Judy Heumann’s death last year was a deep sadness for the disability community. She is often called the “mother” of the disability rights movement, and her activism has had a lasting impact on millions of Americans, yet many people do not know her name.
“She was a really strong advocate. She knew what she wanted. She was really strong for her human rights,” said Acton resident Anna Weinberger, who said Heumann inspired her and her work as an advocate for people with autism.
Weinberger is a volunteer with Easter Seals Massachusetts, a nonprofit that provides a wide range of services and programs for people with disabilities. The organization backs a grassroots movement, also driven by a group of activists and educators, to bring more disability history to classrooms, even though it’s not currently required to be taught in schools.
“I wanted to be involved in that. [the campaign] “I thought it would be a great opportunity to educate people about the history of disabilities, because it’s not really taught in schools,” Weinberger said.
For example, Heumann’s activism helped lead to the creation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a landmark law that banned discrimination in public places and guaranteed equal access to transportation, education and employment.
“I went to school after 1990, so I’m part of what they call the ‘ADA generation,’ and the ADA was always on my side,” said Desiree Forte, youth programs manager for Easter Seals Massachusetts. And yet, she rarely saw people with disabilities like her in textbooks.
While the ADA may be relatively well known, other historic events in the disability rights movement are less well known. These include the 1977 504 Sit-in, in which over 100 people occupied a federal building in San Francisco for 26 days to demand enforcement of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history, and the 1990 Capitol Crawl, in which dozens of people with disabilities walked up the steps of the Capitol building to urgently demand passage of the ADA.
Graham Warder, chair of the history department at Keene State College in New Hampshire, said disability history is a “rich” history for students of all ages.
“It raises all kinds of new kinds of questions about sometimes old subjects,” he said. “I mean, how can you talk about war without talking about disability? How can you talk about the workplace without talking about disability? How can you talk about the role of government? These are really standard questions in history.”
“There is no period, geographical place or time context in history where disabled people do not exist, and yet somehow we have only just scratched the surface of that history,” says Fred Pelka, a writer who has chronicled the disability history movement and teaches a course on disability advocacy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Easterseals Massachusetts volunteered at a recent presentation on disability history education.
Courtesy of Desiree Forte
Pelka points out that there has been increased interest in disability history in recent years.
“It’s long overdue,” he said.
Massachusetts is one of several states that observes Disability History Month each October. In 2018, the state updated its social studies and history standards to be more inclusive, including the history of the disability rights movement. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education now offers the video resource “The Great Fight for Disability Rights” and related curriculum for free upon request from teachers.
Several states, including New Jersey, Nevada, California, and Kansas, have enacted laws requiring disability history to be included in curriculum standards.
Former California Department of Rehabilitation official Judy Heumann and California Department of Rehabilitation Commissioner Ed Roberts, left, attend a news conference in Washington on Oct. 21, 1982, to draw attention to the Reagan administration’s focus on program funding in the hinterland. (AP Photo/John Durica, File)
John Duricka/AP AP
But those standards aren’t always enforced, and there are gaps in teacher awareness about materials and resources, said Rich Cairn, an inclusion specialist in history, civics and social studies at Northampton-based Emerging America.
Cairn said there hasn’t been much formal research into how many teachers are already incorporating disability history into their lessons.
Emerging America developed a disability history curriculum, “Reforming for Equal Rights,” with funding from the Library of Congress. The company promoted the free curriculum widely through webinars, conferences, and professional development events.
“I feel like we’re starting to see signs of it becoming a movement,” he said.
Emerging America’s curriculum emphasizes the use of primary sources, such as the 1913 black-and-white silent film of deaf pioneer George Veditz preaching the importance of American Sign Language. At a time when people like Alexander Graham Bell were trying to eradicate ASL, Veditz used film to preserve the language.
“I think it’s really fascinating that he’s using a new form of communication like silent film to serve his community, because at that time sign language was under threat in most deaf schools around the world and across the United States,” said Ross Newton, a history teacher at HEC Academy, a special needs high school in Northampton.
Newton uses the Emerging America curriculum in her classes, which she says can fill a critical gap in K-12 education and combat stigma around disabilities.
Newton, the historian who uses a wheelchair, points to figures like Ed Roberts, credited with founding the independent living movement, as civil rights leaders that more students should know about.
Kate Benson, a longtime special education teacher and administrator who serves as president of the Friends of Belchertown State School, said the “Emerging America” ​​curriculum presents a more comprehensive view of U.S. history.
“It’s about approaching it from a different angle. If you’re talking about the Civil War, let’s talk about disability institutions, what it was like for soldiers who experienced shell shock before we even knew what it was,” she said. “If you’re talking about women’s rights and the abolitionist movement, let’s talk about women’s rights as it relates to forced institutionalization, and so on.”
Benson said there is plenty of local disability history for teachers to look into, including facilities like Belchertown and the Fernald School in Waltham, the first public facility of its kind in the United States.
She said learning about the history of these institutions and how they ultimately closed allows students to “see how others worked for them during that time and then work for themselves.”
So do Easter Seals volunteers. At a recent campaign meeting, everyone in attendance was asked to name a person in disability history they would like to know more about.
Adner Martinez, a communications student at MassBay Community College, chose a few artists, Ray Charles because of her love of jazz, and Maya Angelou.
“I knew she’d been to school and that she had a disability herself,” he later said of his reasons for choosing Angelou, “and in my experience, I feel like there was a parallel between me and Maya Angelou in elementary school, middle school, high school. That was a huge inspiration to me.”