Edward Roberts Speaks About The Emergence of the Disabled Civil Rights Movement

Background: As a student at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s, Ed Roberts fought to fully participate in campus life. After contracting polio at age fourteen, Roberts was paralyzed from the neck down and slept in an “iron lung,” an 800-pound respirator. When he insisted that Berkeley make it possible for him to live on campus with his respirator, he helped open the university’s dormitories for other students with disabilities. Roberts became one of the “Rolling Quads,” a group of students who pushed the university to implement programs and policies that would enhance their opportunities to fully join in campus activities, and to make numerous changes to its architecture. In 1972, Roberts and others launched the city’s Center for Independent Living. CIL provided assistive technologies that enabled students with disabilities to complete their coursework, and it nurtured many activists later involved in the 504 sit-in. This excerpt comes from a speech Roberts delivered to activists in 1980.

I'm here today to encourage you. You are the emerging leaders of the disabled civil rights movement and I want to urge you to take risks. One of the great values in learning to take risks is that you discover that you have many more options than you ever thought possible. I can't count the times I've been told that I'm unrealistic. I've learned that it is a fundamental mistake to let other people define what's realistic and what's not. . . .

As members of the disabled civil rights movement we must together work to insure that our universities are responsive. We must make sure that there are no service gaps which would inhibit our right to an education. We must make sure that our universities hire persons with disabilities at all levels. We must make sure that our universities have and instill a positive attitude toward disability. We must make sure that universities respect and foster our rights.

One of our major responsibilities is toward children with disabilities. We must work vigorously to ensure that the federal and state laws which guarantee an integrated education to children with disabilities are strictly enforced. We must recognize our obligation to serve as role models for children with disabilities. We must encourage students with disabilities to enter the teaching profession. A young child could have no better role model than a teacher with a disability.

When I was at U.C. Berkeley in the sixties, I and almost every other student on campus became involved in the Civil Rights Movement. We were fighting for the basic rights of black people. But, during my involvement in that movement, I suddenly realized something that has since been extremely important to me —that I'm part of a minority that is as segregated and devalued as any in America's history. I am part of the disabled minority.

I quickly found that other disabled students shared my feelings. We all felt a sense of anger, frustration, and isolation. The more we talked, the more it became apparent that we needed to organize if we were to create our own Civil Rights movement.

These early years of organizing were filled with mistakes and confusion, but they were exhilarating and taught me invaluable lessons.

The first task was to clearly define our objectives. We had to translate our anger, frustration and isolation into a set of needs, which in turn would be translated into a bill of rights for disabled persons.

Over a period of years, we literally transformed the U.C. campus and the City of Berkeley. We changed the architecture and we changed attitudes.

The University must have thought that we were insatiable: we demanded curb cuts, ramps, interpreters, readers and on and on. We held meetings, we demonstrated, we leafleted. After a while, the University realized that our interest and theirs did not clash.

Our struggle for equality had its humorous side. One fall, we decided to go to the Cal football game. We wheeled up to the stadium and asked the gatekeeper the cost of a seat. When he told us, we wheeled on in telling him that we had brought our own seats. . . . 

As I mentioned above, my experiences in Berkeley taught me a number of invaluable lessons. One of our most critical strategic decisions was to join forces with persons with other types of disabilities. None of us wanted this to be simply a wheelchair crusade. We enlisted the support of deaf students, blind students, and students with epilepsy and others. We quickly learned the value and strength of coalition politics. . . . We found that we also had many common issues with the elderly and began to form coalitions. We knew that institutionalization made no sense either for a disabled or elderly person. We knew that the medical model based on illness made no sense. We knew we had to move toward models based on human potential

Source: Edward V. Roberts, speech, The Emergence of the Disabled Civil Rights Movement, May 19, 1980, Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley, https://oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb6m3nb1nw/?brand=oac4.