From: Julie Dawson 
Subject: Equality of Opportunity -- HISTORY.TXT  (fwd)
federal agencies and contractors covered by the regulations. 
     The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of
1973 would be the principal legal foundation for the ADA: the
twin pillars.  There could be no ADA without them.  It was not
enough, however, only to have a legislative foundation.  Passing
legislation is a complicated process; it is not merely an
inevitable and logical development of legal principle. 
Legislation develops in political, social, intellectual, and
cultural contexts.  Successful laws are as much about the people
that shape them as they are about legislative language..  Thus,
even with the legal framework of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and
the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 well-established by 1980, the ADA
could not have succeeded at that time.  The social, political,
and cultural contexts necessary to support such legislation were
simply not yet in place.  While the 1977 protests were the
crowning achievement of ACCD and a major rite of passage for the
disability rights movement, the movement was still in its
infancy.  Yet, over the ensuing decade, the disability rights
movement bloomed.  The disability community attained a new
sophistication in legal expertise, developed a political presence
in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and established
credibility with the broader civil rights community. 
            Growth of the Disability Rights Movement
     The disability rights movement grew primarily out of
personal experiences and the recognition that current quality of
life was inadequate.As Congress and HEW in Washington were
writing civil rights language into federal laws and regulations,
important work within the disability community was taking place
throughout the nation.  A disability rights movement was being
born.  It was not the first time people had advo cated for the
rights of persons with disabilities, but the movement that formed
in the 1970s was unique ly consumer-driven.  Not all
constituencies of the disability community supported the effort
to view disability as a civil rights issue with the same vigor.
Indeed, great obstacles had to be overcome to estab lish a
meaningful disability rights movement.
     Although the disability rights movement developed in the
tradition of the 1960s social movements, a number of factors made
the rise of this movement much more difficult.   Disability  as a
class did not share the same cohesive forces manifest with race
and gender.  In the 1950s and 1960s, persons who were blind,
paralyzed, or mentally ill did not naturally share a common
identity. In fact, persons with different disabilities were often
in conflict over limited government resources. Moreover,
disability transcended and intersected such categories as race,
gender, and class that often provided a basis for affinity and
identity.  Persons with disabilities generally did not inhabit
the same physical communities that helped fuel the civil rights
movement.  And segregation for persons with disability meant not
only separation from mainstream society, but also isolation from
each other.   
     The disability rights movement began to take shape during
the 1970s in spite of these obstacles.  It is difficult, however,
to explain its origins neatly, for it derived from multiple
sources. While the movement drew on various cultural currents to
achieve its ends, it grew primarily out of personal experiences
with disabilities and the recognition that current quality of
life was inadequate. Even though most persons within the
disability community shared similar goals such as education,
jobs, dignity, access, and equal participation the wide variety
of disabilities meant that subgroups of the disability community
did not always seek the same objectives.  The activities of one
group were not only often unknown to others, at times they ran
counter to the efforts of others.
     One key source of the disability rights movement was the
independent living movement. Early threads of the movement can be
seen as early as the 1950s, when people such as Mary Switzer and
Gini Laurie began to realize that disability services could be
cheaper and more effective when provided through personal
attendant care at home rather than in institutions.  In the
1960s, the independent living movement gained momentum
predominantly through the influence of college students.  In
1962, for example, four students with disabilities at the
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana helped start the
movement by leaving an isolated facility to reside near campus in
a home modified for accessibility.  They then began working with
the University to improve campus accessibility and gain increased
control over their own lives. 
     A similar and more visible effort took place the same year,
when Ed Roberts, who was paralyzed from polio, entered the
University of California at Berkeley.  The school housed him in
the third floor of Cowell Hospital, where he was aided by friends
and attendants with eating and dressing.  Roberts thrived.  He
earned not only his undergraduate degree, but also a masters
degree in political science.  News of his success spread, and by
1967 twelve students with major disabilities joined him in
Cowell.  These students, who called themselves the  Rolling
Quads,  began holding brainstorming sessions about ways they
could increase their self-sufficiency.  Rather than be directed
by, and dependent on, bureaucrats, they wanted to be able to
secure their own funding, find their own jobs, and make their own
decisions. 
     The potential of persons with disabilities could not be
realized simply by trying to  rehabilitate  the individual.
 Society  also had to be  rehabilitated. To promote this they
secured a grant from HEW, in 1970, to finance a Physically
Disabled Students  Program (PDSP).  The goal of the program was
independent living.  The ramped office provided access to
residential counselors, tips on where and how to obtain personal
attendants, and a wheelchair repair shop.  To meet the growing
requests for service from non-students, PDSP leaders joined to
incorporate the Berkeley Center for Independent Living in 1972. 
As one journalist observed:  It would be run by people with
disabilities; approach their problems as social issues; work with
a broad range of disabilities; and make integration into the
community its chief goal.  Independence was measured by an indi
vidual s ability to make his own decisions and the availability
of the assistance necessary  from attendants to accessible
housing to have such control.  
     Shortly after the Berkeley center began its operation, other
programs opened their doors: in Boston, Massachusetts; Houston,
Texas; Columbus, Ohio; and Lansing, Michigan.  The movement also
gained support in Congress.  The original Rehabilitation Act of
1972 included an Independent Living Program to help promote
independent living services around the country.  Although it was
eliminated as part of the compromise with President Nixon in
1973, the Carter administration afforded a new opportunity.  The
program was established as part of the 1978 Amendments to the
Rehabilitation Act and became known as the Title VII program. 
Despite its very limited funding, the Title VII program breathed
life into the incipient independent living movement.  It helped
establish standards for independent living programs that ensured
a high level of consumer control and the provision of core
services.  In the ensuing decade, the number of independent
living centers around the country grew exponentially.
     The independent living movement represented nothing less
than a radical transformation in thinking about disability
policy.  One might call it a paradigm shift.  Prior to the 1970s,
disability was viewed primarily as a medical issue.  Persons with
disabilities were considered  sick  or  impaired  and in need of
a cure.  They were patients who required experts  instructions
about how to  get better.   The problem of disability was seen to
reside in the individual, who must be  rehabilitated  and
returned to gainful employment. 
     The independent living movement represented nothing less
than a radical transformation in thinking about disability
policy.  Advocates wanted to shed the medical model that cast
them as passive recipients of professional care.Advocates of
independent living saw things differently.  Infused with a rights
mentality sparked by the civil rights, women s, and anti-war
movements, these individuals wanted to shed the medical model
that cast them as passive recipients of professional care. 
Instead they asserted their rightful place in society.  They
pursued mechanisms for self-help rather than relying
predominantly on authorities.  They advocated a consumer spirit
that established the role of the consumer as the decision-maker
and people with disabilities as the experts.  And they rejected
the idea that persons with disabilities, even persons with severe
disabili ties, should be isolated in custodial institutions.
Instead they promoted community-based living. Moreover, advocates
of independent living hoped to improve the lives of people with
disabilities by promoting cross-disability interaction.  People
with diverse disabilities could help each other through peer
counseling and present a stronger voice for policy change.
     According to the philosophy of independent living, the
problem of  disability  did not reside simply in the individual,
but also in society, in the rehabilitation process, the physical
environment, and the mechanisms of social policy.  The full
potential of persons with disabilities therefore could not be
realized simply through trying to  rehabilitate  the individual. 
 Society  also had to be  rehabilitated,  by making the physical
environment more accessible and destroying the attitudes that
rendered persons with disabilities as helpless victims in need of
charity.
     In this respect, the independent living movement was
strikingly analogous to previous movements for civil rights.  In
the early twentieth century, people widely talked of the  race
problem,  referring to the presence of blacks in America.  The
locus of the problem was supposedly the individual black person
and his or her supposed inferiority.  With the civil rights
movement came a new social critique.  The problem was not the
black person, but pervasive racism.  The American economy and
social structures tended to exclude blacks, rather than
incorporate them as valued citizens.  What was needed, therefore,
was a transformation of the nature of America s
institutions through legal measures and a gradual erosion of
prejudice.  Feminists experienced similar problems, as the social
and economic frameworks functioned to limit their opportunities.
To give women their rightful place in society, fundamental
structural change had to occur.  And so it was with the nascent
disability rights movement.  Advocates argued that people with
disabilities should not have to accommodate themselves to a
society designed to exclude them.  Instead they encouraged
disabled persons to assert their right to join society and
promoted reforms to facilitate participation. 
     This social critique, however, was not about subverting core
American values.  Rather, it was about partaking of the American
ideology of liberty and opportunity.  Persons with disabilities
had the same aspirations as other Americans.  This mentality also
challenged disability professionals.  Many disability rights
advocates viewed these professionals as accomplices in
discrimination because they treated disabled persons as  sick 
patients.  In addition, advocates thought some special interest
organizations contributed to infantile notions of persons with
disabilities by appeal ing to charity for  helpless  children.
     The rise of independent living centers was a crucial aspect
of the disability rights movement. But other contributions were
also significant: for example, those concerning developmental
disabilities and mental illness.  Organizations such as the ARC,
which endeavored to assist persons with developmental
disabilities in living better lives, focused especially on two
issues: institutional ization and education.  Advocates found
appalling conditions and subhuman standards in many institutions
for people with disabilities.  In addition to exploring ways to
develop community-based alternatives, they promoted institutional
reform.  In the early 1970s, the ARC collaborated with a group of
Washington-based organizations to pass a law to protect the
rights and treatment of persons with developmental disabilities
in institutions.  By 1975, under the leadership of Paul Marchand
of the ARC, the group of organizations formally identified
themselves as the Consortium for Citizens with Developmental
Disabilities (CCDD).  Their efforts culminated in the Developmen
tal Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act of 1975, which
promoted respect for the basic human rights of institutionalized
persons.  Congress built on this Act in 1980 with the Civil
Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act, which gave the Federal
Government authority to sue local opera tors of institutions that
consistently violated the constitutional rights of persons in
prisons, mental hospitals, and other institutions.
     CCDD was also interested in improving educational prospects
for persons with developmen tal disabilities.  In this regard
they shared the interests of a variety of disability
organizations, whose collective efforts assisted in passage of
the Education for all Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (more
commonly known as Public Law 94-142).  This act, supported by
persons with disabilities across the spectrum, was a milestone. 
It had the crucial effect of raising a generation of persons with
disabilities who expected to attain a rightful place in American
society, not isolation and segregation.  This generation would
compel its teachers and peers to develop the same understand ing. 
A decade later, it would help mold public opinion about the ADA.
     DIA was made up of young disabled dreamers who believed that
fighting for their rights was their obligation. 
          Judy Heumann   In addition to centers for independent
living and disability-specific organizations, other important
elements of the growing disability rights movement included legal
action centers and organizations devoted to political protest. 
For example, as an outgrowth of a legal activist project in law
school, Robert Burgdorf and several other students at the
University of Notre Dame estab lished the National Center for Law
and the Handicapped (NCLH).  With support from the univer sity,
the American Bar Association, the ARC, and HEW, NCLH pursued
cases around the country to help persons with disabilities. 
Their first work was based on due process and equal protection
law, but Section 504 provided a new and stron ger legal
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