Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
Speaker 2: and I'm Holly Fryed. Today's episode was inspired by some
Speaker 2: stuff that's been going on here in the United States
Speaker 2: for a while now. Honestly hard to figure out exactly
Speaker 2: when to start the clock on this one. But in
Speaker 2: September of twenty twenty four, seventeen states filed a lawsuit
Speaker 2: against the US Department of Health and Human Services. HHS
Speaker 2: had issued its final rule implementing section five oh four
Speaker 2: of the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three, and those
Speaker 2: seventeen states were challenging language from the preamble of that rule,
Speaker 2: and that language indicated that gender dysphoria could be considered
Speaker 2: a disability under the law. This lawsuit also argued that
Speaker 2: section five oh four as a whole was unconstitutional. We
Speaker 2: ran a Saturday classic related to this in February of
Speaker 2: last year when it was in the news. That was
Speaker 2: six Impossible episodes from Sippins to fishi Ins, which talked
Speaker 2: about the five oh four sit ins which pressured what
Speaker 2: is now known as the Department of Health and Human
Speaker 2: Services to establish the policies that would implement Section five
Speaker 2: oh four. Back in nineteen seventy seven, when all this
Speaker 2: was happening in the news, I also wanted to find
Speaker 2: a new episode that was related in some way, but
Speaker 2: I wound up just focused on other topics. That lawsuit
Speaker 2: was effectively dismissed in October of twenty twenty five. Among
Speaker 2: other things, the seventeen states that filed it dropped their
Speaker 2: argument that Section five oh four was unconstitutional, and HHS
Speaker 2: asued guidance, calling that preamble that mentioned gender dysphoria unenforceable
Speaker 2: under the Day one executive order titled Defending Women from
Speaker 2: Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal government.
Speaker 2: The federal government's also basically on the same side as
Speaker 2: the plaintiffs now when it comes to gender dysphoria, but
Speaker 2: Section five oh four and the sit ins are still
Speaker 2: deeply relevant. Other executive orders targeting DEI have been interpreted
Speaker 2: as applying to things like disability and accessibility. Ban Those
Speaker 2: and other related terms have showed up on things like
Speaker 2: widely reported lists of words that are banned from applications
Speaker 2: for government grants and head start funding. So the five
Speaker 2: oh four sit ins have continued to be on my
Speaker 2: mind even after that lawsuit was dropped. And today we're
Speaker 2: going to take another look at section five oh four
Speaker 2: and a couple of the people who were a big
Speaker 2: part of this sit in.
Speaker 1: Should it briefly recap and add a little more detail
Speaker 1: to it. Tracy just talked about. The Rehabilitation Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three was focused primarily on vocational rehabilitation, meaning
Speaker 1: services and programs intended to help disabled people prepare for
Speaker 1: employment or to be able to work. It also authorized
Speaker 1: programs to figure out how to meet the needs of
Speaker 1: people for whom a vocational goal is not possible or feasible,
Speaker 1: although that wasn't one of its primary purposes. It was
Speaker 1: signed into law by President Richard Nixon, who vetoed earlier
Speaker 1: versions of the law because he said that those would
Speaker 1: be too expensive to implement. If you look at the
Speaker 1: whole of this law, I would call it kind of
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. At its core, it is a law
Speaker 1: that views disabled people as needing to be rehabilitated, and
Speaker 1: it's really underpinned by a mindset that a person's value
Speaker 1: is tied to their ability to work. At the same time,
Speaker 1: it included requirements and funding for programs and services that
Speaker 1: really would make things more accessible, including interpreter services for
Speaker 1: deaf people, reader services for blind people, telecommunication services, and
Speaker 1: mobility services. It required federal agencies to assess things like
Speaker 1: transportation barriers that could prevent disabled people from being able
Speaker 1: to work or to participate in these programs. It also
Speaker 1: required federal departments and agencies to create affirmative action plans
Speaker 1: for the hiring, placement, and advancement of disabled people, and
Speaker 1: to have a plan to meet the needs of those employees.
Speaker 1: If the words affirmative action gave you an internal yikes,
Speaker 1: that just means taking proactive steps to make sure disabled
Speaker 1: people were not being discriminated against and were being provided
Speaker 1: with reasonable accommodations to access their workplace and do their work.
Speaker 1: The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three built on earlier laws,
Speaker 1: and it was amended and adjusted by laws that came afterward.
Speaker 1: One of the parts that still discussed the most today
Speaker 1: is Section five oh four, which was the broadest piece
Speaker 1: of disability rights legislation in the United States until the
Speaker 1: passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: when the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three was passed.
Speaker 1: Section five oh four read quote, no otherwise qualified handicapped
Speaker 1: individual in the United States, as defined in section seven six, shall,
Speaker 1: solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the
Speaker 1: participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
Speaker 1: to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.
Speaker 1: It has been amended by other laws since then, and
Speaker 1: the language that's in place today uses the term disability
Speaker 1: rather than handicap, as that is no longer really considered
Speaker 1: the current way to manage those words today. Section five
Speaker 1: oh four also specifies that it applies to the United
Speaker 1: States Postal Service. The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: is about forty pages long, and some of its other
Speaker 1: sections had a lot more detail, including things like dollar
Speaker 1: amounts for the funding and definitions of terms, references to
Speaker 1: how this federal law relates to the states and to
Speaker 1: state agencies. But section five oh four was just that
Speaker 1: bit we read. It had no direction about how it
Speaker 1: could actually be implemented, so the agencies that section five
Speaker 1: oh four applied to had to draft rules and regulations
Speaker 1: that would allow them to implement it. The Department of Health, Education,
Speaker 1: and Welfare was selected as the lead agency, meaning that
Speaker 1: they would draft their regulations first and then other departments
Speaker 1: and agencies would follow based on those regulations, but not
Speaker 1: much actually happened after Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act
Speaker 1: into law on September twenty sixth, nineteen seventy three. He
Speaker 1: resigned as president on August eighth, nineteen seventy four, and
Speaker 1: his successor, Gerald Ford left office on January twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven. Their administrations had drafted regulations but had not
Speaker 1: actually implemented anything. After Jimmy Carter took office, activists demanded
Speaker 1: that the drafted regulations be put into place, but instead
Speaker 1: Joseph Klifano, Carter's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, assigned
Speaker 1: a task force to start reviewing them. A lot of
Speaker 1: people interpreted this as a delaying tactic and an opportunity
Speaker 1: for the government to try to water things down. This
Speaker 1: is where the five oh four sients come into the picture,
Speaker 1: which we talked about in that Saturday classic that we
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top of the show, which ran in
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty five. In nineteen seventy seven, after years
Speaker 1: of other advocacy, disabled activists started taking over HW offices
Speaker 1: around the country.
Speaker 2: These occupations were brief. They ended within a day or
Speaker 2: two after activists were either removed from the buildings or
Speaker 2: they left on their own because they didn't have the
Speaker 2: food or the supplies that they would need to stay
Speaker 2: longer than that. But in San Francisco, disabled people and
Speaker 2: their attendants occupied the HW office twenty four hours a
Speaker 2: day for twenty six days. Eventually, the demonstrators selected a
Speaker 2: delegation of people to go to Washington, d C. To
Speaker 2: try to meet with legislators and Secretary Califano directly. The
Speaker 2: International Association of Machinists helped pay for plane tickets from
Speaker 2: San Francisco to Washington, d C. And, because there were
Speaker 2: no accessible options for ground transportation, they also paid for
Speaker 2: a moving truck with a lift that could accommodate wheelchairs.
Speaker 2: After being turned away from the Washington, d C. Office
Speaker 2: of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the demonstrators
Speaker 2: had a candlelight vigil outside of Califano's house. They also
Speaker 2: demonstrated outside the church where the president and his family
Speaker 2: went to Sunday Services. Califano finally signed the regulations on
Speaker 2: April twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, almost four years after
Speaker 2: the law had been passed. We talked about this sit
Speaker 2: in and the delegation to Washington in that Saturday Classic
Speaker 2: that we mentioned earlier, but we didn't really talk about
Speaker 2: any of the people who organized it or kept it going.
Speaker 2: One person we did mention briefly is Judith Human, who
Speaker 2: went by Judy. She became disabled after surviving polio when
Speaker 2: she was a child, and she was an enormous part
Speaker 2: of this sit in and the disability rights movement more broadly.
Speaker 2: She has been referred to as the mother of the
Speaker 2: disability rights movement. In our earlier episode, we quoted her
Speaker 2: as saying, quote, through the sit in, we turned ourselves
Speaker 2: from being oppressed individuals into being empowered people. We demonstrated
Speaker 2: to the entire nation that disabled people could take control
Speaker 2: over our own lives, take leadership in the struggle for equality.
Speaker 2: We overcame years of parochialism. We really cannot overstate what
Speaker 2: a huge part of this sit in Judy Human was.
Speaker 2: She was deeply involved in organizing it and carrying it
Speaker 2: out and just keeping people going day after day. She
Speaker 2: was one of the people who traveled to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: And some of the people who stayed behind in San
Speaker 2: Francisco said that they kept occupying the HW building there
Speaker 2: not just for their own rights and the rights of
Speaker 2: other disabled people, because they just did not want to
Speaker 2: disappoint her.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is not focused on Judy Human. Though she
Speaker 1: died on March fourth, twenty twenty three, she was seventy five,
Speaker 1: and there are some various challenges with trying to cover
Speaker 1: the life of someone whose death was in the very
Speaker 1: recent past. Her work also continued until the very end
Speaker 1: of her life, meaning a lot of it took place
Speaker 1: in really recent years as well. She was the Assistant
Speaker 1: Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services
Speaker 1: during the Clinton administration, and President Barack Obama appointed her
Speaker 1: Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the US State Department.
Speaker 1: She was the first person to ever fill that role.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, Highy. There have been times we have
Speaker 2: tried to do episodes on someone who just died, and
Speaker 2: that has been something that I ultimately wish we had
Speaker 2: done differently, at least once or twice. Yeah, there are
Speaker 2: just various things that make it more difficult with someone
Speaker 2: whose death was in the recent past. In addition to
Speaker 2: all of that, her memoir Being Human, An Unrepentant Memoir
Speaker 2: of a disability rights activist, was published just in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and she was a big part of the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: film Crip Camp a Disability Revolution. That film is about
Speaker 2: Camp Janeed, which is a summer camp for disabled teenagers
Speaker 2: that ran from nineteen fifty one to nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 2: Human worked as a counselor at the camp, and a
Speaker 2: lot of other people who either went to or worked
Speaker 2: at Camp Jeaneed wound up being a huge part of
Speaker 2: the disability rights movement, including in the five oh four
Speaker 2: sit Ins. The last episodes of her podcast Human Perspective
Speaker 2: were also recorded just a few weeks before her death
Speaker 2: and published posthumously. So there's really a lot of information
Speaker 2: about her, a lot of it very recent, and a
Speaker 2: lot of it in her own words. While we are
Speaker 2: focused on two other people who are not as widely
Speaker 2: known today, we just did want to acknowledge how important
Speaker 2: Judy Human was to the five oh four sit Ins
Speaker 2: and the disability rights movement before we move on. So
Speaker 2: after we take a quick sponsor break, we will talk
Speaker 2: about Kitty Kohane. The Section five oh four sit in
Speaker 2: that took place in San Francisco was the work of
Speaker 2: a large number of disabled people supported by a broad
Speaker 2: coalition of allies and organizations, and Kitty Cone was a
Speaker 2: big part of the reason why the demonstrators had that coalition.
Speaker 2: Curtis Selden Cone, known as Kitty, was born on April seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty four, in Champagne, Illinois. Her parents were Molly
Speaker 2: Mattis Cone and Hutchinson Ingham Cone. Kitty's father was in
Speaker 2: the military and the family moved several times when she
Speaker 2: was a child, including to Japan. When Kitty was in
Speaker 2: first grade, her teacher noticed that she walked on her
Speaker 2: toes all the time, and the teacher pointed this out.
Speaker 1: To Kitty's mother.
Speaker 2: It seems like Kitty's family wasn't really concerned at first,
Speaker 2: but as her symptoms progressed, they took her to the doctor.
Speaker 2: It took a really long time to get an accurate diagnosis.
Speaker 2: At first, doctors thought she had cerebral palsy and then polio.
Speaker 2: Some of the treatments she received after these misdiagnoses seemed
Speaker 2: to make things worse. Eventually, she was diagnosed with muscular
Speaker 2: dystrophy at the age of fifteen, and she and her
Speaker 2: family were told that she probably would not live far
Speaker 2: into adulthood.
Speaker 1: In addition to changing schools when her father was transferred,
Speaker 1: Kitty also had to change schools for accessibility reasons, like
Speaker 1: school buildings having lots of stairs that she could no
Speaker 1: longer climb, and she often faced discrimination from teachers and staff,
Speaker 1: like being told that she wasn't allowed to participate in
Speaker 1: activities because of her disability, or when she was at
Speaker 1: boarding school, being housed away from the other students, which
Speaker 1: was not only isolating, but it also forced her to
Speaker 1: use a bathroom with a tub that she couldn't get
Speaker 1: into or out of on her own. Between her father's
Speaker 1: moves and issues like these, she changed schools more than
Speaker 1: a dozen times over the course of her K through
Speaker 1: twelve education.
Speaker 2: When she was looking at colleges, con wanted to go
Speaker 2: to an Ivy League school or maybe to a women's college,
Speaker 2: but a lot of their campuses weren't accessible either. She
Speaker 2: described her college to visions being made by her family.
Speaker 2: She enrolled at the University of Illinois at Arpana Champagne,
Speaker 2: which was close to some family members and also had
Speaker 2: a significant number of other students who also used wheelchairs.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, Kohane's mother died. Kitty was only
Speaker 1: nineteen at this point and she was still in college
Speaker 1: and she took some time off after the funeral before
Speaker 1: going back to school, and when she did, she really
Speaker 1: threw herself into activism. Being interested in things like equal
Speaker 1: rights and racial justice was not new to her. She
Speaker 1: had started getting into fights about her classmates racism during
Speaker 1: her early school years, and she had fierce disagreements with
Speaker 1: her father over the subject of school segregation. After getting
Speaker 1: back to college, she protested against apartheid in South Africa
Speaker 1: and against the Vietnam War. She joined the Friends of
Speaker 1: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and raised money for civil
Speaker 1: rights protesters who were arrested in the South. She got
Speaker 1: arrested herself during protests, something that infuriated some members of
Speaker 1: her family, including an uncle who was running for public
Speaker 1: office and her father, who actually disowned her. They thought
Speaker 1: that Kitty was making them look bad. Over time, Cone
Speaker 1: started focusing more on activism than on class work, and
Speaker 1: she actually left school in nineteen sixty seven without graduating.
Speaker 1: At this point, Coan wanted to be a parent, but
Speaker 1: her doctors had concerns about the physical effects that a
Speaker 1: pregnancy would have on her body. She also still believed
Speaker 1: that she was not likely to live long. She ultimately
Speaker 1: decided to be sterilized. We have talked about the eugenics
Speaker 1: program in the United States and involuntary sterilizations that were
Speaker 1: enacted on disabled people. The impression that I have from
Speaker 1: this and from what she said about it, was that
Speaker 1: she made the decision that she felt like was best
Speaker 1: for her based on the information that she had, and
Speaker 1: that some of the concerns that her doctor had She
Speaker 1: really agrees with other things, maybe not so much, but
Speaker 1: like this was an informed decision that she made for herself,
Speaker 1: not something someone else decided for her. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Cohne became a socialist, and she also came
Speaker 1: out as a lesbian. She moved to Berkeley, California, and
Speaker 1: started working with the Center for Independent Living. We talked
Speaker 1: about that in our episode on Ed Roberts in the
Speaker 1: Independent living Movement. We ran that episode as a Saturday
Speaker 1: Classic on December third, twenty twenty two, Cone also became
Speaker 1: active with the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities.
Speaker 2: One of the things Cone talked about a lot was
Speaker 2: how important it was for organizations that were working on
Speaker 2: an issue to get the broadest level of support possible. So,
Speaker 2: for example, she thought disability rights organizations should not connect
Speaker 2: only with one another, but they should also connect with
Speaker 2: abortion rights groups, anti war groups, women's rights groups, and
Speaker 2: labor unions, forming a really powerful network of solid air
Speaker 2: anywhere they could find some common ground with other people
Speaker 2: who had other objectives. She made connections like this with
Speaker 2: organizations all over the San Francisco Bay area, and that
Speaker 2: coalition building was a huge part of why the five
Speaker 2: h four sit ins in San Francisco went on for
Speaker 2: almost a month, when most of the sit ins at
Speaker 2: HW offices in other cities ended after just a day
Speaker 2: or two. When disabled activists took over the San Francisco
Speaker 2: HW offices, their support system included so many organizations. There
Speaker 2: was Glide Memorial Church, a non denominational church dedicated to
Speaker 2: social justice that was founded in San Francisco in nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine, brick Hut Lesbian Cooperative, the Gay Men's Butterfly Brigade,
Speaker 2: which coordinated safety patrols to protect gay men in the
Speaker 2: Castro District. The Delancey Street Foundation, which was a nonprofit
Speaker 2: providing residential services for people with substance use disorder or
Speaker 2: who had been released from prison. Multiple labor unions, including
Speaker 2: the International Association of Machinists, the Teamsters, the Federal Workers Union,
Speaker 2: and the United farm Workers. The Black Panthers, which we
Speaker 2: will be talking about more in just a bit. The
Speaker 2: demonstrators also had some support from HW employees who helped
Speaker 2: out where they could, and the San Francisco City government.
Speaker 2: Mayor George Moscone brought in portable showers, getting them authorized
Speaker 2: by the White House after HW officials turned him away.
Speaker 2: And that's just a sampling of the support coalition. Cone
Speaker 2: called it one of the broadest coalitions she had ever seen. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in terms of ATW employees. Obviously, for the most part,
Speaker 2: ATW like leadership did not want them there, but the
Speaker 2: employees would be kind of like, here's where the soap is,
Speaker 2: and we made it so you can open this window.
Speaker 2: That kind of thing, a little subversive assist. Yeah, These
Speaker 2: and other organizations supported the five zero four sit in
Speaker 2: both within and outside the building, doctors and nurse offered
Speaker 2: care to people who had complex medical needs, and volunteers
Speaker 2: from across multiple organizations provided attendant care, like helping people
Speaker 2: dress and take care of their hygiene. Organizations donated food
Speaker 2: and blankets and cots to sleep on, soap and cleaning supplies.
Speaker 2: While people occupied the offices in the building, other supporters
Speaker 2: picketed outside, and they signed petitions, and they contacted their
Speaker 2: legislators demanding action on the five oh four regulations. This
Speaker 2: coalition also involved organizations for people of different disabilities, who
Speaker 2: sometimes had very different needs and perspectives. For example, the
Speaker 2: proposed five oh four regulations got a lot of criticism
Speaker 2: from deaf people because part of the focus was on
Speaker 2: mainstreaming or assimilating disabled people into non disabled culture. But
Speaker 2: a lot of deaf people saw and still see deafness
Speaker 2: as a unique culture with its own language and norms,
Speaker 2: not necessarily as a disability, and not something that should
Speaker 2: be a similar laid it away but organizations for the
Speaker 2: death were also part of the sit in, with death
Speaker 2: activists taking the lead with communicating with people outside the building,
Speaker 2: signing conversations through the windows. After authorities cut off the phones.
Speaker 2: All these intersecting layers of support helped the demonstrators deal
Speaker 2: with the realities of living in a government office twenty
Speaker 2: four hours a day for almost a month. That would
Speaker 2: be uncomfortable for pretty much anybody, but it came with
Speaker 2: additional specific challenges for a lot of the five h
Speaker 2: four demonstrators. A lot of people had particular medical and
Speaker 2: physical needs and no real way to accommodate them the
Speaker 2: way they would where they normally lived. For some demonstrators
Speaker 2: who relied on specialized medical equipment or skilled nursing, this
Speaker 2: could actually be life threatening, so people did a lot
Speaker 2: of improvising and jury rigging and just doing their best
Speaker 2: with the help of supporters both inside and outside the building.
Speaker 2: Kitty Kohane in particular, dealt with a lot a lot
Speaker 2: of pain over the course of the sit in and
Speaker 2: had to take a lot of painkillers to try to
Speaker 2: deal with it. She also needed to be turned over
Speaker 2: during the night, and that was something that other people
Speaker 2: helped her with over the course of the sit in.
Speaker 2: Kitty Cone was one of the people chosen to be
Speaker 2: part of the delegation to Washington, d C. To discuss
Speaker 2: the five oh four regulations with legislators. The coalition that
Speaker 2: Cone had built helped arrange and fund the trip, including
Speaker 2: the Machinists' Union, which we mentioned earlier. After the new
Speaker 2: regulations were signed, Cohne gave a victory speech in which
Speaker 2: she said, in part quote, we showed strength and courage
Speaker 2: and power and commitment that we the shut ins or
Speaker 2: the shutouts, we the hidden, supposedly the frail in the week,
Speaker 2: that we can wage a struggle at the highest level
Speaker 2: of government and win. Cone was also one of the
Speaker 2: many people to point out the importance of the five
Speaker 2: oh four sit ins in the disability rights movement, including
Speaker 2: growing awareness of how accessibility was a political issue. She
Speaker 2: was quoted as calling it quote the public birth of
Speaker 2: the disability rights movement. For the first time, disability was
Speaker 2: really looked at as an issue of civil rights rather
Speaker 2: than an issue of charity and rehabilitation at best, pity
Speaker 2: at worst.
Speaker 1: After the five oh four sit ins, Cohane's work as
Speaker 1: an activist continued to be focused on building coalitions among organizations.
Speaker 1: This included connecting disability rights organizations and the League of
Speaker 1: Women Voters. When Bay Area Rapid Transit, which commonly known
Speaker 1: as BART, proposed removing agents from stations. Yeah, there were
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons that a person might need to
Speaker 1: talk to a human employee at a transit station, and
Speaker 1: a lot of those reasons applied mainly to women and
Speaker 1: to disabled people more than they did to non disabled men.
Speaker 1: Although the federal government had recognized the civil rights of
Speaker 1: disabled people through Section five oh four and its associated regulations,
Speaker 1: in practice after those regulations were signed, a lot of
Speaker 1: things didn't really change that much. For example, as Cone
Speaker 1: tried to travel for her activism work, she often found
Speaker 1: that things like hotels and public transportation were still inaccessible
Speaker 1: to someone who used a wheelchair. Around nineteen eighty, Cone
Speaker 1: started a relationship with Kathy Martinez, who was blind. Cone
Speaker 1: talked about getting around town with her and her power wheelchair,
Speaker 1: and Martinez keeping up with her on roller skates. The
Speaker 1: two of them traveled together, including to Nicaragua, which had
Speaker 1: a large population of disabled people who had experienced spinal injuries, amputations,
Speaker 1: and other injuries due to the Nicaraguan Revolution. Around this time, Cohne,
Speaker 1: who had struggled with alcohol misuse, became sober and joined
Speaker 1: Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2: She also still wanted to have a child and at
Speaker 2: this point, it seemed like her doctor's worries about her
Speaker 2: life expectancy being really shortened that that seemed unfounded. In
Speaker 2: nineteen eight, when she and Martinez started trying to adopt,
Speaker 2: they were rejected as adoptive parents for multiple overlapping reasons.
Speaker 2: They were both disabled. Since they were both women, they
Speaker 2: could not legally marry. Martinez was Latina, so they were
Speaker 2: regarded as an interracial couple. Ultimately, they went to Mexico
Speaker 2: and they adopted a son named Jorge. They returned to
Speaker 2: the United States a couple of years later. At some
Speaker 2: point after this, Cone and Martinez separated. After adopting Jorge,
Speaker 2: parenting became Cone's primary focus. She was still an activist,
Speaker 2: but a lot of her activism was through organizations where
Speaker 2: she could be paid for her work so she could
Speaker 2: support herself and her son. She worked with the Disability Rights,
Speaker 2: Education and Defense Fund for years, eventually becoming its development
Speaker 2: director in nineteen ninety three. She retired in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine at the age of fifty five, but she continued
Speaker 2: to be involved in the organization's work well after that point.
Speaker 2: Toward the end of her life, Cone reconciled with some
Speaker 2: of her family members who had ostracized her due to
Speaker 2: her activism. She died of pancreatic cancer on March twenty first,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen, at the age of seventy. And now we
Speaker 2: are going to take a little break, and then we
Speaker 2: are going to talk about Brad Lomax. The other person
Speaker 2: we're going to talk about today is Brad Lomax. One
Speaker 2: of the things that comes up a lot in descriptions
Speaker 2: of the five oh four sit in is that the
Speaker 2: Black Panthers brought food to the demonstrators in the San
Speaker 2: Francisco HW offices every day. Brad Lomax was a big
Speaker 2: part of the reason for that. His full name was
Speaker 2: Bradford Clyde Lomax, and he was the oldest of three
Speaker 2: children born to Katie and Joseph Lomax. He was born
Speaker 2: in Philadelphia on September thirteenth, nineteen fifty There's actually not
Speaker 2: a lot of information that's publicly available about Lomax's life.
Speaker 2: His father was a World War Two veteran and an electrician.
Speaker 2: Growing up, Lomax was a boy scout and an athlete.
Speaker 1: He played football. He said to have had his first
Speaker 1: experiences with civil rights activism when He visited his mother's
Speaker 1: family in Alabama when he was in his early teens
Speaker 1: and saw first hand the differences between life and Alabama
Speaker 1: and life in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2: As Lomax started getting close to graduating from Benjamin Franklin
Speaker 2: High School, he thought about joining the military, but his
Speaker 2: graduation was in nineteen sixty seven, and at that point
Speaker 2: the United States was really escalating its involvement in the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. We talked about this in our episode on
Speaker 2: the draft board riots that took place during the Vietnam
Speaker 2: War in April of last year. That's one of the
Speaker 2: other subjects I wound up focused on rather than going
Speaker 2: back to five oh four. In the spring of last year,
Speaker 2: Lomax understood how the war and the draft were disproportionately
Speaker 2: affecting black men, so rather than volunteering for service, he
Speaker 2: went to Howard University in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: If he hadn't changed his mind, it's possible that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to pass the physical needed to enlist.
Speaker 1: In his late teens, Lomax started experiencing some physical symptoms,
Speaker 1: including losing his balance and falling when he walked. He
Speaker 1: was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and started using a wheelchair.
Speaker 1: He started experiencing the many ways that society was not
Speaker 1: accessible to wheelchair users, things like a lack of curb
Speaker 1: cuts and doors that were too narrow to get through.
Speaker 1: And he also saw the ways in which black disabled
Speaker 1: people faced multiple layers of discrimination, like housing buildings could
Speaker 1: be inaccessible, and then on top of that, there were
Speaker 1: landlords who just refused to rent to tenants based on
Speaker 1: their race. This was outlawed federally under the Fair Housing
Speaker 1: Act in nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen sixty nine, Lomax
Speaker 1: helped found the Washington, DCA chapter of the Black Panther Party.
Speaker 1: The Black Panther Party was first founded by Huey P.
Speaker 1: Newton and Bobby Seal in Oakland, California, in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: It was originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
Speaker 1: and a big part of its initial focus was the
Speaker 1: forming of armed patrols to protect black neighborhoods, protecting them
Speaker 1: from police brutality. Soon, the Black Panther Party started establishing
Speaker 1: community service programs in black neighborhoods, including medical clinics, ambulance services,
Speaker 1: legal aid, education programs, and breakfast programs for school children.
Speaker 1: Lomax's worked with a Black Panther Party in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Including helping to build a free health clinic that provided
Speaker 1: screenings for sickle cell disease, running the first aid tent
Speaker 1: at various Black Panther events, and helping to organize the
Speaker 1: first African Liberation Day in nineteen seventy two that was
Speaker 1: a demonstration on the National Mall whose speakers included Angela Davis,
Speaker 1: Stokely Carmichael, Jesse Jackson. At some point, Brad moved to Oakland,
Speaker 1: California with his brother Glenn, which seems to have been
Speaker 1: largely at Glenn's encouragement. In addition to being where the
Speaker 1: Black Panthers had been founded, the San Francisco Bay Area
Speaker 1: was becoming more accessible than many other parts of the
Speaker 1: US were. There were multiple interconnected reasons for this. The
Speaker 1: Bay area had generally mild weather, which made it easier
Speaker 1: for people using wheelchairs and other mobility aids to get around.
Speaker 1: California had established an Attendant Care program in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties to provide grants for elderly and disabled people to
Speaker 1: pay for home care services. Organizations like the Center for
Speaker 1: Independent Living founded by ed Roberts were being run by
Speaker 1: and for disabled people, providing information and support and advocating
Speaker 1: for accessibility and services. Even so, when Brad and his
Speaker 1: brother got to California, they found that the buses were
Speaker 1: not accessible. If Brad wanted to take the bus, Glenn
Speaker 1: had to go with him and then physically lift him
Speaker 1: onto the bus and then go back for Brad's chair.
Speaker 2: In theory, the Center for Independent Living served Berkeley and Oakland,
Speaker 2: but in reality a lot of the services did not
Speaker 2: extend into Oakland's predominantly black neighborhoods. So in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: Brad Lomax worked with ed Roberts to establish a new
Speaker 2: chapter of the Center for Independent Living in East Oakland,
Speaker 2: and Lomax did this with support from the Black Panthers.
Speaker 2: In nineteen seventy seven, Lomax became part of the five
Speaker 2: oh four sit in at the San Francisco HW office.
Speaker 2: Another Black Panther Party member, Chuck Jackson, acted as Lomax's attendant,
Speaker 2: and he also provided attendant care for some of the
Speaker 2: other demonstrators inside the building. The Black Panther Party was
Speaker 2: heavily involved throughout the sit in, bringing food and other supplies,
Speaker 2: including making sure all of the demonstrators got a hot
Speaker 2: meal every day and leaving food for the next breakfast
Speaker 2: at lunch. Multiple demonstrators said they would not have survived
Speaker 2: without the Black Panthers. Yeah, we've talked about the enormous
Speaker 2: coalition of organizations that were involved before the break but
Speaker 2: the Black Panthers are reputedly cited as just holding the
Speaker 2: whole thing together with food, and that without enough food,
Speaker 2: it wouldn't have worked. In a documentary short called Brad
Speaker 2: Lomax Creating Communities of Care five o four, demonstrator Corbett
Speaker 2: Jon O'Toole said that she asked one of the Panthers
Speaker 2: why they were helping when almost everybody in that building
Speaker 2: who was demonstrating was white. That was really true of
Speaker 2: a lot of disability rights organizations in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2: Their answer was because the demonstrators were fighting for social
Speaker 2: justice and willing to put their lives on the line
Speaker 2: for it, and because Brad was there. In addition to
Speaker 2: providing food, the Black Panthers helped spread the word about
Speaker 2: what was happening at the HGW office by covering it
Speaker 2: in their newspaper that was also called The Black Panther,
Speaker 2: and that paper had a national circulation. They also helped
Speaker 2: raise funds for the delegation's trip to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: After the five oh four sid in, Brad Lomax continued
Speaker 2: to be involved with the Black Panthers and with disability
Speaker 2: rights activism for as long as he was able, but
Speaker 2: eventually he started experiencing cognitive changes due to multiple sclerosis,
Speaker 2: and MS had also affected his ability to speak. He
Speaker 2: died of complications from MS on August twenty eighth, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four, at the age of thirty three.
Speaker 1: As we've said in this episode that one brief paragraph
Speaker 1: of Section five oh four was really the biggest piece
Speaker 1: of civil rights legislation for disabled people in the US
Speaker 1: when it was passed, but in spite of the regulations
Speaker 1: that were eventually created around it, a lot of the
Speaker 1: same barriers to access and patterns of discrimination remained for years.
Speaker 1: Section five oh four also applied only to the federal
Speaker 1: government and government contractors. It did not apply to private
Speaker 1: businesses at all. Ongoing advocacy to try to close these
Speaker 1: gaps and ensure equal rights and access for disabled people
Speaker 1: eventually led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Speaker 1: Act that happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: If it was a private business that was getting federal funding,
Speaker 2: then that would apply. But I mean otherwise, there were
Speaker 2: a lot of things that were not affected by Section
Speaker 2: five oh four. Some of the language of the ADA
Speaker 2: is rooted in Section five oh four, and it applied
Speaker 2: a lot of the same protections of the Equal Rights
Speaker 2: Act of nineteen sixty four to disabled people who had
Speaker 2: not been included in the Civil Rights Act. The Act
Speaker 2: was amended in two thousand and eight in part to
Speaker 2: address some court decisions that had limited the scope of
Speaker 2: the ADA as it was originally written. Even so, even
Speaker 2: with the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are still a
Speaker 2: lot of barriers to access. Some of this is because
Speaker 2: the old changes, like the Department of Justice just issued
Speaker 2: a final rule on how the ADA applies to state
Speaker 2: and local government websites in twenty twenty four, That is
Speaker 2: many many years after governments started communicating with their constituencies online.
Speaker 2: Some of this is because of EIGHTYA standards just not
Speaker 2: being followed even in new building construction. And some of
Speaker 2: it is because the Americans with Disabilities Act represents a
Speaker 2: minimum level of access requirements and that minimum level is
Speaker 2: just not enough to make things accessible to everyone. In
Speaker 2: some cases, not enough to make things accessible to a
Speaker 2: lot of people, not just a few people who may
Speaker 2: be seen as having different needs than others.
Speaker 1: Do you also have listener mail for us today? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do have listener mail. This is from Anna. Anna
Speaker 1: wrote and said hello. I have always wanted to write
Speaker 1: in and after two mentions of Montana over the past
Speaker 1: couple of episodes, I finally had a reason. I live
Speaker 1: an hour away from Hamilton, Montana and the Rocky Mountain Labs.
Speaker 1: I remember learning during the twenty fourteen Ebola outbreak that
Speaker 1: the local hospital was one of three in the nation
Speaker 1: that could accept and treat people with ebola due to
Speaker 1: its partnership with the LAP I was pretty shocked to
Speaker 1: learn our little local hospital was in the same rank
Speaker 1: as massive hospitals in New York and LA.
Speaker 2: I foster kittens for my local animal shelter and have
Speaker 2: four of my own kiddies. When I've had particularly spicy kittens,
Speaker 2: I've played your podcast to help get them used to
Speaker 2: human voices and hopefully foster a love of history. I
Speaker 2: fostered twenty one kittens and one mama cat this year
Speaker 2: and all have found loving homes. The pictures include my
Speaker 2: cats Gracie, the One Eyed Beauty, Todd and Wendy as
Speaker 2: babies on my lap, Sammy Brown Tabby, and a photo
Speaker 2: of a foster family and one of Tink, a foster kitty,
Speaker 2: meeting our chickens. Thanks for all that you do. You
Speaker 2: bring so much joy. Anna, Anna playing our show for
Speaker 2: spicy foster kittens is I think the best use of
Speaker 2: our show I have ever heard in my life by
Speaker 2: a wide margin.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you are fostering any kind of animal, or if
Speaker 2: you have maybe a dog who's a little anxious and
Speaker 2: does better with voices, if you want to use our
Speaker 2: podcast for that purposes, just go for it.
Speaker 1: Go for it. Do that every time. Such an odd
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should start to bake in little
Speaker 1: secret messages for kitties. Now for kitty cats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one time, a long time ago, somebody sent us
Speaker 2: a note that said, hey, was there maybe a cat
Speaker 2: in the background at this time? Code in this episode?
Speaker 2: Because all of a sudden my cat was very interested,
Speaker 2: and I think at that point I had started recording
Speaker 2: at home, but we hadn't told listeners that was happening.
Speaker 2: I was like, there's.
Speaker 1: Not not who knows.
Speaker 2: Possibly these pictures are all really adorable, so cute.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Also, Anna, thank you for fostering.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's such a big important step in animal
Speaker 2: welfare in the US, and you clearly have a very
Speaker 2: big heart and I appreciate it. Foster families for animals
Speaker 2: also make a huge, huge difference in how those animals
Speaker 2: live as pets afterward. The fact that our kittens whose
Speaker 2: mother was feral were incredibly well socialized and tolerated having
Speaker 2: their nails clipped and you know, great around people. I
Speaker 2: really credit with the family that took care of them
Speaker 2: after their mother returned to the feral colony, because they
Speaker 2: were not thriving in the shelter. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Anna.
Speaker 2: If you would like to send us a note about
Speaker 2: this or any other part podcast, we're at History Podcasts
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our
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