest of her life. When a doctor suggested placing her in an institution, as was common then, her parents refused.
When she was five, the local school principal turned her away, calling her a fire hazard. She was taught at home for a few hours a week until she was nine. Years later, after earning a college degree and passing her exams, she was again called a fire hazard, this time by New York City's Board of Education, which refused her a teaching license. She sued, won the support of the press, and the board settled and granted her the license. She went on to teach at the same school she had attended as a child and co-founded Disabled in Action, a group run by and for disabled people.
Twenty-six days
Heumann had moved to Berkeley, California, where she helped found the Center for Independent Living. With the organiser Kitty Cone and others, she had spent months building alliances with community groups across the Bay Area, and that work held the occupation together. The Black Panther Party brought hot meals every day. Glide Memorial Church, labour unions and many other groups lent support, and the Salvation Army provided mattresses and blankets. The city brought in portable showers, and supportive members of Congress held a hearing inside the building.
Life inside was hard and transforming. Many protesters had come without the attendants who usually helped them, so they helped each other. Blind protesters assisted people who could not move their arms, who in turn read printed material aloud. People learned about disabilities other than their own and formed strong bonds.
On 28 April 1977, Califano signed the regulations. The protesters left the building in triumph on 4 May. The occupation is believed to be the longest nonviolent sit-in at a federal building.
“Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives.”Judith Heumann, disability rights activist, Interview with Joseph Shapiro, 1987, quoted by NPR, 2023
From 504 to the world
Section 504 became the model for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which President George H. W. Bush signed on 26 July 1990. Heumann had lobbied and testified for it, and she was on the White House lawn when it became law. The ADA extended the principle of equal access to jobs, public transport, shops, restaurants and services across American life. Ramps, accessible buses, captioning and curb cuts, now so ordinary that many people hardly notice them, owe much to the movement she helped lead.
Heumann kept working for the rest of her life. She co-founded the World Institute on Disability in 1983. From 1993 to 2001 she served in the U.S. Department of Education, overseeing the federal programmes for special education and rehabilitation. From 2002 to 2006 she was the World Bank's first adviser on disability and development, and she helped develop the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. From 2010 to 2017 she was the first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights at the U.S. State Department, and she travelled to more than 30 countries to support disability rights advocates.
One in six of us
The World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people, about one in six of the world's population, live with a significant disability. The UN convention Heumann helped to shape has been joined by more than 190 states parties, committing them to protect the rights of disabled people in education, work, health and public life. Between 2000 and 2015, according to NPR, 181 countries passed disability rights laws modelled on the ADA.
Late in her life, Heumann's story reached a new generation. Her memoir, Being Heumann, came out in 2020, and the same year the documentary Crip Camp, which features her as a young camp counsellor and activist, brought her story to a wide new audience. She died in Washington, D.C., in March 2023, at the age of 75.
Slowly changing the world
Heumann always insisted that disability itself was not the problem. What held people back, she argued, were the barriers that society builds, from steps without ramps to closed minds. That simple idea, carried by the people who would not leave the building in 1977, opened doors for millions.
In 2015, speaking to disability advocates from 33 countries at a State Department conference in Washington, she summed up her life's work in a few words: "We are slowly changing the world." Every new ramp, every accessible classroom and every disabled child who grows up expecting to be included proves her right.
People in this story
Sources & further reading
- Judith Heumann, Jewish Women's Archive Encyclopedia
- Activist Judy Heumann led a reimagining of what it means to be disabled (Joseph Shapiro, NPR), GBH News
- The World Mourns the Passing of Judy Heumann, Disability Rights Activist, Judith Heumann (official site)
- Section 504 sit-ins, Wikipedia
- Disability: fact sheet, World Health Organization
- Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Wikipedia
- Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Wikipedia
Researched from the sources above and checked against them. Spotted an error? Tell us.
Tikkun olam in action. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.
