Johnnie Lacy Describes How the Section 504 Protest Shaped Her Understanding of Disability Rights

Background: In this excerpt from a longer oral history interview, activist Johnnie Lacy discusses her identity as a person with disabilities and as an African American woman. The 504 protests inspired Lacy to get involved in the disability rights movement. She served as the training coordinator for the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, and later she was executive director of Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward, California. This interview was conducted by David Landes from the University of California, Berkeley, as part of a research project to document the history of the disability rights movement.

LANDES: Talk a little bit about the impact that the 504 sit-in had on your own thinking about your own issues regarding your disability and about disability rights in general.

LACY: Well, it was the first time, I think, that I started to recognize that having a disability was not just my problem to solve, that issues like acceptance, issues like isolation because of access, attitudinal issues were things that made disabled people look like losers in the community, and that was no longer acceptable. When I say disabled people were made to look like losers, the portrayal of disabled people over the years had been very, very negative in terms of the media coverage of disabled people.

LANDES: So how did the 504 demonstration change that for you?

LACY: I saw disabled people demanding things that I never that I thought you had to earn before. Things that should have been theirs. . . . I immediately made the connection, this was the most important thing about my enlightenment, that I had worked in the anti-poverty program before, and poor people were given the same kinds of lack of respect and the same kinds of treatment: the pull-yourselves-up-by-your-bootstraps kind of thing that immediately connected with the way the disabled people were also treated.

LANDES: What about the way that black people were expected to act in order to when they were asking a white person for favor?

LACY: Yes. Well, when I say poor people, I think I’m talking about blacks and other minorities.

LANDES: So you’re talking about your own experience as an African American?

LACY: Yes. And it certainly became even clearer as time went on in terms of how the economics and the politics played a very strong role in the denial of rights of people who had no money and no power, and the disempowerment of blacks and poor people was the same kind of disempowerment that was happening to people with disabilities. So that was the connection I saw at that time.

LANDES: So for you the 504 demonstration was a very important message?

LACY: It empowered, it made me feel empowered, and I think it also made,  you know, the whole country of disabled people and people who have-nots feels stronger. I was just totally amazed. For example, the head of the HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare] in the San Francisco office was someone that I had dealt with in anti-poverty program, Joseph Maldonado. Because before he became the head of HEW, he was the regional head of OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity], and so I had some experience with him. It was just an incredible kind of unique experience that I saw this man as a fighter for the rights of poor people, minority people...not being able to transfer those concerns...to people with disabilities. . . . I felt that here a bunch of disabled people were defying a whole, entire system, and it was fascinating; it was scary in a way because they were putting themselves out on a limb to demand something that they thought was their right. They were confronting people who heretofore were considered powerful people. . . . You know, I thought this was just really something to see and to experience.

Source: Johnnie Lacy, interviewed by David Landes, 1998, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 93–95, transcript, at https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/218051?ln=en.