DC Disability Rights History

This is a sampling of disability rights events and people who were significant in the history of Washington, DC

• National Park Service: Disability History: The Disability Rights Movement
• Judy Heumann – “Mother of Disability Rights” who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations
  • Tributes
    • DREDF
    • Human Rights Watch
    • Judy’s obituary on the BBC
    • New York Times
    • NPR
  • Judy Heumann’s website
• Lois Curtis
  • Lois Curtis, Whose Lawsuit Secured Disability Rights, Dies at 55, The New York Times
• Native Americans
  • “Everything in Nature Goes in Curves and Circles”: Native American Concepts of Disability, Grinnell College
  • Hidden History of “Hand Talk” (video)
  • Susan Burch, Committed – book about Native American institutions
  • Hiawatha Insane Asylum, Canton, South Dakota
  • Grant Them Rest: The Canton Asylum
• St Elizabeths Mental Hospital
  • St Elizabeths: Martin Summers, Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation’s Capital (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2019)
  • Treating Race at St Elizabeths Hospital
• The Invalid Corps
  • A documentary by Day Al-Mohamed
  • The Invalid Corps, Civil War Research
• Gallaudet University
  • The First 100 Years, Gallaudet University
  • How “Deaf President Now” Changed America, Pacific Standard Magazine
• Enslaved Persons
  • The Continuation of Slavery: The Experience of Disabled Slaves during Emancipation, Disability Studies Quarterly
  • Disability and Enslavement, Wikipedia
  • Book explores the intersection of slavery and disability in the US, University of Buffalo
• League of Physically Handicapped: Pioneers in the fight for disability rights, International Socialist Review
• Fight for Education in DC
  • Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia (1972)
• Forest Haven, institution for DC people with intellectual and developmental disabilities
  • From Institution to Inclusion, WAMU
  • Oral Histories from Forest Haven:
  • Bob Williams – Director of the US Independent Living Administration at the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), worked on the Forest Haven case
  • Washington Post reporting from Katherine Boo
• Rehabilitation Act of 1973 & 504
  • Short History of the 504 Sit-in, DREDF
  • Transcript of a Black Panther newspaper article about the protests
• 2017: ADAPT protests re. healthcare
  • Disability advocates arrested during health care protest at McConnell’s office, the Washington Post
  • “No cuts to Medicaid!”: protesters in wheelchairs arrested after release of health care bill, Vox
• Disability Justice Movement
  • What is Disability Justice? – Sins Invalid
  • A Black disabled teen went unheard in prison. People are now listening., The Washington Post
• Some of the Significant People in DC Disability Rights
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt, US President – Disability and Deception, University of Arizona
  • Harriet Tubman, American abolitionist
  • Justin and Yoshiko Dart, disability activists
  • 14 Black Disabled Women Who Made a Powerful Impact
  • The Overlooked History of Black Disabled People
  • People in government who were disability activists
    • Kathy Martinez, a blind, Latinx LGBTQI, was Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy for the Obama administration
    • Michael Winter – transportation Department – starting in 1994 (Clinton administration).
  • Helen Keller
    • Helen Keller’s Forgotten Radicalism, Time Magazine
    • Helen Keller in Washington, DC
  • Claudia Gordon – Black Deaf Lawyer attended Howard U, advisor to Obama
  • John Kennedy and Eunice Shriver – worked to advance research and treatment of people with developmental disabilities
  • Brad Lomax, Black Panther Party member and part of the 504 delegation that went to DC
    • Overlooked No More: Brad Lomax, a Bridge Between Civil Rights Movements, The New York Times