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How the Nation’s Largest Minority Became White: Race Politics and the Disability Rights Movement, 1970–1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 June 2018

Jennifer L. Erkulwater
Jennifer L. Erkulwater*
Affiliation:
University of Richmond
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Abstract:

Scholars point out a tension between racial justice and disability rights activism. Although racial minorities are more likely to become disabled than whites, both disability activism and the historiography of disability politics tend to focus on the experience and achievements of whites. This article examines how disability rights activists of the 1970s sought to build a united movement of all people with disabilities and explains why these efforts were unable to overcome cleavages predicated on race. Activists drew from New Left ideas of community and self-help as well as the New Right rhetoric of market freedoms to articulate a vision of liberation for people with disabilities. Though they yearned for racial solidarity, in practice, activists could not overcome institutions that separated antipoverty and racial politics from disability policy, nor could they figure out how to incorporate minority voices in an identity-based movement forged around disability rather than color.

Keywords

Disability RightsAmerican Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD)New Deal LiberalismIndependent LivingDisability Activism
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 367 - 399
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2018 

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References

NOTES

1. Though several excellent narratives of the Section 504 protests exist, this account is based on Susan Schweik, “Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504,” in Foundations of Disability Studies, ed. Matthew Wappett and Katrina Arndt (New York, 2013), 105–24. Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1255,CrossRefGoogle Scholar also emphasizes the extent to which civil rights and disability activists were part of a “matrix” of overlapping labor and social justice groups. The point is further underscored in the oral histories of Kitty Cone, Donald Galloway, Michael Fuss, and Johnnie Lacy. Kitty Cone was initially a member of the Socialist Workers Party in Chicago and a feminist activist before coming to work at the Center for Independent Living, and Donald Galloway was an active member of the NAACP and National Federation of the Blind before joining the CIL. Michael Fuss was active in the antinuclear arms movement, while Johnnie Lacy was a community and welfare rights organizer. See Kitty Cone, “Political Organizer for Disability Rights, 1970s–1990s, and Strategist for Section 504 Demonstrations, 1977,” an oral history conducted in 1996–98 by David Landes, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 66–68 (hereafter Cone, Oral History); Galloway, Donald, “The Independent Living Movement in Berkeley and Colorado: Blind Advocacy and Minority Inclusion,” an oral history conducted by Pelka, Fred in 2001, in Blind Services and Advocacy and the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2004, 67–68, 72–73 (hereafter Galloway, Oral History);Google Scholar Fuss, Michael, “Attendant for Cowell Residents, Assistant Director of the Physically Disabled Students’ Program, 1966–1972,” an oral history conducted in 1997 by Bonney, Sharon in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume II, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 51–52 (hereafter Fuss, Oral History);Google Scholar Johnnie Lacy, Director, “Community Resources for Independent Living: An African-American Woman’s Perspective on the Independent Living Movement in the Bay Area, 1960s–1980s,” an oral history conducted in 1998 by David Landes, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 43–44, 49, 60, 66 (hereafter Lacy, Oral History).

2. Lukin, Josh, “Disability and Blackness,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed., ed. Davis, Lennard J. (New York, 2013), 308–34;Google Scholar Bell, Chris, “Introducing White Disability Studies: A Modest Proposal,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Davis, Lennard J. (New York, 2006), 275–82.Google Scholar A recent effort to address the paucity of scholarly attention to the black disability experience in disability studies is Dunhamn, Jane, Harris, Jerome, Jarrett, Shancia, Moore, Leroy, Nishida, Akemi, Price, Margaret, Robinson, Britney, and Schalk, Sami, “Developing and Reflecting on a Black Disability Studies Pedagogy: Work from the National Black Disability Coalition,” Disability Studies Quarterly 35, no. 2 (2015): online document at http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4637/3933.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Brune, Jeffrey A., “Minority,” in Keywords for Disability Studies, ed. Adams, Rachel, Reiss, Benjamin, and Serlin, Davis (New York, 2015), 122–24,Google Scholar describes the emergence of minority consciousness and its impact on disability studies and disability activism. Ed Roberts is quoted in Brune, 122.

4. Heyer, Katherina, Rights Enabled: The Disability Revolution, from the U.S. to Germany and Japan, to the United Nations (Ann Arbor, 2015), 51–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Bagenstos, Samuel R., “The Americans with Disabilities Act as Welfare Reform,” William and Mary Law Review 44, no. 3 (2003): 921–1027.Google Scholar On racial coding and the rhetoric of the New Right, see Edsall, Thomas Byrne with Edsall, Mary D., Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York, 1991);Google Scholar Harvey-Lopez, Ian, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Wrecked the Middle Class (Oxford, 2014).Google Scholar

6. Hall, Gloria T., Scott, Patricia Bell, and Smith, Barbara, All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave (New York, 1982),Google Scholar called attention to the contributions of nonwhite women to the feminist movement and feminist studies and opened up intersectional feminist analysis. Cathy Cohen points to a similar estrangement between contemporary queer activists and the voices of people of color. See Cohen, Cathy J., “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 3, no. 4 (1997): 437–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Lukin suggests that African Americans are reluctant to embrace disability rights because blackness in the United States has so often been equated with physical and mental deficits. Disability becomes just another hardship that blacks must deal with. Lukin, “Disability and Blackness,” 309. The ambivalence is a continuing one. See The Harriet Tubman Collective, “The Vision for Black Lives is Incomplete without Disability Solidarity, For Harriet blog, September 29, 2016, online document at http://www.forharriet.com/2016/09/the-vision-for-black-lives-is.html#axzz4m9cOsLcN (last accessed 7 July 2017); Luticha Doucette, “If You’re in a Wheelchair, Segregation Lives,” New York Times, 17 May 2017, online document at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/17/opinion/if-youre-in-a-wheelchair-segregation-lives.html (last accessed 7 July 2016).

8. I supplement use of Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (Amherst, 2012), with oral histories in the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement collection and the materials from the CIL contained in two collections, the Center for Independent Living records and Hale Zukas papers, in the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. Although Pelka’s volume is a rich resource, it focuses on the development of the national disability rights movement. The oral histories and CIL materials in Bancroft, on the other hand, provide insight into the operations of the self-help centers and activists’ puzzling through of questions related to race relations, self-help programs, center budgets, and social policy. The oral histories include interviews with attendants and employees of the Center for Independent Living who were vital to the continuation of PDSP and the CIL and the blossoming of independent living in the Bay Area but otherwise were not known as leaders in the national disability rights movement.

9. Lukin, “Disability and Blackness,” 308.

10. The contemporary disability rights movement is actually a coalition of many smaller movements on behalf of people with different impairments, united by a core set of beliefs: namely, that the disabled are a minority group and that they have a right to live with dignity in community settings. Bagenstos, Samuel R., Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement (New Haven, 2009), 4, 11–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On independent living as the core of disability rights, see Bagenstos, Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement, 13; Richard Verville, War, Politics, and Philanthropy: The History of Rehabilitation Medicine (Lanham, Md., 2009), 195. It is worth noting that one’s choice of terms to describe people with disabilities is a complicated one. See Longmore, Paul K., “A Note on Language and the Social Identity of Disabled People,” American Behavioral Scientist 28, no. 3 (1985): 419–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In this article, I have tried to strike a balance between “people first” terminology and fluid syntax. In addition, following the convention of the National Federation of the Blind, which seeks to destigmatize blindness, I use the term “blind” and “the blind” rather than “people with visual impairments” to refer to the nonsighted. Personal communication with Anna Kresmer, archivist, National Federation of the Blind, Baltimore, 26 April 2017. Individuals who are deaf sometimes regard themselves as members of a cultural or linguistic minority rather than individuals with a hearing impairment, and thus they capitalize the word Deaf to denote the difference between deafness as an impairment and deafness as a minority identity. Not all individuals who are deaf, however, are culturally Deaf, especially in nonwhite communities. To be inclusive, therefore, I do not capitalize the word “deaf.” The Harriett Tubman Collective, online document; Susan Burch and Ian Sutherland, “Who’s Not Here Yet? American Disability History, Radical History Review 94 (2006): 127–47. Self-advocates are people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are committed to know and speak up for their right to self-determination as well as to protect others who cannot speak for themselves. Ward, Michael J. and Meyer, Roger N., “Self-Determination for People with Developmental Disabilities and Autism: Two Self-Advocates’ Perspectives,” Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities 14, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 135.Google Scholar

11. Accounts that emphasize the role of political insiders in shaping policy outcomes include: Berkowitz, Edward D., Rehabilitation: The Federal Government’s Response to Disability, 1935–1954 (New York, 1980);Google Scholar Berkowitz, Edward D., Disabled Policy: America’s Programs for the Handicapped (Cambridge, 1987);Google Scholar Scotch, Richard K., From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy (Philadelphia, 1984);Google Scholar Katzmann, Robert A., Institutional Disability: The Saga of Transportation Policy for the Disabled (Washington, D.C., 1986);Google Scholar O’Brien, Ruth, Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Chicago, 2001);Google Scholar Skretney, John D., The Minority Rights Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2002).Google Scholar Davis, Lennard J., Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest U.S. Minority Its Rights (Boston, 2015),Google Scholar emphasizes the interplay between Washington insiders and grassroots activists. While the insider accounts help us to understand how legislation is passed and why legislative intentions go awry at implementation, they are less helpful in allowing us to see what most disability activists—the grassroots volunteers and organizers, rather than the lobbyists, lawyers, or congressional staffers—tried to accomplish. Furthermore, by focusing on national legislative victories, these accounts, even Davis’s chronicle of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, risk glossing over fissures between disability groups.

12. Kemp, Evan J. Jr., “Stop ‘Caring for’ the Disabled,” Washington Post, 7 June 1981, online document at https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1981/06/07/stop-caring-for-the-disabled/2ea92fe5-8b02-4e32-a5a2-077b87da782d/?utm_term=.e8baa5b7ec82 (last accessed 9 September 2016).Google Scholar

13. Bagenstos, Law and the Contradictions, 6, 27–29, 31; Burke, Thomas F., “On the Rights Track: The Americans with Disabilities Act,” in Comparative Disadvantages? Social Regulations and the Global Economy, ed. Nivola, Pietro S. (Washington, D.C., 1997), 256–57;Google Scholar Shapiro, Joseph P., No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1993), 121.Google Scholar

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15. Ibid., 83.

16. Tony Coehlo, in U.S. Senate, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989, Hearing on S. 933 before the Subcommittee on the Handicapped, Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 101st Cong., 1st sess., 1989, 7; Sandra Swift Parrino, in U.S. House of Representatives, Americans with Disabilities Act of 1989, Hearing on H.R. 2273 Before the Subcommittee Select Education and Employment Opportunities of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 101st Cong., 1st sess., 1989, 70.

17. On disability being used as a basis for unequal treatment, see Baynton, Douglas C., “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” in The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed., ed. Davis, Lennard (New York, 2013), 17–33;Google Scholar Wright, David, Downs: The History of a Disability (Oxford, 2011);Google Scholar Erevelles, Nirmala and Minear, Andrea, “Unspeakable Offenses: Untangling Race and Disability in Discourses of Intersectionality,” Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies 4, no. 2 (2010): 127–45;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mitchell, David and Snyder, Sharon, “The Eugenic Atlantic: Race, Disability, and the Making of an International Eugenic Science, 1800–1945,” Disability and Society 18, no. 7 (2003): 843–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Though veterans and soldiers are the epitome of masculinity, early twentieth-century officials administering veteran programs frequently used disability, or bodily or mental weaknesses, as an excuse to exclude black men from the full civic benefits accorded to white men following the military. For instance, after World War I, rehabilitation officials wondered if it was worth accepting black veterans into their programs, given that their race was destined for extinction anyway. Lawrie, Paul R. D., “‘Salvaging the Negro’: Race, Rehabilitation, and the Body Politics in World War I America, 1917–1924,” in Disability Histories, ed. Burch, Susan and Rembis, Michael (Urbana, 2014), 321–34;Google Scholar Kenne, Jennifer D., “The Long Journey Home: African American World War I Veterans and Veterans’ Policies,” in Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States, ed. Ortiz, Stephen R. (Gainesville, 2012), 146–72;Google Scholar Linker, Beth, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago, 2011), 135–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar After World War II, black veterans increasingly challenged their exclusion. Even when they gained access to vocational rehabilitation services and medical care, counselors steered them toward jobs in manual labor and agricultural work that buttressed the racial hierarchy of the southern political economy. Mwachofi, Ari K., “African Americans’ Access to Vocational Rehabilitation Services after Antidiscrimination Legislation,” Journal of Negro Education 77, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 39–59;Google Scholar Jefferson, Robert F., “‘Enabled Courage’: Race, Disability, and Black World War II Veterans in Postwar America,” The Historian 65, no. 5 (September 2003): 1102–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. King and Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development,” 76–77, 82–84.

19. Cates, Jerry R., Insuring Inequality: Administrative Leadership in Social Security, 1935–1954 (Ann Arbor, 1983), 104–35;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Derthick, Martha, Policymaking for Social Security (Washington, D.C., 1979), 295–315;Google Scholar Gordon, Linda, ed., Women, the State, and Welfare (Madison, 2012);Google Scholar Katznelson, Ira, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 2005);Google Scholar Abramovitz, Mimi, Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present, rev. ed. (Boston, 1996);Google Scholar Gordon, Linda, Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (New York, 1994).Google Scholar On VR programs turning away women, see Rose, Sarah F., “‘Crippled’ Hands: Disability in Labor and Working-Class History,” Labor 2, no. 1 (2005): 27–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Fraser, Nancy and Gordon, Linda, “A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State,” Signs 19, no. 2 (1994): 309–36,CrossRefGoogle Scholar provides a trenchant analysis of how the term “dependency” is employed to stigmatize women and people of color while obfuscating and depoliticizing economic inequality between white men.

21. On these pre-1970s disability movements, see Groce, Nora, “Parent Advocacy for Disabled Children and the Disability Rights Movement: Similar Movements, Different Trajectories,” PONPO Working Paper No. 237 and ISPS Working Paper No. 2237, 1997, unpublished paper from ERIC, http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/15151/1/15151.pdf (last accessed 31 July 2016);Google Scholar Longmore, Paul K. and Goldberger, David, “The League of the Physically Handicapped and the Great Depression: A Case Study in the New Disability History,” Journal of American History 87, no. 3 (2000): 888–922;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kornbluh, Felicia, “Disability, Antiprofessionalism, and Civil Rights: The National Federation of the Blind and the ‘Right to Organize’ in the 1950s,” Journal of American History 97, no. 4 (2011): 1023–47;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Jennings, Audra, Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America (Philadelphia, 2016), esp. 119, 122–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar David Gerber’s analysis of veterans’ organizations underscores the difficulties of articulating an inclusive identity of disability. Gerber notes that prior to the 1960s, almost all veterans’ organizations were all white. The Blinded Veterans Association was a striking exception, bringing blind service members together across racial, religious, and ethnic differences. While larger veterans’ organizations eschewed involvement in divisive social issues, the BAV maintained integrated chapters and an integrated national office, and it staunchly opposed both racial segregation and anti-Semitism. The organization, however, maintained distance from civilian blind organizations, promoted separate programs for veterans, and avoided lobbying for pensions, which it regarded as feminized. Gerber, David A., “Disabled Veterans, the State, and the Experience of Disability in Western Societies, 1914–1950,” Journal of Social History 36, no. 4 (Summer 2003): 899–916, esp. 908, 910.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. On the origins of programs for disabled college students, see Rose, Sarah F., “The Right to a College Education? The GI Bill, Public Law 16, and Disabled Veterans,” Journal of Policy History 24, no. 1 (2012): 26–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the campus climate at California state universities during this period, see Elbaum, Max, “What Legacy from the Radical Internationalism of 1968?” Radical History Review 82 (Winter 2002): 37–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Bailey, Martha J. and Danzinger, Sheldon, “Legacies of the War on Poverty,” in Legacies of the War on Poverty, ed. Bailey, Martha J. and Danzinger, Sheldon (New York, 2013), 1–12.Google Scholar Kornbluh, Felicia, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2007), 27–33,Google Scholar is attentive to the connections between civil rights, labor, disabled, and antipoverty activists in California during this time period.

24. Berkowitz, Disabled Policy, 153–54.

25. For a discussion of the distinction between programs that seek to ameliorate the disadvantages of disability (such as Social Security Disability Insurance) and those that try to correct disability (like vocational rehabilitation), see Berkowitz, Disabled Policy, 153–54.

26. Stone, Deborah A., The Disabled State (Philadelphia, 1986), 90–117;Google Scholar Tani, Karen M., States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935–1972 (Cambridge, 2016), 27–56.Google Scholar

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28. For an argument that policy must be reconstructed in order to end societal discrimination against the disabled, see Hahn, Harlan, “An Agenda for Citizens with Disabilities: Pursuing Identity and Empowerment,” Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation 9 (1992): 31–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Note that Hahn anticipated the policy-feedback theories of contemporary political scientists. For a review of the literature, see Mettler, Suzanne and Soss, Joe, “The Consequences of Public Policy for Democratic Citizenship: Bridging Policy Studies and Mass Politics,” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 1 (2004): 55–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. Mary Lou Breslin in Pelka, What We Have Done, 66.

30. Denis Karuth in ibid., 64.

31. Lucy Gwin in ibid., 84–85.

32. Normalization was developed by Bengt Nirje and brought to an American audience by Wolf Wolfensberger. See Bengt Nirje, “The Normalization Principle: Implications and Comments,” British Journal of Mental Subnormality 16, no. 31 (1970): 62–70; Bengt Nirje, “The Right to Self-Determination,” in The Principle of Normalizations in Human Services, ed. Wolf Wolfensberger (Washington, D.C., 1972), 176–93; Bengt Nirje, “The Normalization Principle and Its Human Management Implications,” in Changing Patterns in Residential Services for the Mentally Retarded, ed. Robert B. Kugel and Wolf Wolfensberger (Washington, D.C., 1969), 179–95; Wolf Wolfensberger, “The Origin and Nature of Our Institutional Models,” in ibid., 59–171. Self-advocacy and self-determination are both used among people with intellectual impairments and have slightly different meanings. Self-determination means deciding what one wants, while self-advocacy is the action that individuals take to speak up for what they want and need. Ward and Meyer, “Self-Determination for People with Developmental Disabilities and Autism,” 135. Samuel Bagenstos argues that “independence” became the glue that held together a loose coalition of disability groups in the late 1980s. The term is admittedly ill-defined, but, Bagenstos argues, it had come to mean self-sufficiency and freedom from income-support programs. While I do not dispute Bagenstos’s characterization of disability rights discourse in the late 1980s, my intention here is to show that “independence” had a slightly different meaning in the 1970s, one that was much more contested and that drew from similar strands of thinking in other corners of the nascent disability rights movement. Bagenstos, Law and the Contradictions, 27–29.

33. Of independent living, Judy Heumann said in 1977, “It means being able to make independent decisions.” Quoted in Susan Stoddard Pflueger, Independent Living (Washington, D.C., December 1977), 1. Frieden, Lex, Richards, Laurel, Cole, Jean, and Baily, David, ILRU Source Book: A Technical Assistance Manual on Independent Living (Houston, 1979), 3,Google Scholar which defined independent living as is “control over one’s life based on the choice of acceptable options . . . managing one’s affairs, participating in day-to-day life in the community, fulfilling a range of social roles, and making decisions that lead to self-determination and the minimization of physical or psychological dependence on others.”

34. Quotations from DeJong, Gerben, “Independent Living: From Social Movement to Analytic Paradigm,” Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation 60, no. 10 (1979): 442.Google Scholar On the dignity of risk, see Perske, Robert, “Dignity of Risk and the Mentally Retarded,” Mental Retardation 10, no. 1 (February 1972): 24–27.Google Scholar

35. See, for instance, Frieden et al., ILRU Source Book: A Technical Assistance Manual on Independent Living, 3: “Independent living is not dependent upon programs that foster functional independence. Instead, it is based upon the individual’s ability to choose and achieve a desired lifestyle and to function freely in society.”

36. Ed Roberts, in U.S. House of Representatives, Oversight Hearings on the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Hearings, Before the Subcommittee on Select Education, of the Committee on Education and Labor, held in Berkeley and Washington, D.C., 95th Cong., 2nd sess., 5 January and 7–12 April 1978, 62 (hereafter Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973).

37. Roberts, Edward V., “The UC Berkeley Years: First Student Resident at Cowell Hospital, 1962,” an oral history conducted in 1994 by O’Hara, Susan in University of California’s Cowell Hospital Residence Program for Physically Disabled Students, 1962–1975: Catalyst for Berkeley’s Independent Living Movement, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 34 (hereafter Roberts, Oral History).Google Scholar The point is also made in Barner, Oral History, 261; Perotti, Oral History, 117–18.

38. Roberts, in Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 65.

39. “Nixon Vetoes $1.7 Billion Rehabilitation Bill,” CQ Almanac, 1972, 28th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1973), 953–58; “Third Handicapped Aid Bill Signed After Two Vetoes,” CQ Almanac, 1973, 29th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1974), 557–64; Nixon, Richard, “Veto of the Vocational Rehabilitation Bill,” 27 March 1973, online document by Peters, Gerhard and Woolley, John T., The American Presidency Project, at http://www.presidency.uscb.edu/ws/?pid=4154 (last accessed 30 June 2017);Google Scholar Verville, War, Politics, and Philanthropy, 205–7; O’Brien, Crippled Justice, 120–25; Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 42–53.

40. Despite the demise of the 1972 legislation, federal rehabilitation officials had already began moving in the direction of serving severely disabled individuals. The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation tried to keep control of rehabilitation activities, but as the War on Poverty came to emphasize rehabilitation of the poor, different offices within HEW vied for control of programs for individuals too disabled for employment. The Public Health Service Administration and the Welfare Administration both wanted control of independent living. The PHSA argued that they had jurisdiction over programs for people with medical conditions, while WA claimed programs that provided cash assistance and social services programs for the poor. As a compromise, OVR director Mary Switzer agreed to a six-month extended period of evaluation so that people with severe disabilities might be more closely evaluated to determine eligibility. During this period of extended evaluation, clients could receive vocational rehabilitation services even though they might not eventually qualify for the program given the severity of their impairments. The provision became part of the Narcotic Addict Rehabilitation Act of 1966. For activists, the provisions did not go far enough in reorienting VR away from outcome-focused norms that, they believed, devalued the worth of people with severe disabilities. The 1972 legislation simply would have given statutory authorization for independent living. Verville, War, Politics, and Philanthropy, 161–63.

41. Center for Independent Living, “Service Areas,” 1977–1978, 3, in Center for Independent Living records, BANC MSS 2000/43c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Carton 20, Folder 43 (hereafter CIL records).

42. Mary Lou Breslin, in Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 128; Phil Draper, in ibid., 213. The image of VR as a factory is repeated in Center for Independent Living, “Service Areas,” 6, 16.

43. Judy Heumann, in Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 79.

44. Nosek, Peg, Narita, Yayoi, Dart, Yoshiko, and Dart, Justin, A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements (Houston, 1982), 8–9, 20–21.Google Scholar

45. DeJong, “Independent Living,” 439.

46. Ibid., 443.

47. Nosek et al., A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements, 2, and Margaret L. Shreve, Patricia A. Spiller, Eric L. Griffin, Nancy Waldron, and Lynda Stolzman, “Consumer Control in Independent Living,” Center for Resource Management and the National Council on Independent Living, South Hampton, N.H., 1988, 6, posted at http://www.mwcil.org/home/files/discconsumer_control_in_independent_living_manualedited.pdf (last accessed 28 May 2016).

48. The quote is from a letter to rehabilitation advocate and friend to polio survivors Gini Laurie and is repeated several times in websites of independent living centers documenting the philosophy and history of the movement. See, for instance, Danny Housley, “The Life of Ed Roberts,” I Live With a Disability, n.d., online document at http://ilivewithadisability.com/ed-roberts/ (last accessed 12 May 2016); Marin Center for Independent Living, “Ed Roberts: The Father of Independent Living,” n.d., online document at http://www.marincil.org/who_we_are/ed_roberts.php (last accessed 12 May 2016); ILUSA, “Ed Roberts: The Father of Independent Living,” n.d., online document at http://www.ilusa.com/links/022301ed_Roberts.htm (last accessed 12 May 2016); Alicia Ouellettee, Bioethics and Disability: Toward a Disability Conscious Bioethics (Cambridge, 2011), 330 n. 26.

49. Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia, 2001), 39, 50; Shapiro, No Pity, 36, 49.

50. Hale Zukas, “History of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL),” 1975, reprinted and posted online at http://www.independentliving.org/docs3/zukas.html (last accessed 12 May 2016); U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, “History of the Federal TRIO Programs,” 2011, online document at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/trio/triohistory.html (last accessed 18 April 2016); Brian Woods and Nick Watson, “Power to Independence: A Historical Glimpse at the Interactions between Powered Wheelchairs and the Physically Disabled Students Program at Berkeley,” paper presented at the Inaugural Conference of the Disabilities Studies Association, Lancaster University, September 2003, 5, posted at http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/events/disabilityconference_archive/2003/papers/woods_watson2003.pdf (last accessed 1 May 2016); Young, Jonathan M., Equality of Opportunity: The Making of the Americans with Disabilities Act (Washington, D.C., 1997), 19.Google Scholar For a recounting of how PDSP developed concepts of independent living, see Fuss, Oral History, 57, 88–91; Dibner, Eric, “Advocate and Specialist in Architectural Accessibility,” an oral history conducted in 1998 by Cowan, Kathy in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume III, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 39–40;Google Scholar Perotti, Linda, “An Employee Perspective on the Early Days of the Cowell Residence Program, Physically Disabled Students’ Program, and the Center for Independent Living,” an oral history conducted in 1997–98 by Cowan, Kathy and Bonney, Sharon in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume II, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 138 (hereafter Perotti, Oral History);Google Scholar Barner, Billy, “First African American Student in the Cowell Program, 1969–1973; Administrator in Disability Programs in Los Angeles,” an oral history conducted in 1999 by Cowan, Kathy in University of California’s Cowell Hospital Residence Program for Physically Disabled Students, 1962–1975: Catalyst for Berkeley’s Independent Living Movement , Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 286–87 (hereafter Barner, Oral History).Google Scholar

51. Draper, in Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 213. Confirming the rapid growth of the CIL, see Heumann, Oral History, 307.

52. Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 52, 56, 222–24, 236–37; Herbert Leibowitz, “Research and Training Specialist for Rehabilitation Services Administration, 1971–1990,” an oral history conducted in 1998 by Susan O’Hara in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume I, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 16; and Zukas, “The History of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL),” online document (last accessed 12 May 2016).

53. Nosek et al., A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements, 28.

54. Ibid., 21.

55. Fleischer and Zames, The Disability Rights Movement, 42. Observing young people’s embrace of voluntary social change, see Suleiman Osman, “The Decade of the Neighborhood,” in Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s, ed. Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 106–27.

56. Nosek et al., A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements, 2; Shreve et al., “Consumer Control in Independent Living,” 6.

57. Kirshbaum, Hal R. and Harveston, Dominic S., “Independent Living for the Disabled,” Social Policy 7, no. 2 (1976): 59–62;Google Scholar Curtis, Bruce, How to Set Up an Independent Living Program: Twenty-Seven Questions and Answers (Houston, 1980), 10;Google Scholar Young, Equality of Opportunity, 19; Draper, in Oversight Hearings of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 227–28.

58. First Meeting of the Potential Board of Directors, 14 June 1971, in Hale Zukas papers, BANC MSS 99/150c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Carton 1, Folder 6:A (hereafter Hale Zukas papers).

59. For the number of ILCs, see CESS, Evaluation of the Centers for Independent Living Program, for the Rehabilitation Services Administration, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (Washington, D.C., 2003), 1.3. Not all of those were governed according to the model of consumer participation developed by the Independent Living Research Utilization Project. Congress endorsed the principles of consumer control and self-determination by requiring that all independent living centers be governed and staffed by people with disabilities. Though the centers spread, not all of them were run by people with disabilities. In 1986, Congress affirmed its support of consumer control. The 1986 amendments stipulated that 51 percent of staff and board had be persons with a disability before a center could receive federal funding. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 394.

60. Kleinfield, Sonny, “Declaring Independence in Berkeley,” Psychology Today 13, no. 3 (August 1979): 67–78, reprinted and posted at http://www.independentliving.org/toolsforpower/tools2.html (last accessed 15 May 2016).Google Scholar

61. Janet Brown confirms this assessment from a staff perspective, arguing that Roberts was more interested in creating a national and international example of the CIL rather than providing services, something she was highly critical of. Janet McEwan Brown, “Student Member of the National Federation of the Blind and First Newsletter Editor for the Center for Independent Living, 1972–1976,” an oral history conducted in 1998 by Sharon Bonney in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume IV, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 11 (hereafter Brown, Oral History). Also noting that Roberts was not often present at the CIL and that the goal of many of the founders had been to create a national social movement for people with disabilities, see Collignon, Frederick C., “UC Professor of City and Regional Planning: Policy Research and Funding Advocacy,” an oral history conducted in 1997 by Breslin, Mary Lou in Builders and Sustainers of the Independent Living Movement in Berkeley, Volume IV, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2000, 82–83, 116–117 (hereafter Collignon, Oral History).Google Scholar

62. The typical person with a disability is a middle-aged African American woman beleaguered by arthritis, back or spine problems, or heart conditions. People with disabilities tend to have lower levels of education than the average American. Matthew W. Brault, Americans with Disabilities: 2010, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, Household Economic Studies July 2012, table 2, p. 6, and table A-2, p. 21.

63. On discussions of the need to hire more “third world people,” see Minutes of the CIL Meeting of 7 July 1972, and Minutes of the Board Meeting of 10 July 1972, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 10, Folder 3. On the difficulties CIL faced trying to diversify its volunteers, staff, and clients, see Center for Independent Living, “Affirmative Action: February 1976,” in Hale Zukas papers, Carton 1, Folder 13:E.

64. Schweik, 112, and Galloway, Oral History, 81–82.

65. Young, 33; Nosek et al., 28–29. On the translators available, see letter from Phil Draper, Center for Independent Living, to Steve Owyang, Chinese for Affirmative Action, June 11, 1979, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 29.

66. Scotch, From Good Will to Civil Rights, 146; Judith Heumann, “Pioneering Disability Rights Advocate and Leader in Disabled in Action, New York: Center for Independent Living, Berkeley; World Institute on Disability; and the U.S. Department of Education 1960s–2000,” an oral history conducted by Susan Brown, David Landes, Jonathan Young in 1998–2001, Oral History Center, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2004, 317–19 (hereafter Heumann, Oral History). On the influence of the CIL on national and international disability rights activism, see Young, 32–33; Pelka, What We Have Done, 88–90, 106; Martinez, Kathy and Duncan, Barbara, “The Road to Independent Living in the USA: An Historical Perspective and Contemporary Challenges,” Disability World 20 (September–October 2003), reprinted by the Independent Living Institute at www.independentliving.org/docs6/martinez200309.html (last accessed 12 May 2016).Google Scholar

67. Schweik, “Lomax’s Matrix,” 105–23; Shapiro, No Pity , 64–65.

68. First Meeting of the Potential Board of Directors, 14 June 1971, in Hale Zukas papers, Carton 1, Folder 6:A.

69. Fuss, Oral History, 86.

70. Phil Draper, “Year End Report, 1978, and Future Projections” (Berkeley: Center for Independent Living, 1978), Part V, p. 2; Part VII, p. 2; Appendix A, Part 2, page 3; in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 20, Folder 39.

71. Letter from Floyd L. Pierce, Director of the Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, to Phil Draper, Center for Independent Living, 29 March 1978, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 26; letter from Phil Draper to Steve Owyang, Chinese for Affirmative Action, 11 June 1979, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 29; letter from Steve Owyang, to Phil Draper, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 29.

72. Lacy, Oral History, 96, 106. The Community Services Administration was the successor to the Office of Economic Opportunity. Draper states that, as of 1979, the CIL staff included twenty African Americans and seven Asian Americans (20 percent nonwhite), an improvement from the numbers Draper reported in his 1978 end-of-year report, indicating that pressure from the CSA and HEW had encouraged the CIL to make a concerted effort to increase minority hiring. Letter from Draper to Owyang, 11 June 1979.

73. Staff at the CIL and activists working with the center confirm that the organization was largely staffed and visited by whites with mobility impairments and that it was seen as that kind of organization in the Berkeley area. Galloway, Oral History, 79; Perotti, Oral History, 146–47; Collignon, Oral History, 104–6; Brown, 15–16. The observation is seconded in Martinez and Duncan, online document at www.independentliving.org/docs6/martinez200309.html (last accessed 12 May 2016).

74. Galloway, Oral History, 75, 78–79; Don Galloway, “The CIL FBI Files,” The CIL Classified: In-House Monthly, issue no. 3, April 1976, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 5, Folder 10.

75. Galloway, Oral History, 100, 103.

76. Fay, Oral History, 85–86. For more on the differences between the white and nonwhite disability experience, see Wright, Tenneyson J. and Leung, Paul., eds., Meeting the Unique Needs of Minorities with Disabilities: A Report to the President and the Congress (Washington, D.C., 1993);Google Scholar Perry, David, “Police Killings: The Price of Being Disabled and Black in America,” Guardian, 22 June 2017, online document at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/22/police-killings-disabled-black-people-mental-illness (last accessed 7 July 2016).Google Scholar

77. Lacy, Oral History, 124.

78. Phillips-Fein, Kim, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (New York, 2017), 132–37.Google Scholar

79. Schulman, Bruce J., The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York, 2001), 193–217.Google Scholar

80. Draper, “Year End Report, 1978, and Future Projections,” 4, 5; letter from Phil Draper to Assemblyman Dan Boatwright, 14 March 1979, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 2, Folder 1; letter from Phil Draper to Governor Jerry Brown, 26 June 1979, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 2, Folder 1; Phil Draper to Mayor Gus Newport, 19 December 1979, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 33.

81. Kundu, Madan M. and Schiro-Geist, Chrisann, “Legislative Aspects of Rehabilitation,” in Multicultural Issues in Rehabilitation and Allied Health, ed. Leung, Paul, Flowers, Carl R., Talley, William B., and Sanderson, Priscilla R. (Linn Creek, Mo.: Aspen Professional Services, 2007), 17–43;Google Scholar “Congress Clears $5 Billion Handicapped Aid,” CQ Almanac, 1978, 34th ed. (Washington, D.C., 1979), 591–95.

82. 42 U.S.C. 1397, Social Security Act, Title XX Subtitle A, Sec, 2001 (1), (2), (4), and (5).

83. Nosek et al., A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements, 10. See also the same sentiment voiced in DeJong, Gerben, “Defining and Implementing the Independent Living Concept,” in Independent Living for Physically Disabled People, ed. Crewe, Nancy M. and Zola, Irving Kenneth (San Francisco, 1983), 27;Google Scholar Horton, Muriel, “California, Here We Come,” Disabled USA 1, no. 1 (1977): 4.Google Scholar

84. For more on SSI and FAP, see Bertram, Eva, The Workfare State: Public Assistance Politics from the New Deal to the New Democrats (Philadelphia, 2015);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Steensland, Brian, The Failed Welfare Revolution: America’s Struggle over Guaranteed Income Policy (Princeton, 2008);Google Scholar Kornbluh, Felicia, The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America (Philadelphia, 2007);Google Scholar Erkulwater, Jennifer L., Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net (Ithaca, 2006);Google Scholar Kenneth Bowler, M., The Nixon Guaranteed Income Proposal: Substance and Process in Policy Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1974);Google Scholar Burke, Vincent J. and Burke, Vee, Nixon’s Good Deed: Welfare Reform (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

85. Russell Long in U.S. Senate, Committee on Finance, Hearings before the Committee on Finance on H.R. 1, 92nd Cong., 1st sess., 1971, 270.

86. After his death, Lucy Gwin published the text of interviews she had conducted with Roberts over his life. In the interviews, he confirmed that CIL supplemented its payroll with SSI. Ed Roberts, “Independent Living, Born on Campus: The Origins and the Purpose of Independent Living, as Told by Ed Roberts,” Mouth: The Voice of the Disability Nation, part 4 of 4, online document at http://www.mouthmag.com/issues/101/born_on_campus.html (last accessed 23 March 2016), and also Lucy Gwin, “A Note from the Editor,” online document at http://www.mouthmag.com/index.htm#start (last accessed 23 March 2016). The fact that CIL employees received SSI and that the board took benefits into account when it needed to reduce staff salaries in lean times is confirmed in Brown, Oral History, 20; Heumann, Oral History, 289; Perotti, Oral History, 138–39; Board of Directors Executive Session, 8 March 1976, in Bancroft Library, Hale Zukas papers, Carton 1, Folder 14:O.

87. Center for Independent Living, “Service Areas,” 14, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 20, Folder 43.

88. Ibid., 14.

89. Murray, Charles, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 (New York, 1984), 227–28.Google Scholar

90. Center for Independent Living, “Work Disincentives in the SSI/SSP Program: What They Are, How They Affect Disabled Individuals, and What Should Be Done,” c. 1975–76, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 5, Folder 26; Center for Independent Living, “Recommendations for Revision of the Social Security Act and Regulations,” 1978, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 1, Folder 20.

91. Steensland, The Failed Welfare Revolution, 207–9; Bloodworth, Jeff, “The Program for Better Jobs and Income: Welfare Reform, Liberalism, and the Failed Presidency of Jimmy Carter,” International Social Science Review 81, no. 3/4 (2006): 135–50.Google Scholar

92. Ted Thayer, in Oversight Hearings on the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 335.

93. American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, “Action Alert!!! Your Immediate Action is Needed in 4 Important Areas,” ACCD Action, 6 March 1982, 1–2, in Center for Independent Living records, Carton 19, Folder 9.

94. Nosek et al., A Philosophical Foundation for the Independent Living and Disability Rights Movements, 11.

95. Much of the recent historical work seeks to understand the political and economic turmoil of this pivotal period in American politics. Thomas Borstelmann, The Seventies: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality (Princeton, 2011); Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge, Mass., 2011); Bruce J. Schulman and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s (Cambridge, Mass., 2008); Edward D. Berkowitz, Something Happened: A Political and Cultural Overview of the Seventies (New York, 2007).

96. Borstelmann, The Seventies, 4; King and Smith, “Racial Orders in American Political Development,” 83–84.

97. Fraser, Nancy, “Rethinking Recognition,” New Left Review (2000): 107–20,Google Scholar suggests the tension between redistribution and cultural or identity-based recognition.