SYMHC Classics: Six Impossible Episodes - Other Ins

This 2020 episode covers direct action demonstrations and protests that have some similarities to the sit-in movement. 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. I don't think we've done an installment of
six impossible episodes as a Saturday Classic before. Maybe we have,
but I think today is a first. This classic is
inspired by a lawsuit that has been filed by seventeen
states regarding section five oh four of the Rehabilitation Act
of nineteen seventy three. This filing is initially focused on

(00:26):
the Biden administration's inclusion of gender dysphoria as a protected
disability under this Act, but the lawsuit also argues that
section five oh four itself is unconstitutional, so with today's language,
Section five oh four begins quote, no otherwise qualified individual
with a disability in the United States shall, solely by

(00:50):
reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the
participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected
to discrimination, under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,
or under any program or activity conducted by any Executive
agency or by the United States Postal Service.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
We have talked about Section five oh four and how
disabled people, supported by a broad coalition of allies, successfully
demonstrated for the US government to actually write the regulations
needed to implement and enforce this law four years after
it had been passed. That was in our episode Six
Impossible Episodes Other INDs. As a note, Judy Human, who

(01:36):
we talked about in this episode, died on March fourth,
twenty twenty three. This episode originally came out February fifth,
twenty twenty so enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in
History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

Speaker 1 (02:05):
I started talking immediately as I could see that Holly
was taking a.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Drink of water.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
So not long ago on the podcast, we talked about
the sit in movement in the United States of the
nineteen sixties, and today we're kind of coming back to
that theme with an addition of six Impossible Episodes. For
listeners who are new to our show, this is when
we take a shorter look at six topics that, for
one reason or another, we can't quite tackle as a
standalone episode. That can be for all kinds of reasons,

(02:35):
including how much information is available and how broad the
topic itself is. This time we are looking at what
I'm just calling other ins, so other direct action demonstrations
and similar protests that have some similarities to that sit
in movement that we talked about earlier. A couple of
today's topics might have worked as whole episodes, but I

(02:58):
really like having them as part of this collection because
together they illustrate a wide variety of ways that these
kinds of demonstrations have worked in the United States. They
point out some similarities and differences in these movements, so
we're keeping them all together today.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
And our first event took place in Alexandria, Virginia. A
lot of articles about it today call it the Alexandria
Library sit in, but accounts and newspaper reports from the
time described it as a sit down strike. On August
twenty first, nineteen thirty nine, a group of young black
men tried to get library cards at the whites only
library on Queen Street in Alexandria, Virginia, which is the

(03:39):
Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library today. Their names were William Evans,
Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gattis, Morris Murray, and Clarence Strange,
and they were all between the ages of nineteen and
twenty two. So they each came into the library one
at a time and asked Alice Green, who was the
assistant librarian on duty, if they could register for a

(04:00):
library card. She told each of them know that the
library was for whites only, and then from there each
of them would pick a book from the stacks and
then sit down at a table to read it, or
at least to try to read. Later on, some of
them gave interviews where they talked about being way too
nervous to actually concentrate on what was on the page,
so once one person had gotten a book and sat down,

(04:23):
the next person would come in and do the same thing.
With five black men sitting at five different tables in
the library and refusing to leave, Green wasn't sure what
to do. She sent the library's page, William Adam, to
the home of the head librarian, Catherine Scoggin to tell
her what was going on. Skagin went to city hall
to discuss what was happening with the city planner and

(04:45):
the chief of police.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
Soon police were on the scene of the library, and
a sixth participant in this, who was fourteen year old
Bobby Strange, had been tasked with keeping watch over the
library and then going to get Attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker,
known as sw four his law office, which was nearby
when the police got there. S W.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Tucker had graduated from Howard University in nineteen thirty three,
studied law on his own, and passed the Virginia Bar
exam at the age of only twenty, a year too
young to actually be sworn in. He had arranged the
sit downstrike at the library, and his brother Otto, was
one of the people sitting in. Back in nineteen twenty seven,
sw and Otto had been arrested after refusing to give

(05:28):
up their seat on a trolley to a white passenger,
so they already had some experience in civil disobedience. Sw
and a friend had also been denied library cards shortly
after the library opened. He was hoping to use that
as part of a court case to force the library
to integrate. The sit in was part of that plan
as well.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
SW Tucker had also gotten a photographer to document the scene,
and that photographer captured a picture of the demonstrators being
escorted out of the building by police. What you won't
see if you look at this photo online is that
by the time that happened, a crowd of about three
hundred angry spectators, along with some other reporters had also

(06:08):
gathered around the building. The demonstrators were charged with disorderly conduct,
and Tucker arranged for their release from jail. In terms
of Tucker's legal action, the library was taxpayer funded and
black residents paid taxes but weren't allowed to use it,
so his hope was that the courts would force the
library to allow equal access to black residents. But rather

(06:30):
than integrate the library, the city of Alexandria rushed through
approvals for a new library for black patrons, the Robert H.
Robinson Library, which opened on February fourteenth, nineteen forty. When SW.
Tucker got a letter inviting him to register for a
library card at that branch, he answered with a refusal,
insisting that he reissued the card he had already applied

(06:52):
for at the library that had already existed. He went
on to write, quote, continued delay beyond the close of
this month in issuing me a card for use the
library on Queen Street will be taken as refusal to
do so, whereupon I feel justified in seeking aid of
court to enforce my right.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Tucker went on to become the lead lawyer for the
NAACP in Virginia, During his legal career, he argued before
the US Supreme Court several times, including in the attempts
to overturn public school segregation in Virginia. Today, an elementary
school in Alexandria is named in his honor, and the
former Robinson Library is the Alexandria Black History Museum. In

(07:33):
October twenty nineteen, a judge dismissed the disorderly conduct charges
against the young men who sat in, which had never
come to trial.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
So one of the really interesting things about this sit
in is that it used the same strategy that the
NAACP and other civil rights organizations were using really extensively
later on. It's not like nobody had ever thought to
do this, but he was sort of doing something that
would become a really huge part of the movement later,
and that was pairing d wrecked action with legal action.

(08:02):
The Alexandria sit in predated the parts that we really
think of as the most active parts of the civil
rights movement, but this strategy was really similar to a
lot of what was going on later on.

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Next up, we have a relatively early moment in the
movement for LGBTQ rights in the US, back when it
was more commonly known as the homophile movement. The Mattachine
Society was one of the earliest gay rights organizations in
the United States. One documented as being older is Chicago
Society for Human Rights, which was founded in nineteen twenty four.

(08:33):
We covered that on the Show in twenty fifteen.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
The Mattachine Society was first founded in Los Angeles in
nineteen fifty one, and then other chapters formed in other
cities around the US after that. And in nineteen sixty six,
members of New York City's Matachine Society challenged regulations that
prohibited gay men from being served alcohol in New York's bars.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Those regulations came from the New York State Liquor Authority
in the form of an acquirement that bar patrons had
to display quote orderly conduct. In the liquor authorities view,
homosexuality was inherently disorderly, although the policy didn't specifically mention
sexual orientation. Police frequently rated bars that were believed to
have a gay clientele, and bars posted signs saying that

(09:18):
men had to be facing the bar while drinking. This
was part of an overall climate of homophobia, stigmatization, and harassment,
and it was not unique to New York. Other states
had similar policies, some of which specifically referenced homosexuality.

Speaker 1 (09:33):
On April twenty first, nineteen sixty six, three Matachine Society
members went to bars in New York City with the
hope of being denied service so that then they could
file suit and try to get that policy overturned. They
included Dick Leisch, who was the head of the New
York chapter of the Matachine Society, as well as Craig
Rodwell and John Timmins. A fourth man, Randy Wicker, also

(09:55):
joined them. As they went on, they had informed reporters
of what they were doing ahead time, and they called
it a sip in.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
This turned out to be a little easier said than done, though.
The men's first choice had been a bar that had
a sign posted in the window that said if you're gay,
go away, But as soon as the staff there realized
that there were reporters on the premises, they closed down
for the day. At their next stop, the men told
the bartender that they were homosexual, but that they would
not be disorderly, and they asked to be served, and

(10:24):
in that case, the bartender served them, which is what happened.
At their next stop, as well.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
There are interviews I think it was with Dick Leish
where he was talking about at this point, they were like,
we've we've got to get turned down at the next bar,
or we're going to have to table this for later
because we're going to be like too inebriated to make
the argument that were not disorderly. So they finally wound
up at a bar called Julius's in Greenwich Village, which

(10:49):
they thought would be hyper sensitive to their presence there
because it had recently been raided by police the same
as before. They sat down at the bar, they told
the bartender that they were gay, but they were going
to remain orderly, and they said that they wanted to
be served.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
The bartender had already put glasses in front of them
and covered them with his hands, saying I can't serve you.
Then this led to a dramatic photo captured by Fred
macdera of the Village Voice, with a three man in
coats and ties facing the bartender and the bartender covering
their glasses.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
With the help of the ACLU, the men filed legal
action against the State Liquor Board and the bar. New
York City's Commission on Human Rights got involved with it
as well, so under the threat of a lawsuit, the
liquor Board changed the policy. Then in nineteen sixty seven,
which was just a few years later, a New York
Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the case Kerma
Restaurant Corporation versus State Liquor Authority, and that court ruling

(11:44):
specifically said that homosexuality was not inherently disorderly. That ruling
did not end discrimination at New York's bars, though the
Stonewall riots started after a police raid on June twenty eighth,
nineteen sixty nine, that was another two more years after
that Appeal's go or ruling had happened. We are going
to take a quick sponsor break before we go on
to some more actions. The Matachine Society sipin we talked

(12:17):
about a moment ago was inspired by the nineteen sixties
civil rights sit ins that we just covered on a podcast,
and that was also true of our next active protest,
which is the fish ins that took place in the
Pacific Northwest in the nineteen fifties and sixties and beyond.
But the context for that protest stretches all the way
back to the nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Isaac Ingele Stevens became governor of what was then Washington
Territory in eighteen fifty three. One of his objectives as
governor was to secure as much land as possible from
the indigenous tribes and nations who were living in the
Pacific Northwest. As we discussed in our recent two parter
on the occupation of Alcatraz. He did this through treaties,
and these treaties detailed the terms under which Native nations

(13:00):
ceded land to the United States. These treaties ultimately assigned
more than ninety percent of the total land to the
United States, with the rest being established as reservation land.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
At least thirteen tribes and nations were signatories to these treaties,
including then a Squally, the Pewallup, and the Muckleshoot, although
the exact number is a little complicated because Stevens treated
individual villages as separate tribes when he was negotiating these treaties,
under the idea that a smaller group would have less
negotiating power.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
These treaties covered a lot of points in the relationship
between the Indigenous nations and the United States, but one
important point was fishing rights. While there were multiple treaties
at work. They all had similar language. Here the quote
right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds
and stations is further secured to said Indians in common

(13:54):
with all citizens.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Of the territory, So the Native nations, I mean, this
has been the case with all all of the Native
American history that we've talked about on the showy. A
lot of these treaties were heavily skewed in favor of
the United States versus the indigenous tribe or nation. In
this case, though, all of the nations involved refused to
sign the treaties without that point about fishing rights, because

(14:18):
not only was fishing a major source of food, but
the fish and the act of fishing also held religious
and spiritual significance. And from Stevens point of view, he
was totally willing to make that concession for very pragmatic reasons,
because if the indigenous people did not retain their fishing rights,
then the government was going to be obligated to provide
them with some other kind of food source. At first,

(14:39):
the indigenous nations were able to exercise their rights to
fish in the waterways around the Pacific Northwest using their
traditional methods which included using gillnets, which are like underwater
walls made of netting. There just weren't that many non
Indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest yet, and at first
those who were there were more interested in other industries.

(15:00):
But as the non indigenous population started to grow, Indigenous
people started having more trouble exercising those rights. And that
also was true as federal policy toward Indigenous people went
through all of those shifts that we talked about in
the Occupation of Alcatraz episodes. The state of Washington started
to interpret that treaty language as meaning that the Indigenous

(15:22):
people had fishing rights only on their reservations, and that
was in defiance of some federal court rulings, which weren't
always totally clear and decisive, but they generally upheld the
Native people's rights to fish in other waterways as well.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
These restrictions made it increasingly difficult for Indigenous people in
the Pacific Northwest to fish. The best runs for salmon
and steelhead trout were outside of the reservation's boundaries. On
top of that, during the period of allotment, the reservations
themselves got smaller. Then, when the federal government implemented its
termination policies, which were posted to get rid of the

(16:00):
reservations and make Native people quote subject to the same
laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as
are applicable to other citizens of the United States. The
state of Washington and to a lesser extent, Oregon became
increasingly focused on enforcing fishing and conservation laws, specifically when
violated by Native people, even though those treaties were still

(16:23):
in place.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Yeah, it's like the state laws were contrary to the
treaty language, but the treaties had not been abolished in
any way. They were still in effect. Running alongside all
of this was a perception among predominantly white sport fishers
that the indigenous people were what was to blame for
declining populations of salmon and steelhead trout, and this was

(16:47):
in defiance of actual data. Between nineteen fifty eight and
nineteen sixty seven, Indigenous people caught six and a half
percent of the catch in the Pacific Northwest, White sport
fishers caught twelve point two percent, and then commercial fishing
operations took all the rest. More than eighty percent of
the catch was through commercial fishing operations, not through indigenous

(17:09):
people or sport fishers doing their own thing. I can
tell you firsthand that that belief persisted into the seventies
when I lived there as a kid. That does not
surprise me at all.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
I remember hearing neighbors, adult neighbors discuss how they wanted
to go fishing, but then said very disparaging things about
the native population and how they had ruined it for everyone. Yeah,
we talked in our behind the scenes after the Greensboro
Lunch Counter sit Ins episode about how like we'll be
doing research on something and the whole topic is angering,

(17:41):
but then there will be one element that just is
particularly viscerally angering, and the things that were said about
like the indigenous people are trying to get something for nothing,
Like I got so angry over and over in this
part of it. And eventually the only safe place for
an Indigenous person to fish in the Pacific Northwest was
on a reservation. Outside a reservation, Indigenous fishers were being harassed, arrested,

(18:06):
and jailed and having their equipment confiscated by police, including
their boats. Plus outside of the reservations, nets and traps,
which were part of traditional indigenous fishing practices were outlawed.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
So this was still a few years away from the
occupation of Alcatraz and the rise of an intertribal movement
for Indigenous rights that we just discussed back in November.
In the Pacific Northwest and the nineteen fifties and early sixties,
most tribal leaders were taking a more conciliatory approach to things.
The National Congress of American Indians was explicitly not in

(18:41):
favor of the direct action methods that the civil rights
movement was using, finding them really to be too aggressive
and contradictory to Indigenous culture. So like there was a
banner hanging from their headquarters at one point that said
something along the lines of like, Indigenous people don't demonstrate, like.
They were not in favor of sit ins or marches
or earth or any of those kinds of things at

(19:01):
this point as a trend among leadership.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
But not everyone agreed, and in nineteen sixty four, the
Survival of the American Indian Association SAIA was established, with
a focus on direct action and civil disobedience. One of
the organization's demonstrations was a series of fish ins around
the Pacific Northwest. They were not the first people to
do this. For example, Robert Satayakum was arrested while fishing

(19:26):
in nineteen fifty four, and he hoped that his arrest
would lead to a court ruling that would clarify the
Indigenous Nations treaty rights. Unfortunately, his criminal record went well
beyond this act of civil disobedience. That whole story is
outside the scope of this episode.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
So these fishians arranged by the SAIA started on February
twenty seventh of nineteen sixty four, and they continued well
into the nineteen seventies, sometimes as individual fishing events and
sometimes as prolonged demonstrations that established encampments with fishing going
on throughout that whole time. The demonstrators had legal and

(20:01):
strategic advice from Jack Tanner, who was the director of
the Tacoma, Washington chapter of the NAACP. They also had
the attention of celebrity supporters, including Marlon Brando, who was
arrested at a fish in on March second of nineteen
sixty four, but wasn't ultimately charged with a crime.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
These fish ins attracted a lot of criticism, at least
at first. Many indigenous leaders disagreed with the strategy entirely
preferring to focus on compromise. Jack Tanner's colleagues in the
civil rights movement criticized his involvement, saying it was taking
his focus away from Black Americans. The Washington State Sportsman's Club,

(20:40):
which was a lobbying organization that had a lot of
influence over the state Game Department, described Native people as
trying to flaunt the rules and get special privileges. On
December sixth, nineteen sixty four, they issued a statement encouraging
the state to get rid of all fishing regulations quote
to allow such waters to become barren until such time
as the Congress of the United States or the courts

(21:02):
of our Land sets up enforceable regulations that will allow
the state to carry on a reasonable fisheries management program.
This was kind of a burn it all down mentality. Overall,
the white media portrayed the Indigenous protesters as backward and lawless.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
So nonviolence was a core part of the strategy for
the civil rights movement in the United States for a
lot of the time, but that wasn't really entirely the
case in the fish in movement. The demonstrators were repeatedly
targeted by Game wardens and by police, including being beaten
with clubs and sprayed with tear gas. On December seventh,

(21:39):
police making an arrest rammed demonstrators canoe with their boat,
which jumped to the demonstrators into the water. It is
not entirely clear whether that was an accident or intentional.
At some encampments, native people carried firearms to defend themselves,
and at others they fought back with things like stones
and paddles. After a brawl on October thirteenth of nineteen

(22:01):
sixty four, the ACLU agreed to defend some of the demonstrators.
At first, the ACLU really focused on people who had
been charged with interfering with police, and then they later
expanded it to include defending people who were arrested for fishing.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
As was the case with the occupation of Alcatraz. This
turned into an inter tribal movement, with supporters from other
Native nations traveling to the Pacific Northwest from other parts
of North America to support the demonstrators. The movement also
gradually gained more support among non indigenous people, including members
of the American Friends Services Committee and the Black Panther Party.

(22:36):
In September of nineteen sixty eight, a massive protest was
planned that pulled together all these populations. It was supposed
to involve five days of fishing, but it went on
for more than forty.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
This movement continued into the nineteen seventies. On June seventeenth
of nineteen seventy, the Washington State Sportsmen's Club, which was
still insisting that Indigenous people were trying to get undeserved
special privle that the expensive white sport fishers, filed a lawsuit,
but the judge did not find in their favor. The
judge found in favor of the Indigenous Nations, granting a

(23:09):
fifteen day window in which net fishing would be allowed
in the Pwallup River. By that point, more tribal leadership
had started to support these protests.

Speaker 2 (23:19):
On February twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one, the SAIA asked
the US Attorney General to file suit against the State
of Washington for violating the treaties that the Native nations
had signed all the way back in the nineteenth century.
Judge George Bolt issued his decision on February twelfth, nineteen
seventy four. This came to be known as the Bolt Decision.

(23:41):
And it was one of a series of court cases
that were all part of this. It ruled that the
native tribes that were party to those treaties were entitled
to fifty percent of the available catch, including fishing outside
their reservations. That was way better than the six and
a half percent that they'd actually and fishing according to

(24:01):
that earlier data. This was regarded as a huge wind
for the indigenous people, but of course it did not
fix everything. Non Indigenous fishers were outraged and tried to
stage their own fish ins as like a counter demonstration.
The ruling also didn't apply to landless indigenous nations or
ones that had not been partied to those earlier treaties,

(24:24):
and that included the Duwamish, Chinook, and Snowhomish peoples. Native
nations in the Pacific Northwest are also still reliant on
fishing for food, and the populations of those fish has
continued to decline through the effects of commercial fishing, habitat loss,
increasing ocean temperatures, all kinds of other factors. Back in
twenty seventeen, we did an episode on Ed Roberts and

(24:46):
the independent living movement which evolved in Berkeley, California In
the nineteen sixties and seventies. Before this point, a lot
of disability advocacy had really been focused on parents and
caregivers of disabled people rather than onn disabled people's own
self advocacy. The independent living movement really shifted that focus
more towards self determination and self advocacy. So this kind

(25:10):
of language about independence has been evolving in more recent
years to include the idea of interdependence, because really all
of us depend on other people in some ways, and
when it comes to disability, a lot of times that
interdependence is really stigmatized. Obviously, that's a brief sum up,
not the entirety of the philosophy at this point, but

(25:31):
in terms of the nineteen sixties and seventies, this move
toward independence and away from pity and paternalism was just huge.
One of the moments that came up in that episode
is the passage of section five oh four of the
Rehabilitation Act in nineteen seventy three and the sit in
that followed it, But we didn't really spend much time
on that at all. So Section five oh four was

(25:53):
the first federal law regarding civil rights for people with disabilities.
It read quote no otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the
United States shall, solely on the basis of his handicap,
be excluded from the participation, be denied the benefits of,
or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity
receiving federal financial assistance.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
So that sounds pretty great, But this law was just
the starting point, like, how do you define, to use
the language of the law, what handicapped means, what did
or didn't classify as discrimination. Federal agencies needed to create
their own regulations regarding how Section five h four would
actually be implemented and enforced. And this applied to every

(26:39):
federal agency but the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
or HW. I don't know if maybe people say that
HUGH that was selected as the lead agency. They were
to set their regulations first and then the other agencies
would follow.

Speaker 2 (26:55):
But between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy seven nothing happened.
Attorneys from the Office for Civil Rights drafted regulations and
sent them to HW but rather than publishing them for
public comment, the Department sent them to Congress, and then
Congress sent them back. It went on for so long
that in the meantime President Richard Nixon, who had signed

(27:16):
it into law, was impeached, and then his successor, Gerald Ford,
had been replaced by Jimmy Carter.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
By that point, disability rights activists were demanding for the
regulations that the Office for Civil Rights had be put
into place. Instead, the Carter administration set up a task
force to study and revise them, and that task force
did not include any disabled members.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
It became clear that this study and revision process was
going to weaken the proposed regulations that the Office for
Civil Rights had recommended back in nineteen seventy three, so
the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities decided to take action.
They gave the HW an ultimatum either HW Secretary Joseph
Klifano would sign the regulations as written by April fourth,

(28:01):
nineteen seventy seven, or activists would start sitting in at
HW offices on April fifth.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
April fourth came and went, and on April fifth, demonstrators
took over the federal buildings that housed eight different regional offices.
Most of these sit ins lasted for a day or two,
but in San Francisco, more than one hundred people sat
in for twenty six days.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Unlike some of the other sit ins that we've talked about,
they didn't show up during business hours and leave when
HW closed for the day. Activists took over the building
and stayed, which was really possible thanks to the involvement
of lots of other organizations, including civil rights and gay
rights groups, church organizations, and politicians who were on the

(28:44):
demonstrator's side. In San Francisco, Glide Memorial Church and the
Black Panther Party provided meals.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Over the course of the sit in in San Francisco,
conditions in the building became increasingly difficult. Supporters had donated
things like mattress and a shower attachment that could be
used with a sink faucet, but people had to sleep
in shifts because there were not enough sleeping spaces. The
building's restrooms overall were not accessible. Nobody had any privacy,

(29:13):
and in some cases it wasn't just uncomfortable, it was
potentially life threatening. For example, people who used catheters or
ventilators didn't necessarily have caregivers or other people on hand
who knew how to operate and care for these devices.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Eventually, a delegation from the San Francisco cit in was
selected to travel to Washington, d C. To meet with legislators.
People donated funds for plane tickets for people who could
travel by air. The International Association of Machinists rented a
moving truck with a lift and used it to transport
people who used wheelchairs. Once in Washington, they met with

(29:48):
senators to go over the original regulations point by point,
answering senators' objections one by one. I cannot imagine how
uncomfortable this trip was, especially for the people who were little,
really in a moving van. Yeah, Like, my mom uses
a wheelchair that she can't really transfer out of to
get into a vehicle, So like there's a special vehicle

(30:09):
with a ramp and it's high downs for her chair, like,
and that is not a comfortable trip. A lot of
the time, this was literally a moving van with no windows,
driving people across the country.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah. Secretary Kalifano finally signed these regulations on April twenty
eighth of nineteen seventy seven. They included general provisions along
with regulations on employment practices, program accessibility, primary and secondary education,
post secondary education, health welfare and social services, and government procedures.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Overall, this was a major success for the disability rights movement,
but at the same time, enforcement was a huge issue.
Opponents argued that the work and expense involved made the
regulations impractical or impossible to implement. The regulations also served
as a template for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which
became law in nineteen ninety, but actually implementing that has

(31:04):
been a struggle as well, even now decades later.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yeah, I remember there being headlines. I feel like it
was late last year about maybe we don't need to
implement this because it's just too expensive, and people were like,
you have had thirty years. I have feelings about this.
I do too. We should also note that, as is
the case with any group, disabled people are not a monolith,

(31:30):
and accessibility looks really different for different disabilities. Different parts
of the community have different perspectives depending on all kinds
of issues. During the five zero four sit in, for example,
some members of the deaf community felt like they were excluded,
and the deaf community also thought that some of the regulations,
like a requirement for educating disabled children and classrooms with

(31:51):
their non disabled peers whenever possible, could threaten deaf culture.

Speaker 2 (31:55):
That said, though beyond the regulations, activists who were part
of these sit ins. I've also talked about their role
in shifting non disabled people's perceptions of disability. In the
words of Judith Human, who is part of the sit
in and is an international disability rights advocate today, quote
through the sit in, we turned ourselves from being oppressed
individuals into being empowered people. We demonstrated to the entire

(32:19):
nation that disabled people could take control over our own
lives and take leadership in the struggle for equality. She
went on to say, quote, we overcame years of parochialism.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
If you're curious, there was an episode of Drunk History
on this that cast disabled people in the roles of
all the five or four protesters, which shouldn't sound like
some kind of accomplishment, but it is. Sadly.

Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yes, yes, there was a lot in this middle act
of the show. So we're going to take a quick
sponsor break to.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
Return to our six Impossible episodes. The idea of respectability
has come up in a lot of our episodes on
the civil rights movement in the United States. It came
up in our recent episode on the Greensboro sit ins
and the other sit ins. It's come up in today's
shows so far, even when we haven't called it out specifically.
A lot of these demonstrations that we have talked about

(33:21):
have involved people who took a lot of care to
always be very polite and very well dressed. And this
has been a strategy and a lot of social movements,
but it's definitely not the only strategy, which is really
illustrated by what we're about to talk about.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
The first official reporting of what came to be known
as acquired immune deficiency syndrome came in the Morbidity and
Mortality Weekly Report, which is a publication of the US
Centers for Disease Control. It described an unusual outbreak of
NUMOSISDS pneumonia in five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles,
and that was on June fifth in nineteen eighty one.

Speaker 1 (33:59):
In years following that, more than twenty eight thousand cases
of AIDS were reported in the United States and more
than twenty four thousan five hundred people had died. By
the end of nineteen eighty six, there was no approved
treatment for HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS
in the United States. The US federal government had been

(34:19):
incredibly slow to respond, and at that point President Ronald
Reagan had not made any public statements on the crisis
at all. A really lengthy drug approval process also meant
that people with HIV were dying while they waited for
access to drugs that were already extending people's lives in
other countries.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
People who were affected by this, who had either contracted
HIV or who knew and loved people who did, were outraged.
This was particularly true among gay men, who were disproportionately affected.
In response to all of this, Larry Kramer and other
activists formed the Aid's Coalition to Unleash Power, or act UP,
on March twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, in New York City.

(34:59):
It's purpose was to use direct action to force the government,
drug companies, public health agencies, insurance companies, everyone involved in
the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV and AIDS to
get moving immediately.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
So act UP still exists today and is still directly
involved in AIDS advocacy because this is not over. Throughout
its existence, the organization has become known for demonstrations that
are angry and aggressive and militant and just viscerally affecting.
As one example, act UP has organized marches to Washington,
DC in which people have scattered the ashes of loved

(35:36):
ones who died from AIDS related diseases on the White
House lawn. Some who have participated in these marches have
said that if that is not enough to prompt the
government to act, that they would start using bodies.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
One of actup's tactics has been the die in, in
which demonstrators lie down unmoving, usually in a public space,
sometimes in roadways, blocking traffic. This is part of actup's
very first protest on March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven,
when seventeen people lay down in the intersection of Broadway
and Wall Street in New York City outside Trinity Church.

(36:09):
At this demonstration, the protesters had a very clear set
of demands that they had written up ahead of time.
They wanted the FDA to immediately release potentially life saving drugs,
to eliminate double blind studies in which HIV positive patients
were given placebos, and to make these drugs affordable. They
also demanded a massive public education campaign, protections against discrimination

(36:32):
for people who are being treated for AIDS, and quote
immediate establishment of a coordinated, comprehensive and compassionate national policy
on AIDS. Okay, when it comes to those drug standards.
In general, people think of controlled studies and double blind
trials as helpful in making sure that the drugs that
make it to market are safe and effective. We talked

(36:54):
about some of that in our two part episode on thlidamide.
But in the early nineteen eighties, the FDA approval took
up to nine years. That was much longer than people
lived after being diagnosed with HIV, especially before the test
for the disease was approved in nineteen eighty five. Since
there had been very little public education on the disease,

(37:14):
most people were diagnosed after contracting an opportunistic infection, at
which point they just did not have long to live.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, Like, people couldn't wait that long. And then also
the idea that somebody could be in a study, like
somebody who was HIV positive could be in a study
where they would be given a placebo, like, they didn't
have time to wait until that study was over to
find out whether they could get the actual drug or not.
So on September fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine, act UP held
a rally and die in outside of the New York

(37:43):
Stock Exchange to protest pharmaceutical company Burrows Welcome, which manufactured AZT,
which by that point was the only drug in the
United States that was approved to treat HIV. Demonstrators had
also made their way into the building and dropped a
banner from a balcony that said sell welcome. So one
of the things they were protesting was how expensive Burro's

(38:03):
Welcome had made AZT, so not long after the demonstration,
they lowered the price for a year of AZT treatment,
which had originally been ten thousand dollars per patient per year,
to six four hundred dollars. Actup's very aggressive advocacy on
this has often been credited with prompting the change, although
Burrow's Welcome has maintained that they had already been planning

(38:26):
to do it.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
Because of their tactics and the stigma surrounding both homosexuality
and AIDS, actup's actions have been inherently controversial. One particular
die in was particularly divisive. In December of nineteen eighty nine,
act UP and Women's Health Action Mobilization demonstrated inside Saint
Patrick's Cathedral during High Mass. They were both there to

(38:49):
protest John Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, who was
influential in city politics and who opposed things like sex education, abortion, access,
AIDS education, and condom distribution.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, a lot of that also applied to the Catholic
Church in general. So this demonstration included a die in
in the cathedral's aisles. More than forty people were arrested,
with some of the demonstrators being carried out of the
cathedral on stretchers. Act UP had initially intended this demonstration
to be somewhat quiet, to sort of go into the
church have their die in in the aisles without otherwise

(39:25):
causing a lot of disruption. But as it developed, Michael
Petrellis loudly blew a whistle and shouted, you're killing us,
and that tipped the protest into something that became a
lot more chaotic.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
People were offended not only at the disruption of the
church services, but also because one of the demonstrators, Thomas Keene,
threw a host wafer from the Communion service on the floor.
He later said that he did not realize how offensive
that would be to Catholics who believed that the communion
host was the body of Christ. Even within act UP,
some people began to argue that the tone of these

(39:58):
demonstrations was turning off potential supporters. So overall, these demonstrations
have been credited with like getting more effective AIDS policy
happening more quickly, and as we said earlier, act UP
is still using Dian's as a protest tool like today.
On October fourth of twenty thirteen, there was a Dian

(40:20):
at the New York Public Library after they put up
an exhibit titled why We Fight Remembering AIDS Activism. One
of Actup's slogans at that event was AIDS is not History,
because this idea that we were remembering activism sort of
suggests that we are done with it now and it
were not. Another took place on January first of twenty fourteen,

(40:42):
after the inauguration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio,
because at that point act UP had been trying to
meet with him about his AIDS platform for months without success.
Act UP repeated the AIDS is Not History theme at
the Whitney Museum in twenty eighteen, after the museum arranged
a retrospective of the world of David Boynovitch, who was

(41:02):
an act UP member before his death in nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 1 (41:06):
Act UP again felt that the Whitney's presentation made it
seem as though the AIDS epidemic was in the past
rather than being a critical current issue.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Okay, So the last one the teaching movement during the
Vietnam War. This one is a little bit different. It
wasn't exactly a direct action meant to force the US
government to end its military involvement in Vietnam. Instead, it
was an educational tool that inspired people to take on
direct actions of their own. So for contexts, during the
nineteen sixty four presidential election, part of Lyndon Bains Johnson's

(41:38):
campaign was a peace platform, so people thought he was
going to end American involvement in Vietnam. But on February
thirteenth of nineteen sixty five, which was less than a
month after being inaugurated, Johnson authorized a bombing campaign that
was known as Operation Rolling Thunder, as well as combat
troop deployments to Vietnam. There had been American personnel and

(42:00):
Vietnam before that, but not in a combat capacity. People
who had voted for him, thinking that he was going
to end American involvement in the war, felt really betrayed.
That spring, the Faculty Committee to Stop the War in
Vietnam at the University of Michigan was discussing ways to
demonstrate against the war and against what they saw as
the militarization of their academic disciplines. As one example, social

(42:23):
scientists had been recruited to work on a military funded
counterinsurgency program called Project Camelot, which was meant to study
cultures primarily in Latin America. And of course, people in
hard science fields had seen the development of weapons like
the atomic bomb. Academics had also seen their work branded
as a communist threat during the Cold War, with accusations

(42:45):
that they were indoctrinating students against the United States. There
was a lot going on with the education community.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
Yeah, and at first these particular professors and other educators
were focused on a walkout in which classes would be
canceled and faculty would instead give anti war lectures somewhere
off campus. But people raised some concerns about whether that
was in the best interests of students and whether people
would perceive it as the professors not being committed to

(43:15):
their work. And a staff meeting on March seventeenth, after
a lot of debate about this whole walkout and strike idea,
anthropologist Marshall sallins said, I've got it. They say, we're
neglecting our responsibilities as teachers. Let's show them how responsible
we feel. Instead of teaching out, we will teach in
all night.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
This led to the first teach in and held from
eight pm on March twenty fourth, nineteen sixty five, until
eight am the following morning. It was held in Angel
Hall Auditorium, although the crowd was so larged that it
spilled out to other parts of the campus, including the
library steps. More than two thousand people attended, with about
five hundred still there when the last lecture started. Women

(43:58):
enrolled at the university had a at the time, but
it was waived so that they could attend. In addition
to the faculty involvement, students for a Democratic Society were
also part of the event.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
This event included lectures and discussions that were meant to
educate attendees on things like the military industrial complex and
Cold War rhetoric and US foreign policy, the effects of
weapons like napalm and phosphorus bombs. There were at least
two different bomb threats during the event, with police clearing
the building after one of them, and counter demonstrators were

(44:31):
inside and outside the building shouting pro war slogans like
better dead than Red.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Two days later, another teach in was held at Columbia
University in New York City. More teachins followed, and on
April seventeenth, nineteen sixty five, an inter university committee for
a public Hearing on Vietnam was established. Participating schools included
the University of Chicago, MIT, University of Wisconsin, Wayne State University,

(44:58):
and Washington University in Saint Louis.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
The committee published a pamphlet called The Meaning of the
National teach In. It began quote the teach ins were
born in protest against United States policy in Vietnam. However,
they are vehicles for a larger purpose. They are a
means of discussion and debate, without which democracy lacks significance.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
On May fifteenth, that National teach In was held in Washington,
d C. This was an all day event that was
also broadcast on more than two hundred radio stations. It
included discussions about US policies and context of the war,
along with debates between supporters and opponents of US policy
toward Vietnam. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy was supposed to

(45:41):
be at the National teach In, but he canceled at
the last minute for a trip to the Dominican Republic
that was described as urgent.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah, of course, there are people who wondered if that
was a convenient excuse or an actual urgency. On May
twenty first and twenty second, the largest teach in in
this movement was held at the University of California at Berkeley,
with thirty thousand people in attendance.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
The committee had followed up with McGeorge Bundy repeatedly after
his cancelation at the National teach In. The committee's hope
was that they would schedule some kind of opportunity for
the debate and discussion that he was supposed to have
been a part of, and that did finally happen with
a televised event in July. The teach in movement didn't
really last beyond nineteen sixty five. Over time, people started

(46:25):
to become concerned that it had shifted from being an
explicitly anti war movement about educating people to one that
was more focused on a debate between two sides. As
the anti war movement became more radical, activists started seeing
the teach ins as too conservative. At the same time,
the teaching movement is marked as a critical moment in

(46:46):
the early anti Vietnam War movement. Carl Oglesby of Students
for a Democratic Society called it a stroke of genius.
That quote put the debate on the map for the
whole academic community. And you could not be an intellectual
after those teach ins and not think a lot and
express yourself and defend your ideas about Vietnam. According to

(47:06):
Marshall Salnds, it also shifted some of the counterculture movement
from one that was ideologically pacifist and pro civil rights
to one that was overtly political and more likely to
take direct action.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
I think this is I mean, there's so much discussion
of the anti war movement during Vietnam, which could be
really divisive, and I don't know if could be was
even a strong enough word, Like it was really divisive
and became really militant in a lot of places. And
so this to me feels like this kind of nice

(47:40):
precursor that was about basically educating people about all of
the context, like all the context for what was happening
in Vietnam, all the context for what it could mean
in like the world of global history, all of that
that then went on to inspire people to take direct actions.

(48:03):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If
you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses
History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe
to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.