What Can a Body Do? (First Year Read, 2024)

Ed Roberts (1939-1995) & The Rolling Quads

UC Berkeley's Cowell Hospital became the first space on campus meant for disabled students.

Inspired by the civil rights movements of the 1960s, Ed Roberts and fellow students formed the Rolling Quads in 1969, an activist student group later renamed the "Disabled Students' Union" in 1973. They worked to get institutional recognition of the Independent Living Movement, and later developed the Center for Independent Living (CIL), which became a model for similar organizations worldwide.

Image: Ed Roberts, by William Bronston, working for the California Department of Rehabilitation. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=141188359

Judy Heumann, the "Mother of the Disability Rights Movement" (1947-2023)

“[T]o us, independence does not mean doing things physically alone. It means being able to make independent decisions. It is a mind process not contingent on a normal body.”
(1978, quoted in What Can a Body Do?, p. 117)

Heumann's activism made her an internationally recognized expert on the issue, serving in multiple roles in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

In 1970, she co-founded the protest group Disabled in Action, and led protests against the federal government in the 1970s to push for greater enforcement of laws supporting disabled people.

Along with Ed Roberts, Heumann co-founded the World Institute on Disability.

MORE ABOUT JUDY HEUMANN

• Judith Heumann: American Disability Rights Activist (Britannica)
  Biography of the activist who led protests and testified in Congressional hearings about the needs of the disabled community.

Image: Judith Heumann, by East Asia and Pacific Media Hub U.S. Department of State, 2014, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83508530