January 5, 2026 • 39 mins
Kitty Cone and Brad Lomax were key players in the 1977 sit-ins which pressured the Department of Health and Human Services to establish policies to implement section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act.
Research:
- R.8070 - Rehabilitation Act of 1973. https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/8070
- Grim, Andrew. “Sitting-in for disability rights: The Section 504 protests of the 1970s.” National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/explore/stories/sitting-disability-rights-section-504-protests-1970s
- “Celebrating Kitty Cone: 1944-2015.” https://dredf.org/celebrating-kitty-cone-1944-2015/
- Feingold, Lainey. “Disability Rights Leader Kitty Cone Dies at 70.” BeyondChron. 3/23/2015. https://beyondchron.org/curtis-kitty-cone-disability-rights-hero-dead-at-70/
- Gardiner, Kathryn S. “Forgotten Foremothers: Kitty Cone - Disability Activist.” League of Women Voters of Indiana. 7/9/2022. https://www.lwvin.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=42001&item_id=77659
- Lu, Wendy. “Overlooked No More: Kitty Cone, Trailblazer of the Disability Rights Movement.” New York Times. 3/26/2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/obituaries/kitty-cone-overlooked.html
- Center for Learner Equality. “Brad Lomax – Uniting the Civil Rights and Disability Rights Communities.” https://www.centerforlearnerequity.org/news/brad-lomax-uniting-the-civil-rights-and-disability-rights-communities/
- Essien, Markus, director and producer. “Renegades: Brad Lomax.” PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/brad-lomax-documentary/33589/
- Connelly, Eileen AJ. “Overlooked No More: Brad Lomax, a Bridge Between Civil Rights Movements.” New York Times. 7/20/2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/obituaries/brad-lomax-overlooked.html
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fryed. Today's episode was inspired by some
stuff that's been going on here in the United States
for a while now. Honestly hard to figure out exactly
when to start the clock on this one. But in
September of twenty twenty four, seventeen states filed a lawsuit
(00:33):
against the US Department of Health and Human Services. HHS
had issued its final rule implementing section five oh four
of the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three, and those
seventeen states were challenging language from the preamble of that rule,
and that language indicated that gender dysphoria could be considered
(00:55):
a disability under the law. This lawsuit also argued that
section five oh four as a whole was unconstitutional. We
ran a Saturday classic related to this in February of
last year when it was in the news. That was
six Impossible episodes from Sippins to fishi Ins, which talked
about the five oh four sit ins which pressured what
(01:18):
is now known as the Department of Health and Human
Services to establish the policies that would implement Section five
oh four. Back in nineteen seventy seven, when all this
was happening in the news, I also wanted to find
a new episode that was related in some way, but
I wound up just focused on other topics. That lawsuit
(01:38):
was effectively dismissed in October of twenty twenty five. Among
other things, the seventeen states that filed it dropped their
argument that Section five oh four was unconstitutional, and HHS
asued guidance, calling that preamble that mentioned gender dysphoria unenforceable
under the Day one executive order titled Defending Women from
(02:01):
Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal government.
The federal government's also basically on the same side as
the plaintiffs now when it comes to gender dysphoria, but
Section five oh four and the sit ins are still
deeply relevant. Other executive orders targeting DEI have been interpreted
(02:25):
as applying to things like disability and accessibility. Ban Those
and other related terms have showed up on things like
widely reported lists of words that are banned from applications
for government grants and head start funding. So the five
oh four sit ins have continued to be on my
mind even after that lawsuit was dropped. And today we're
(02:48):
going to take another look at section five oh four
and a couple of the people who were a big
part of this sit in.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Should it briefly recap and add a little more detail
to it. Tracy just talked about. The Rehabilitation Act of
nineteen seventy three was focused primarily on vocational rehabilitation, meaning
services and programs intended to help disabled people prepare for
employment or to be able to work. It also authorized
(03:16):
programs to figure out how to meet the needs of
people for whom a vocational goal is not possible or feasible,
although that wasn't one of its primary purposes. It was
signed into law by President Richard Nixon, who vetoed earlier
versions of the law because he said that those would
be too expensive to implement. If you look at the
whole of this law, I would call it kind of
(03:39):
a mixed bag. At its core, it is a law
that views disabled people as needing to be rehabilitated, and
it's really underpinned by a mindset that a person's value
is tied to their ability to work. At the same time,
it included requirements and funding for programs and services that
(03:59):
really would make things more accessible, including interpreter services for
deaf people, reader services for blind people, telecommunication services, and
mobility services. It required federal agencies to assess things like
transportation barriers that could prevent disabled people from being able
to work or to participate in these programs. It also
(04:22):
required federal departments and agencies to create affirmative action plans
for the hiring, placement, and advancement of disabled people, and
to have a plan to meet the needs of those employees.
If the words affirmative action gave you an internal yikes,
that just means taking proactive steps to make sure disabled
(04:44):
people were not being discriminated against and were being provided
with reasonable accommodations to access their workplace and do their work.
The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three built on earlier laws,
and it was amended and adjusted by laws that came afterward.
One of the parts that still discussed the most today
(05:04):
is Section five oh four, which was the broadest piece
of disability rights legislation in the United States until the
passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In nineteen ninety,
when the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three was passed.
Section five oh four read quote, no otherwise qualified handicapped
individual in the United States, as defined in section seven six, shall,
(05:29):
solely by reason of his handicap, 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.
It has been amended by other laws since then, and
the language that's in place today uses the term disability
rather than handicap, as that is no longer really considered
(05:53):
the current way to manage those words today. Section five
oh four also specifies that it applies to the United
States Postal Service. The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three
is about forty pages long, and some of its other
sections had a lot more detail, including things like dollar
amounts for the funding and definitions of terms, references to
(06:17):
how this federal law relates to the states and to
state agencies. But section five oh four was just that
bit we read. It had no direction about how it
could actually be implemented, so the agencies that section five
oh four applied to had to draft rules and regulations
that would allow them to implement it. The Department of Health, Education,
(06:39):
and Welfare was selected as the lead agency, meaning that
they would draft their regulations first and then other departments
and agencies would follow based on those regulations, but not
much actually happened after Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act
into law on September twenty sixth, nineteen seventy three. He
(07:00):
resigned as president on August eighth, nineteen seventy four, and
his successor, Gerald Ford left office on January twentieth, nineteen
seventy seven. Their administrations had drafted regulations but had not
actually implemented anything. After Jimmy Carter took office, activists demanded
that the drafted regulations be put into place, but instead
(07:23):
Joseph Klifano, Carter's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, assigned
a task force to start reviewing them. A lot of
people interpreted this as a delaying tactic and an opportunity
for the government to try to water things down. This
is where the five oh four sients come into the picture,
which we talked about in that Saturday classic that we
(07:44):
mentioned at the top of the show, which ran in
early twenty twenty five. In nineteen seventy seven, after years
of other advocacy, disabled activists started taking over HW offices
around the country.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
These occupations were brief. They ended within a day or
two after activists were either removed from the buildings or
they left on their own because they didn't have the
food or the supplies that they would need to stay
longer than that. But in San Francisco, disabled people and
their attendants occupied the HW office twenty four hours a
day for twenty six days. Eventually, the demonstrators selected a
(08:24):
delegation of people to go to Washington, d C. To
try to meet with legislators and Secretary Califano directly. The
International Association of Machinists helped pay for plane tickets from
San Francisco to Washington, d C. And, because there were
no accessible options for ground transportation, they also paid for
(08:44):
a moving truck with a lift that could accommodate wheelchairs.
After being turned away from the Washington, d C. Office
of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the demonstrators
had a candlelight vigil outside of Califano's house. They also
demonstrated outside the church where the president and his family
went to Sunday Services. Califano finally signed the regulations on
(09:09):
April twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, almost four years after
the law had been passed. We talked about this sit
in and the delegation to Washington in that Saturday Classic
that we mentioned earlier, but we didn't really talk about
any of the people who organized it or kept it going.
One person we did mention briefly is Judith Human, who
(09:30):
went by Judy. She became disabled after surviving polio when
she was a child, and she was an enormous part
of this sit in and the disability rights movement more broadly.
She has been referred to as the mother of the
disability rights movement. In our earlier episode, we quoted her
as saying, quote, through the sit in, we turned ourselves
(09:50):
from being oppressed individuals into being empowered people. We demonstrated
to the entire nation that disabled people could take control
over our own lives, take leadership in the struggle for equality.
We overcame years of parochialism. We really cannot overstate what
a huge part of this sit in Judy Human was.
(10:13):
She was deeply involved in organizing it and carrying it
out and just keeping people going day after day. She
was one of the people who traveled to Washington, d C.
And some of the people who stayed behind in San
Francisco said that they kept occupying the HW building there
not just for their own rights and the rights of
other disabled people, because they just did not want to
(10:34):
disappoint her.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Today's episode is not focused on Judy Human. Though she
died on March fourth, twenty twenty three, she was seventy five,
and there are some various challenges with trying to cover
the life of someone whose death was in the very
recent past. Her work also continued until the very end
of her life, meaning a lot of it took place
in really recent years as well. She was the Assistant
(10:59):
Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services
during the Clinton administration, and President Barack Obama appointed her
Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the US State Department.
She was the first person to ever fill that role.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, I know, Highy. There have been times we have
tried to do episodes on someone who just died, and
that has been something that I ultimately wish we had
done differently, at least once or twice. Yeah, there are
just various things that make it more difficult with someone
whose death was in the recent past. In addition to
all of that, her memoir Being Human, An Unrepentant Memoir
(11:38):
of a disability rights activist, was published just in twenty twenty,
and she was a big part of the twenty twenty
film Crip Camp a Disability Revolution. That film is about
Camp Janeed, which is a summer camp for disabled teenagers
that ran from nineteen fifty one to nineteen seventy seven.
Human worked as a counselor at the camp, and a
lot of other people who either went to or worked
(12:01):
at Camp Jeaneed wound up being a huge part of
the disability rights movement, including in the five oh four
sit Ins. The last episodes of her podcast Human Perspective
were also recorded just a few weeks before her death
and published posthumously. So there's really a lot of information
about her, a lot of it very recent, and a
lot of it in her own words. While we are
(12:24):
focused on two other people who are not as widely
known today, we just did want to acknowledge how important
Judy Human was to the five oh four sit Ins
and the disability rights movement before we move on. So
after we take a quick sponsor break, we will talk
about Kitty Kohane. The Section five oh four sit in
(12:51):
that took place in San Francisco was the work of
a large number of disabled people supported by a broad
coalition of allies and organizations, and Kitty Cone was a
big part of the reason why the demonstrators had that coalition.
Curtis Selden Cone, known as Kitty, was born on April seventh,
(13:12):
nineteen forty four, in Champagne, Illinois. Her parents were Molly
Mattis Cone and Hutchinson Ingham Cone. Kitty's father was in
the military and the family moved several times when she
was a child, including to Japan. When Kitty was in
first grade, her teacher noticed that she walked on her
toes all the time, and the teacher pointed this out.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
To Kitty's mother.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It seems like Kitty's family wasn't really concerned at first,
but as her symptoms progressed, they took her to the doctor.
It took a really long time to get an accurate diagnosis.
At first, doctors thought she had cerebral palsy and then polio.
Some of the treatments she received after these misdiagnoses seemed
to make things worse. Eventually, she was diagnosed with muscular
(13:58):
dystrophy at the age of fifteen, and she and her
family were told that she probably would not live far
into adulthood.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
In addition to changing schools when her father was transferred,
Kitty also had to change schools for accessibility reasons, like
school buildings having lots of stairs that she could no
longer climb, and she often faced discrimination from teachers and staff,
like being told that she wasn't allowed to participate in
activities because of her disability, or when she was at
(14:28):
boarding school, being housed away from the other students, which
was not only isolating, but it also forced her to
use a bathroom with a tub that she couldn't get
into or out of on her own. Between her father's
moves and issues like these, she changed schools more than
a dozen times over the course of her K through
twelve education.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
When she was looking at colleges, con wanted to go
to an Ivy League school or maybe to a women's college,
but a lot of their campuses weren't accessible either. She
described her college to visions being made by her family.
She enrolled at the University of Illinois at Arpana Champagne,
which was close to some family members and also had
(15:09):
a significant number of other students who also used wheelchairs.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
In nineteen sixty three, Kohane's mother died. Kitty was only
nineteen at this point and she was still in college
and she took some time off after the funeral before
going back to school, and when she did, she really
threw herself into activism. Being interested in things like equal
rights and racial justice was not new to her. She
(15:34):
had started getting into fights about her classmates racism during
her early school years, and she had fierce disagreements with
her father over the subject of school segregation. After getting
back to college, she protested against apartheid in South Africa
and against the Vietnam War. She joined the Friends of
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and raised money for civil
(15:56):
rights protesters who were arrested in the South. She got
arrested herself during protests, something that infuriated some members of
her family, including an uncle who was running for public
office and her father, who actually disowned her. They thought
that Kitty was making them look bad. Over time, Cone
started focusing more on activism than on class work, and
(16:19):
she actually left school in nineteen sixty seven without graduating.
At this point, Coan wanted to be a parent, but
her doctors had concerns about the physical effects that a
pregnancy would have on her body. She also still believed
that she was not likely to live long. She ultimately
decided to be sterilized. We have talked about the eugenics
(16:40):
program in the United States and involuntary sterilizations that were
enacted on disabled people. The impression that I have from
this and from what she said about it, was that
she made the decision that she felt like was best
for her based on the information that she had, and
that some of the concerns that her doctor had She
really agrees with other things, maybe not so much, but
(17:02):
like this was an informed decision that she made for herself,
not something someone else decided for her. In the early
nineteen seventies, Cohne became a socialist, and she also came
out as a lesbian. She moved to Berkeley, California, and
started working with the Center for Independent Living. We talked
about that in our episode on Ed Roberts in the
(17:22):
Independent living Movement. We ran that episode as a Saturday
Classic on December third, twenty twenty two, Cone also became
active with the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
One of the things Cone talked about a lot was
how important it was for organizations that were working on
an issue to get the broadest level of support possible. So,
for example, she thought disability rights organizations should not connect
only with one another, but they should also connect with
abortion rights groups, anti war groups, women's rights groups, and
(17:56):
labor unions, forming a really powerful network of solid air
anywhere they could find some common ground with other people
who had other objectives. She made connections like this with
organizations all over the San Francisco Bay area, and that
coalition building was a huge part of why the five
h four sit ins in San Francisco went on for
(18:17):
almost a month, when most of the sit ins at
HW offices in other cities ended after just a day
or two. When disabled activists took over the San Francisco
HW offices, their support system included so many organizations. There
was Glide Memorial Church, a non denominational church dedicated to
social justice that was founded in San Francisco in nineteen
(18:40):
twenty nine, brick Hut Lesbian Cooperative, the Gay Men's Butterfly Brigade,
which coordinated safety patrols to protect gay men in the
Castro District. The Delancey Street Foundation, which was a nonprofit
providing residential services for people with substance use disorder or
who had been released from prison. Multiple labor unions, including
the International Association of Machinists, the Teamsters, the Federal Workers Union,
(19:05):
and the United farm Workers. The Black Panthers, which we
will be talking about more in just a bit. The
demonstrators also had some support from HW employees who helped
out where they could, and the San Francisco City government.
Mayor George Moscone brought in portable showers, getting them authorized
by the White House after HW officials turned him away.
(19:26):
And that's just a sampling of the support coalition. Cone
called it one of the broadest coalitions she had ever seen. Yeah,
in terms of ATW employees. Obviously, for the most part,
ATW like leadership did not want them there, but the
employees would be kind of like, here's where the soap is,
and we made it so you can open this window.
(19:49):
That kind of thing, a little subversive assist. Yeah, These
and other organizations supported the five zero four sit in
both within and outside the building, doctors and nurse offered
care to people who had complex medical needs, and volunteers
from across multiple organizations provided attendant care, like helping people
dress and take care of their hygiene. Organizations donated food
(20:13):
and blankets and cots to sleep on, soap and cleaning supplies.
While people occupied the offices in the building, other supporters
picketed outside, and they signed petitions, and they contacted their
legislators demanding action on the five oh four regulations. This
coalition also involved organizations for people of different disabilities, who
(20:35):
sometimes had very different needs and perspectives. For example, the
proposed five oh four regulations got a lot of criticism
from deaf people because part of the focus was on
mainstreaming or assimilating disabled people into non disabled culture. But
a lot of deaf people saw and still see deafness
as a unique culture with its own language and norms,
(20:56):
not necessarily as a disability, and not something that should
be a similar laid it away but organizations for the
death were also part of the sit in, with death
activists taking the lead with communicating with people outside the building,
signing conversations through the windows. After authorities cut off the phones.
All these intersecting layers of support helped the demonstrators deal
(21:19):
with the realities of living in a government office twenty
four hours a day for almost a month. That would
be uncomfortable for pretty much anybody, but it came with
additional specific challenges for a lot of the five h
four demonstrators. A lot of people had particular medical and
physical needs and no real way to accommodate them the
way they would where they normally lived. For some demonstrators
(21:42):
who relied on specialized medical equipment or skilled nursing, this
could actually be life threatening, so people did a lot
of improvising and jury rigging and just doing their best
with the help of supporters both inside and outside the building.
Kitty Kohane in particular, dealt with a lot a lot
of pain over the course of the sit in and
had to take a lot of painkillers to try to
(22:04):
deal with it. She also needed to be turned over
during the night, and that was something that other people
helped her with over the course of the sit in.
Kitty Cone was one of the people chosen to be
part of the delegation to Washington, d C. To discuss
the five oh four regulations with legislators. The coalition that
Cone had built helped arrange and fund the trip, including
(22:25):
the Machinists' Union, which we mentioned earlier. After the new
regulations were signed, Cohne gave a victory speech in which
she said, in part quote, we showed strength and courage
and power and commitment that we the shut ins or
the shutouts, we the hidden, supposedly the frail in the week,
that we can wage a struggle at the highest level
of government and win. Cone was also one of the
(22:49):
many people to point out the importance of the five
oh four sit ins in the disability rights movement, including
growing awareness of how accessibility was a political issue. She
was quoted as calling it quote the public birth of
the disability rights movement. For the first time, disability was
really looked at as an issue of civil rights rather
(23:10):
than an issue of charity and rehabilitation at best, pity
at worst.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
After the five oh four sit ins, Cohane's work as
an activist continued to be focused on building coalitions among organizations.
This included connecting disability rights organizations and the League of
Women Voters. When Bay Area Rapid Transit, which commonly known
as BART, proposed removing agents from stations. Yeah, there were
(23:36):
a lot of reasons that a person might need to
talk to a human employee at a transit station, and
a lot of those reasons applied mainly to women and
to disabled people more than they did to non disabled men.
Although the federal government had recognized the civil rights of
disabled people through Section five oh four and its associated regulations,
(23:56):
in practice after those regulations were signed, a lot of
things didn't really change that much. For example, as Cone
tried to travel for her activism work, she often found
that things like hotels and public transportation were still inaccessible
to someone who used a wheelchair. Around nineteen eighty, Cone
started a relationship with Kathy Martinez, who was blind. Cone
(24:21):
talked about getting around town with her and her power wheelchair,
and Martinez keeping up with her on roller skates. The
two of them traveled together, including to Nicaragua, which had
a large population of disabled people who had experienced spinal injuries, amputations,
and other injuries due to the Nicaraguan Revolution. Around this time, Cohne,
(24:43):
who had struggled with alcohol misuse, became sober and joined
Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
She also still wanted to have a child and at
this point, it seemed like her doctor's worries about her
life expectancy being really shortened that that seemed unfounded. In
nineteen eight, when she and Martinez started trying to adopt,
they were rejected as adoptive parents for multiple overlapping reasons.
They were both disabled. Since they were both women, they
(25:11):
could not legally marry. Martinez was Latina, so they were
regarded as an interracial couple. Ultimately, they went to Mexico
and they adopted a son named Jorge. They returned to
the United States a couple of years later. At some
point after this, Cone and Martinez separated. After adopting Jorge,
parenting became Cone's primary focus. She was still an activist,
(25:34):
but a lot of her activism was through organizations where
she could be paid for her work so she could
support herself and her son. She worked with the Disability Rights,
Education and Defense Fund for years, eventually becoming its development
director in nineteen ninety three. She retired in nineteen ninety
nine at the age of fifty five, but she continued
to be involved in the organization's work well after that point.
(25:57):
Toward the end of her life, Cone reconciled with some
of her family members who had ostracized her due to
her activism. She died of pancreatic cancer on March twenty first,
twenty fifteen, at the age of seventy. And now we
are going to take a little break, and then we
are going to talk about Brad Lomax. The other person
(26:25):
we're going to talk about today is Brad Lomax. One
of the things that comes up a lot in descriptions
of the five oh four sit in is that the
Black Panthers brought food to the demonstrators in the San
Francisco HW offices every day. Brad Lomax was a big
part of the reason for that. His full name was
Bradford Clyde Lomax, and he was the oldest of three
(26:47):
children born to Katie and Joseph Lomax. He was born
in Philadelphia on September thirteenth, nineteen fifty There's actually not
a lot of information that's publicly available about Lomax's life.
His father was a World War Two veteran and an electrician.
Growing up, Lomax was a boy scout and an athlete.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
He played football. He said to have had his first
experiences with civil rights activism when He visited his mother's
family in Alabama when he was in his early teens
and saw first hand the differences between life and Alabama
and life in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
As Lomax started getting close to graduating from Benjamin Franklin
High School, he thought about joining the military, but his
graduation was in nineteen sixty seven, and at that point
the United States was really escalating its involvement in the
Vietnam War. We talked about this in our episode on
the draft board riots that took place during the Vietnam
(27:44):
War in April of last year. That's one of the
other subjects I wound up focused on rather than going
back to five oh four. In the spring of last year,
Lomax understood how the war and the draft were disproportionately
affecting black men, so rather than volunteering for service, he
went to Howard University in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
If he hadn't changed his mind, it's possible that he
wouldn't have been able to pass the physical needed to enlist.
In his late teens, Lomax started experiencing some physical symptoms,
including losing his balance and falling when he walked. He
was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and started using a wheelchair.
(28:25):
He started experiencing the many ways that society was not
accessible to wheelchair users, things like a lack of curb
cuts and doors that were too narrow to get through.
And he also saw the ways in which black disabled
people faced multiple layers of discrimination, like housing buildings could
be inaccessible, and then on top of that, there were
(28:46):
landlords who just refused to rent to tenants based on
their race. This was outlawed federally under the Fair Housing
Act in nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen sixty nine, Lomax
helped found the Washington, DCA chapter of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party was first founded by Huey P.
Newton and Bobby Seal in Oakland, California, in nineteen sixty six.
(29:09):
It was originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
and a big part of its initial focus was the
forming of armed patrols to protect black neighborhoods, protecting them
from police brutality. Soon, the Black Panther Party started establishing
community service programs in black neighborhoods, including medical clinics, ambulance services,
(29:30):
legal aid, education programs, and breakfast programs for school children.
Lomax's worked with a Black Panther Party in Washington, d C.
Including helping to build a free health clinic that provided
screenings for sickle cell disease, running the first aid tent
at various Black Panther events, and helping to organize the
(29:50):
first African Liberation Day in nineteen seventy two that was
a demonstration on the National Mall whose speakers included Angela Davis,
Stokely Carmichael, Jesse Jackson. At some point, Brad moved to Oakland,
California with his brother Glenn, which seems to have been
largely at Glenn's encouragement. In addition to being where the
(30:11):
Black Panthers had been founded, the San Francisco Bay Area
was becoming more accessible than many other parts of the
US were. There were multiple interconnected reasons for this. The
Bay area had generally mild weather, which made it easier
for people using wheelchairs and other mobility aids to get around.
California had established an Attendant Care program in the nineteen
(30:33):
fifties to provide grants for elderly and disabled people to
pay for home care services. Organizations like the Center for
Independent Living founded by ed Roberts were being run by
and for disabled people, providing information and support and advocating
for accessibility and services. Even so, when Brad and his
(30:54):
brother got to California, they found that the buses were
not accessible. If Brad wanted to take the bus, Glenn
had to go with him and then physically lift him
onto the bus and then go back for Brad's chair.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
In theory, the Center for Independent Living served Berkeley and Oakland,
but in reality a lot of the services did not
extend into Oakland's predominantly black neighborhoods. So in nineteen seventy five,
Brad Lomax worked with ed Roberts to establish a new
chapter of the Center for Independent Living in East Oakland,
and Lomax did this with support from the Black Panthers.
(31:32):
In nineteen seventy seven, Lomax became part of the five
oh four sit in at the San Francisco HW office.
Another Black Panther Party member, Chuck Jackson, acted as Lomax's attendant,
and he also provided attendant care for some of the
other demonstrators inside the building. The Black Panther Party was
heavily involved throughout the sit in, bringing food and other supplies,
(31:54):
including making sure all of the demonstrators got a hot
meal every day and leaving food for the next breakfast
at lunch. Multiple demonstrators said they would not have survived
without the Black Panthers. Yeah, we've talked about the enormous
coalition of organizations that were involved before the break but
the Black Panthers are reputedly cited as just holding the
(32:16):
whole thing together with food, and that without enough food,
it wouldn't have worked. In a documentary short called Brad
Lomax Creating Communities of Care five o four, demonstrator Corbett
Jon O'Toole said that she asked one of the Panthers
why they were helping when almost everybody in that building
who was demonstrating was white. That was really true of
(32:39):
a lot of disability rights organizations in the Bay Area.
Their answer was because the demonstrators were fighting for social
justice and willing to put their lives on the line
for it, and because Brad was there. In addition to
providing food, the Black Panthers helped spread the word about
what was happening at the HGW office by covering it
(33:00):
in their newspaper that was also called The Black Panther,
and that paper had a national circulation. They also helped
raise funds for the delegation's trip to Washington, d C.
After the five oh four sid in, Brad Lomax continued
to be involved with the Black Panthers and with disability
rights activism for as long as he was able, but
(33:20):
eventually he started experiencing cognitive changes due to multiple sclerosis,
and MS had also affected his ability to speak. He
died of complications from MS on August twenty eighth, nineteen
eighty four, at the age of thirty three.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
As we've said in this episode that one brief paragraph
of Section five oh four was really the biggest piece
of civil rights legislation for disabled people in the US
when it was passed, but in spite of the regulations
that were eventually created around it, a lot of the
same barriers to access and patterns of discrimination remained for years.
(33:57):
Section five oh four also applied only to the federal
government and government contractors. It did not apply to private
businesses at all. Ongoing advocacy to try to close these
gaps and ensure equal rights and access for disabled people
eventually led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Act that happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
If it was a private business that was getting federal funding,
then that would apply. But I mean otherwise, there were
a lot of things that were not affected by Section
five oh four. Some of the language of the ADA
is rooted in Section five oh four, and it applied
a lot of the same protections of the Equal Rights
Act of nineteen sixty four to disabled people who had
(34:39):
not been included in the Civil Rights Act. The Act
was amended in two thousand and eight in part to
address some court decisions that had limited the scope of
the ADA as it was originally written. Even so, even
with the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are still a
lot of barriers to access. Some of this is because
(34:59):
the old changes, like the Department of Justice just issued
a final rule on how the ADA applies to state
and local government websites in twenty twenty four, That is
many many years after governments started communicating with their constituencies online.
Some of this is because of EIGHTYA standards just not
(35:21):
being followed even in new building construction. And some of
it is because the Americans with Disabilities Act represents a
minimum level of access requirements and that minimum level is
just not enough to make things accessible to everyone. In
some cases, not enough to make things accessible to a
lot of people, not just a few people who may
be seen as having different needs than others.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Do you also have listener mail for us today? Yes,
I do have listener mail. This is from Anna. Anna
wrote and said hello. I have always wanted to write
in and after two mentions of Montana over the past
couple of episodes, I finally had a reason. I live
an hour away from Hamilton, Montana and the Rocky Mountain Labs.
(36:05):
I remember learning during the twenty fourteen Ebola outbreak that
the local hospital was one of three in the nation
that could accept and treat people with ebola due to
its partnership with the LAP I was pretty shocked to
learn our little local hospital was in the same rank
as massive hospitals in New York and LA.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I foster kittens for my local animal shelter and have
four of my own kiddies. When I've had particularly spicy kittens,
I've played your podcast to help get them used to
human voices and hopefully foster a love of history. I
fostered twenty one kittens and one mama cat this year
and all have found loving homes. The pictures include my
(36:46):
cats Gracie, the One Eyed Beauty, Todd and Wendy as
babies on my lap, Sammy Brown Tabby, and a photo
of a foster family and one of Tink, a foster kitty,
meeting our chickens. Thanks for all that you do. You
bring so much joy. Anna, Anna playing our show for
spicy foster kittens is I think the best use of
(37:09):
our show I have ever heard in my life by
a wide margin.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
If you are fostering any kind of animal, or if
you have maybe a dog who's a little anxious and
does better with voices, if you want to use our
podcast for that purposes, just go for it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Go for it. Do that every time. Such an odd
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I feel like we should start to bake in little
secret messages for kitties. Now for kitty cats.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, one time, a long time ago, somebody sent us
a note that said, hey, was there maybe a cat
in the background at this time? Code in this episode?
Because all of a sudden my cat was very interested,
and I think at that point I had started recording
at home, but we hadn't told listeners that was happening.
I was like, there's.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Not not who knows.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Possibly these pictures are all really adorable, so cute.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Thank you so much. Also, Anna, thank you for fostering.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah. So it's such a big important step in animal
welfare in the US, and you clearly have a very
big heart and I appreciate it. Foster families for animals
also make a huge, huge difference in how those animals
live as pets afterward. The fact that our kittens whose
(38:32):
mother was feral were incredibly well socialized and tolerated having
their nails clipped and you know, great around people. I
really credit with the family that took care of them
after their mother returned to the feral colony, because they
were not thriving in the shelter. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Anna.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other part podcast, we're at History Podcasts
at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our
show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:19):
visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson
and I'm Holly Fryed. Today's episode was inspired by some
stuff that's been going on here in the United States
for a while now. Honestly hard to figure out exactly
when to start the clock on this one. But in
September of twenty twenty four, seventeen states filed a lawsuit
(00:33):
against the US Department of Health and Human Services. HHS
had issued its final rule implementing section five oh four
of the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three, and those
seventeen states were challenging language from the preamble of that rule,
and that language indicated that gender dysphoria could be considered
(00:55):
a disability under the law. This lawsuit also argued that
section five oh four as a whole was unconstitutional. We
ran a Saturday classic related to this in February of
last year when it was in the news. That was
six Impossible episodes from Sippins to fishi Ins, which talked
about the five oh four sit ins which pressured what
(01:18):
is now known as the Department of Health and Human
Services to establish the policies that would implement Section five
oh four. Back in nineteen seventy seven, when all this
was happening in the news, I also wanted to find
a new episode that was related in some way, but
I wound up just focused on other topics. That lawsuit
(01:38):
was effectively dismissed in October of twenty twenty five. Among
other things, the seventeen states that filed it dropped their
argument that Section five oh four was unconstitutional, and HHS
asued guidance, calling that preamble that mentioned gender dysphoria unenforceable
under the Day one executive order titled Defending Women from
(02:01):
Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal government.
The federal government's also basically on the same side as
the plaintiffs now when it comes to gender dysphoria, but
Section five oh four and the sit ins are still
deeply relevant. Other executive orders targeting DEI have been interpreted
(02:25):
as applying to things like disability and accessibility. Ban Those
and other related terms have showed up on things like
widely reported lists of words that are banned from applications
for government grants and head start funding. So the five
oh four sit ins have continued to be on my
mind even after that lawsuit was dropped. And today we're
(02:48):
going to take another look at section five oh four
and a couple of the people who were a big
part of this sit in.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Should it briefly recap and add a little more detail
to it. Tracy just talked about. The Rehabilitation Act of
nineteen seventy three was focused primarily on vocational rehabilitation, meaning
services and programs intended to help disabled people prepare for
employment or to be able to work. It also authorized
(03:16):
programs to figure out how to meet the needs of
people for whom a vocational goal is not possible or feasible,
although that wasn't one of its primary purposes. It was
signed into law by President Richard Nixon, who vetoed earlier
versions of the law because he said that those would
be too expensive to implement. If you look at the
whole of this law, I would call it kind of
(03:39):
a mixed bag. At its core, it is a law
that views disabled people as needing to be rehabilitated, and
it's really underpinned by a mindset that a person's value
is tied to their ability to work. At the same time,
it included requirements and funding for programs and services that
(03:59):
really would make things more accessible, including interpreter services for
deaf people, reader services for blind people, telecommunication services, and
mobility services. It required federal agencies to assess things like
transportation barriers that could prevent disabled people from being able
to work or to participate in these programs. It also
(04:22):
required federal departments and agencies to create affirmative action plans
for the hiring, placement, and advancement of disabled people, and
to have a plan to meet the needs of those employees.
If the words affirmative action gave you an internal yikes,
that just means taking proactive steps to make sure disabled
(04:44):
people were not being discriminated against and were being provided
with reasonable accommodations to access their workplace and do their work.
The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three built on earlier laws,
and it was amended and adjusted by laws that came afterward.
One of the parts that still discussed the most today
(05:04):
is Section five oh four, which was the broadest piece
of disability rights legislation in the United States until the
passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. In nineteen ninety,
when the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three was passed.
Section five oh four read quote, no otherwise qualified handicapped
individual in the United States, as defined in section seven six, shall,
(05:29):
solely by reason of his handicap, 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.
It has been amended by other laws since then, and
the language that's in place today uses the term disability
rather than handicap, as that is no longer really considered
(05:53):
the current way to manage those words today. Section five
oh four also specifies that it applies to the United
States Postal Service. The Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three
is about forty pages long, and some of its other
sections had a lot more detail, including things like dollar
amounts for the funding and definitions of terms, references to
(06:17):
how this federal law relates to the states and to
state agencies. But section five oh four was just that
bit we read. It had no direction about how it
could actually be implemented, so the agencies that section five
oh four applied to had to draft rules and regulations
that would allow them to implement it. The Department of Health, Education,
(06:39):
and Welfare was selected as the lead agency, meaning that
they would draft their regulations first and then other departments
and agencies would follow based on those regulations, but not
much actually happened after Richard Nixon signed the Rehabilitation Act
into law on September twenty sixth, nineteen seventy three. He
(07:00):
resigned as president on August eighth, nineteen seventy four, and
his successor, Gerald Ford left office on January twentieth, nineteen
seventy seven. Their administrations had drafted regulations but had not
actually implemented anything. After Jimmy Carter took office, activists demanded
that the drafted regulations be put into place, but instead
(07:23):
Joseph Klifano, Carter's Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, assigned
a task force to start reviewing them. A lot of
people interpreted this as a delaying tactic and an opportunity
for the government to try to water things down. This
is where the five oh four sients come into the picture,
which we talked about in that Saturday classic that we
(07:44):
mentioned at the top of the show, which ran in
early twenty twenty five. In nineteen seventy seven, after years
of other advocacy, disabled activists started taking over HW offices
around the country.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
These occupations were brief. They ended within a day or
two after activists were either removed from the buildings or
they left on their own because they didn't have the
food or the supplies that they would need to stay
longer than that. But in San Francisco, disabled people and
their attendants occupied the HW office twenty four hours a
day for twenty six days. Eventually, the demonstrators selected a
(08:24):
delegation of people to go to Washington, d C. To
try to meet with legislators and Secretary Califano directly. The
International Association of Machinists helped pay for plane tickets from
San Francisco to Washington, d C. And, because there were
no accessible options for ground transportation, they also paid for
(08:44):
a moving truck with a lift that could accommodate wheelchairs.
After being turned away from the Washington, d C. Office
of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the demonstrators
had a candlelight vigil outside of Califano's house. They also
demonstrated outside the church where the president and his family
went to Sunday Services. Califano finally signed the regulations on
(09:09):
April twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, almost four years after
the law had been passed. We talked about this sit
in and the delegation to Washington in that Saturday Classic
that we mentioned earlier, but we didn't really talk about
any of the people who organized it or kept it going.
One person we did mention briefly is Judith Human, who
(09:30):
went by Judy. She became disabled after surviving polio when
she was a child, and she was an enormous part
of this sit in and the disability rights movement more broadly.
She has been referred to as the mother of the
disability rights movement. In our earlier episode, we quoted her
as saying, quote, through the sit in, we turned ourselves
(09:50):
from being oppressed individuals into being empowered people. We demonstrated
to the entire nation that disabled people could take control
over our own lives, take leadership in the struggle for equality.
We overcame years of parochialism. We really cannot overstate what
a huge part of this sit in Judy Human was.
(10:13):
She was deeply involved in organizing it and carrying it
out and just keeping people going day after day. She
was one of the people who traveled to Washington, d C.
And some of the people who stayed behind in San
Francisco said that they kept occupying the HW building there
not just for their own rights and the rights of
other disabled people, because they just did not want to
(10:34):
disappoint her.
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Today's episode is not focused on Judy Human. Though she
died on March fourth, twenty twenty three, she was seventy five,
and there are some various challenges with trying to cover
the life of someone whose death was in the very
recent past. Her work also continued until the very end
of her life, meaning a lot of it took place
in really recent years as well. She was the Assistant
(10:59):
Secretary of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services
during the Clinton administration, and President Barack Obama appointed her
Special Advisor on Disability Rights for the US State Department.
She was the first person to ever fill that role.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, I know, Highy. There have been times we have
tried to do episodes on someone who just died, and
that has been something that I ultimately wish we had
done differently, at least once or twice. Yeah, there are
just various things that make it more difficult with someone
whose death was in the recent past. In addition to
all of that, her memoir Being Human, An Unrepentant Memoir
(11:38):
of a disability rights activist, was published just in twenty twenty,
and she was a big part of the twenty twenty
film Crip Camp a Disability Revolution. That film is about
Camp Janeed, which is a summer camp for disabled teenagers
that ran from nineteen fifty one to nineteen seventy seven.
Human worked as a counselor at the camp, and a
lot of other people who either went to or worked
(12:01):
at Camp Jeaneed wound up being a huge part of
the disability rights movement, including in the five oh four
sit Ins. The last episodes of her podcast Human Perspective
were also recorded just a few weeks before her death
and published posthumously. So there's really a lot of information
about her, a lot of it very recent, and a
lot of it in her own words. While we are
(12:24):
focused on two other people who are not as widely
known today, we just did want to acknowledge how important
Judy Human was to the five oh four sit Ins
and the disability rights movement before we move on. So
after we take a quick sponsor break, we will talk
about Kitty Kohane. The Section five oh four sit in
(12:51):
that took place in San Francisco was the work of
a large number of disabled people supported by a broad
coalition of allies and organizations, and Kitty Cone was a
big part of the reason why the demonstrators had that coalition.
Curtis Selden Cone, known as Kitty, was born on April seventh,
(13:12):
nineteen forty four, in Champagne, Illinois. Her parents were Molly
Mattis Cone and Hutchinson Ingham Cone. Kitty's father was in
the military and the family moved several times when she
was a child, including to Japan. When Kitty was in
first grade, her teacher noticed that she walked on her
toes all the time, and the teacher pointed this out.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
To Kitty's mother.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It seems like Kitty's family wasn't really concerned at first,
but as her symptoms progressed, they took her to the doctor.
It took a really long time to get an accurate diagnosis.
At first, doctors thought she had cerebral palsy and then polio.
Some of the treatments she received after these misdiagnoses seemed
to make things worse. Eventually, she was diagnosed with muscular
(13:58):
dystrophy at the age of fifteen, and she and her
family were told that she probably would not live far
into adulthood.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
In addition to changing schools when her father was transferred,
Kitty also had to change schools for accessibility reasons, like
school buildings having lots of stairs that she could no
longer climb, and she often faced discrimination from teachers and staff,
like being told that she wasn't allowed to participate in
activities because of her disability, or when she was at
(14:28):
boarding school, being housed away from the other students, which
was not only isolating, but it also forced her to
use a bathroom with a tub that she couldn't get
into or out of on her own. Between her father's
moves and issues like these, she changed schools more than
a dozen times over the course of her K through
twelve education.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
When she was looking at colleges, con wanted to go
to an Ivy League school or maybe to a women's college,
but a lot of their campuses weren't accessible either. She
described her college to visions being made by her family.
She enrolled at the University of Illinois at Arpana Champagne,
which was close to some family members and also had
(15:09):
a significant number of other students who also used wheelchairs.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
In nineteen sixty three, Kohane's mother died. Kitty was only
nineteen at this point and she was still in college
and she took some time off after the funeral before
going back to school, and when she did, she really
threw herself into activism. Being interested in things like equal
rights and racial justice was not new to her. She
(15:34):
had started getting into fights about her classmates racism during
her early school years, and she had fierce disagreements with
her father over the subject of school segregation. After getting
back to college, she protested against apartheid in South Africa
and against the Vietnam War. She joined the Friends of
the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and raised money for civil
(15:56):
rights protesters who were arrested in the South. She got
arrested herself during protests, something that infuriated some members of
her family, including an uncle who was running for public
office and her father, who actually disowned her. They thought
that Kitty was making them look bad. Over time, Cone
started focusing more on activism than on class work, and
(16:19):
she actually left school in nineteen sixty seven without graduating.
At this point, Coan wanted to be a parent, but
her doctors had concerns about the physical effects that a
pregnancy would have on her body. She also still believed
that she was not likely to live long. She ultimately
decided to be sterilized. We have talked about the eugenics
(16:40):
program in the United States and involuntary sterilizations that were
enacted on disabled people. The impression that I have from
this and from what she said about it, was that
she made the decision that she felt like was best
for her based on the information that she had, and
that some of the concerns that her doctor had She
really agrees with other things, maybe not so much, but
(17:02):
like this was an informed decision that she made for herself,
not something someone else decided for her. In the early
nineteen seventies, Cohne became a socialist, and she also came
out as a lesbian. She moved to Berkeley, California, and
started working with the Center for Independent Living. We talked
about that in our episode on Ed Roberts in the
(17:22):
Independent living Movement. We ran that episode as a Saturday
Classic on December third, twenty twenty two, Cone also became
active with the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
One of the things Cone talked about a lot was
how important it was for organizations that were working on
an issue to get the broadest level of support possible. So,
for example, she thought disability rights organizations should not connect
only with one another, but they should also connect with
abortion rights groups, anti war groups, women's rights groups, and
(17:56):
labor unions, forming a really powerful network of solid air
anywhere they could find some common ground with other people
who had other objectives. She made connections like this with
organizations all over the San Francisco Bay area, and that
coalition building was a huge part of why the five
h four sit ins in San Francisco went on for
(18:17):
almost a month, when most of the sit ins at
HW offices in other cities ended after just a day
or two. When disabled activists took over the San Francisco
HW offices, their support system included so many organizations. There
was Glide Memorial Church, a non denominational church dedicated to
social justice that was founded in San Francisco in nineteen
(18:40):
twenty nine, brick Hut Lesbian Cooperative, the Gay Men's Butterfly Brigade,
which coordinated safety patrols to protect gay men in the
Castro District. The Delancey Street Foundation, which was a nonprofit
providing residential services for people with substance use disorder or
who had been released from prison. Multiple labor unions, including
the International Association of Machinists, the Teamsters, the Federal Workers Union,
(19:05):
and the United farm Workers. The Black Panthers, which we
will be talking about more in just a bit. The
demonstrators also had some support from HW employees who helped
out where they could, and the San Francisco City government.
Mayor George Moscone brought in portable showers, getting them authorized
by the White House after HW officials turned him away.
(19:26):
And that's just a sampling of the support coalition. Cone
called it one of the broadest coalitions she had ever seen. Yeah,
in terms of ATW employees. Obviously, for the most part,
ATW like leadership did not want them there, but the
employees would be kind of like, here's where the soap is,
and we made it so you can open this window.
(19:49):
That kind of thing, a little subversive assist. Yeah, These
and other organizations supported the five zero four sit in
both within and outside the building, doctors and nurse offered
care to people who had complex medical needs, and volunteers
from across multiple organizations provided attendant care, like helping people
dress and take care of their hygiene. Organizations donated food
(20:13):
and blankets and cots to sleep on, soap and cleaning supplies.
While people occupied the offices in the building, other supporters
picketed outside, and they signed petitions, and they contacted their
legislators demanding action on the five oh four regulations. This
coalition also involved organizations for people of different disabilities, who
(20:35):
sometimes had very different needs and perspectives. For example, the
proposed five oh four regulations got a lot of criticism
from deaf people because part of the focus was on
mainstreaming or assimilating disabled people into non disabled culture. But
a lot of deaf people saw and still see deafness
as a unique culture with its own language and norms,
(20:56):
not necessarily as a disability, and not something that should
be a similar laid it away but organizations for the
death were also part of the sit in, with death
activists taking the lead with communicating with people outside the building,
signing conversations through the windows. After authorities cut off the phones.
All these intersecting layers of support helped the demonstrators deal
(21:19):
with the realities of living in a government office twenty
four hours a day for almost a month. That would
be uncomfortable for pretty much anybody, but it came with
additional specific challenges for a lot of the five h
four demonstrators. A lot of people had particular medical and
physical needs and no real way to accommodate them the
way they would where they normally lived. For some demonstrators
(21:42):
who relied on specialized medical equipment or skilled nursing, this
could actually be life threatening, so people did a lot
of improvising and jury rigging and just doing their best
with the help of supporters both inside and outside the building.
Kitty Kohane in particular, dealt with a lot a lot
of pain over the course of the sit in and
had to take a lot of painkillers to try to
(22:04):
deal with it. She also needed to be turned over
during the night, and that was something that other people
helped her with over the course of the sit in.
Kitty Cone was one of the people chosen to be
part of the delegation to Washington, d C. To discuss
the five oh four regulations with legislators. The coalition that
Cone had built helped arrange and fund the trip, including
(22:25):
the Machinists' Union, which we mentioned earlier. After the new
regulations were signed, Cohne gave a victory speech in which
she said, in part quote, we showed strength and courage
and power and commitment that we the shut ins or
the shutouts, we the hidden, supposedly the frail in the week,
that we can wage a struggle at the highest level
of government and win. Cone was also one of the
(22:49):
many people to point out the importance of the five
oh four sit ins in the disability rights movement, including
growing awareness of how accessibility was a political issue. She
was quoted as calling it quote the public birth of
the disability rights movement. For the first time, disability was
really looked at as an issue of civil rights rather
(23:10):
than an issue of charity and rehabilitation at best, pity
at worst.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
After the five oh four sit ins, Cohane's work as
an activist continued to be focused on building coalitions among organizations.
This included connecting disability rights organizations and the League of
Women Voters. When Bay Area Rapid Transit, which commonly known
as BART, proposed removing agents from stations. Yeah, there were
(23:36):
a lot of reasons that a person might need to
talk to a human employee at a transit station, and
a lot of those reasons applied mainly to women and
to disabled people more than they did to non disabled men.
Although the federal government had recognized the civil rights of
disabled people through Section five oh four and its associated regulations,
(23:56):
in practice after those regulations were signed, a lot of
things didn't really change that much. For example, as Cone
tried to travel for her activism work, she often found
that things like hotels and public transportation were still inaccessible
to someone who used a wheelchair. Around nineteen eighty, Cone
started a relationship with Kathy Martinez, who was blind. Cone
(24:21):
talked about getting around town with her and her power wheelchair,
and Martinez keeping up with her on roller skates. The
two of them traveled together, including to Nicaragua, which had
a large population of disabled people who had experienced spinal injuries, amputations,
and other injuries due to the Nicaraguan Revolution. Around this time, Cohne,
(24:43):
who had struggled with alcohol misuse, became sober and joined
Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
She also still wanted to have a child and at
this point, it seemed like her doctor's worries about her
life expectancy being really shortened that that seemed unfounded. In
nineteen eight, when she and Martinez started trying to adopt,
they were rejected as adoptive parents for multiple overlapping reasons.
They were both disabled. Since they were both women, they
(25:11):
could not legally marry. Martinez was Latina, so they were
regarded as an interracial couple. Ultimately, they went to Mexico
and they adopted a son named Jorge. They returned to
the United States a couple of years later. At some
point after this, Cone and Martinez separated. After adopting Jorge,
parenting became Cone's primary focus. She was still an activist,
(25:34):
but a lot of her activism was through organizations where
she could be paid for her work so she could
support herself and her son. She worked with the Disability Rights,
Education and Defense Fund for years, eventually becoming its development
director in nineteen ninety three. She retired in nineteen ninety
nine at the age of fifty five, but she continued
to be involved in the organization's work well after that point.
(25:57):
Toward the end of her life, Cone reconciled with some
of her family members who had ostracized her due to
her activism. She died of pancreatic cancer on March twenty first,
twenty fifteen, at the age of seventy. And now we
are going to take a little break, and then we
are going to talk about Brad Lomax. The other person
(26:25):
we're going to talk about today is Brad Lomax. One
of the things that comes up a lot in descriptions
of the five oh four sit in is that the
Black Panthers brought food to the demonstrators in the San
Francisco HW offices every day. Brad Lomax was a big
part of the reason for that. His full name was
Bradford Clyde Lomax, and he was the oldest of three
(26:47):
children born to Katie and Joseph Lomax. He was born
in Philadelphia on September thirteenth, nineteen fifty There's actually not
a lot of information that's publicly available about Lomax's life.
His father was a World War Two veteran and an electrician.
Growing up, Lomax was a boy scout and an athlete.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
He played football. He said to have had his first
experiences with civil rights activism when He visited his mother's
family in Alabama when he was in his early teens
and saw first hand the differences between life and Alabama
and life in Philadelphia.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
As Lomax started getting close to graduating from Benjamin Franklin
High School, he thought about joining the military, but his
graduation was in nineteen sixty seven, and at that point
the United States was really escalating its involvement in the
Vietnam War. We talked about this in our episode on
the draft board riots that took place during the Vietnam
(27:44):
War in April of last year. That's one of the
other subjects I wound up focused on rather than going
back to five oh four. In the spring of last year,
Lomax understood how the war and the draft were disproportionately
affecting black men, so rather than volunteering for service, he
went to Howard University in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (28:05):
If he hadn't changed his mind, it's possible that he
wouldn't have been able to pass the physical needed to enlist.
In his late teens, Lomax started experiencing some physical symptoms,
including losing his balance and falling when he walked. He
was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and started using a wheelchair.
(28:25):
He started experiencing the many ways that society was not
accessible to wheelchair users, things like a lack of curb
cuts and doors that were too narrow to get through.
And he also saw the ways in which black disabled
people faced multiple layers of discrimination, like housing buildings could
be inaccessible, and then on top of that, there were
(28:46):
landlords who just refused to rent to tenants based on
their race. This was outlawed federally under the Fair Housing
Act in nineteen sixty eight. In nineteen sixty nine, Lomax
helped found the Washington, DCA chapter of the Black Panther Party.
The Black Panther Party was first founded by Huey P.
Newton and Bobby Seal in Oakland, California, in nineteen sixty six.
(29:09):
It was originally called the Black Panther Party for Self Defense,
and a big part of its initial focus was the
forming of armed patrols to protect black neighborhoods, protecting them
from police brutality. Soon, the Black Panther Party started establishing
community service programs in black neighborhoods, including medical clinics, ambulance services,
(29:30):
legal aid, education programs, and breakfast programs for school children.
Lomax's worked with a Black Panther Party in Washington, d C.
Including helping to build a free health clinic that provided
screenings for sickle cell disease, running the first aid tent
at various Black Panther events, and helping to organize the
(29:50):
first African Liberation Day in nineteen seventy two that was
a demonstration on the National Mall whose speakers included Angela Davis,
Stokely Carmichael, Jesse Jackson. At some point, Brad moved to Oakland,
California with his brother Glenn, which seems to have been
largely at Glenn's encouragement. In addition to being where the
(30:11):
Black Panthers had been founded, the San Francisco Bay Area
was becoming more accessible than many other parts of the
US were. There were multiple interconnected reasons for this. The
Bay area had generally mild weather, which made it easier
for people using wheelchairs and other mobility aids to get around.
California had established an Attendant Care program in the nineteen
(30:33):
fifties to provide grants for elderly and disabled people to
pay for home care services. Organizations like the Center for
Independent Living founded by ed Roberts were being run by
and for disabled people, providing information and support and advocating
for accessibility and services. Even so, when Brad and his
(30:54):
brother got to California, they found that the buses were
not accessible. If Brad wanted to take the bus, Glenn
had to go with him and then physically lift him
onto the bus and then go back for Brad's chair.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
In theory, the Center for Independent Living served Berkeley and Oakland,
but in reality a lot of the services did not
extend into Oakland's predominantly black neighborhoods. So in nineteen seventy five,
Brad Lomax worked with ed Roberts to establish a new
chapter of the Center for Independent Living in East Oakland,
and Lomax did this with support from the Black Panthers.
(31:32):
In nineteen seventy seven, Lomax became part of the five
oh four sit in at the San Francisco HW office.
Another Black Panther Party member, Chuck Jackson, acted as Lomax's attendant,
and he also provided attendant care for some of the
other demonstrators inside the building. The Black Panther Party was
heavily involved throughout the sit in, bringing food and other supplies,
(31:54):
including making sure all of the demonstrators got a hot
meal every day and leaving food for the next breakfast
at lunch. Multiple demonstrators said they would not have survived
without the Black Panthers. Yeah, we've talked about the enormous
coalition of organizations that were involved before the break but
the Black Panthers are reputedly cited as just holding the
(32:16):
whole thing together with food, and that without enough food,
it wouldn't have worked. In a documentary short called Brad
Lomax Creating Communities of Care five o four, demonstrator Corbett
Jon O'Toole said that she asked one of the Panthers
why they were helping when almost everybody in that building
who was demonstrating was white. That was really true of
(32:39):
a lot of disability rights organizations in the Bay Area.
Their answer was because the demonstrators were fighting for social
justice and willing to put their lives on the line
for it, and because Brad was there. In addition to
providing food, the Black Panthers helped spread the word about
what was happening at the HGW office by covering it
(33:00):
in their newspaper that was also called The Black Panther,
and that paper had a national circulation. They also helped
raise funds for the delegation's trip to Washington, d C.
After the five oh four sid in, Brad Lomax continued
to be involved with the Black Panthers and with disability
rights activism for as long as he was able, but
(33:20):
eventually he started experiencing cognitive changes due to multiple sclerosis,
and MS had also affected his ability to speak. He
died of complications from MS on August twenty eighth, nineteen
eighty four, at the age of thirty three.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
As we've said in this episode that one brief paragraph
of Section five oh four was really the biggest piece
of civil rights legislation for disabled people in the US
when it was passed, but in spite of the regulations
that were eventually created around it, a lot of the
same barriers to access and patterns of discrimination remained for years.
(33:57):
Section five oh four also applied only to the federal
government and government contractors. It did not apply to private
businesses at all. Ongoing advocacy to try to close these
gaps and ensure equal rights and access for disabled people
eventually led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities
Act that happened in nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
If it was a private business that was getting federal funding,
then that would apply. But I mean otherwise, there were
a lot of things that were not affected by Section
five oh four. Some of the language of the ADA
is rooted in Section five oh four, and it applied
a lot of the same protections of the Equal Rights
Act of nineteen sixty four to disabled people who had
(34:39):
not been included in the Civil Rights Act. The Act
was amended in two thousand and eight in part to
address some court decisions that had limited the scope of
the ADA as it was originally written. Even so, even
with the Americans with Disabilities Act, there are still a
lot of barriers to access. Some of this is because
(34:59):
the old changes, like the Department of Justice just issued
a final rule on how the ADA applies to state
and local government websites in twenty twenty four, That is
many many years after governments started communicating with their constituencies online.
Some of this is because of EIGHTYA standards just not
(35:21):
being followed even in new building construction. And some of
it is because the Americans with Disabilities Act represents a
minimum level of access requirements and that minimum level is
just not enough to make things accessible to everyone. In
some cases, not enough to make things accessible to a
lot of people, not just a few people who may
be seen as having different needs than others.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
Do you also have listener mail for us today? Yes,
I do have listener mail. This is from Anna. Anna
wrote and said hello. I have always wanted to write
in and after two mentions of Montana over the past
couple of episodes, I finally had a reason. I live
an hour away from Hamilton, Montana and the Rocky Mountain Labs.
(36:05):
I remember learning during the twenty fourteen Ebola outbreak that
the local hospital was one of three in the nation
that could accept and treat people with ebola due to
its partnership with the LAP I was pretty shocked to
learn our little local hospital was in the same rank
as massive hospitals in New York and LA.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I foster kittens for my local animal shelter and have
four of my own kiddies. When I've had particularly spicy kittens,
I've played your podcast to help get them used to
human voices and hopefully foster a love of history. I
fostered twenty one kittens and one mama cat this year
and all have found loving homes. The pictures include my
(36:46):
cats Gracie, the One Eyed Beauty, Todd and Wendy as
babies on my lap, Sammy Brown Tabby, and a photo
of a foster family and one of Tink, a foster kitty,
meeting our chickens. Thanks for all that you do. You
bring so much joy. Anna, Anna playing our show for
spicy foster kittens is I think the best use of
(37:09):
our show I have ever heard in my life by
a wide margin.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
If you are fostering any kind of animal, or if
you have maybe a dog who's a little anxious and
does better with voices, if you want to use our
podcast for that purposes, just go for it.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
Go for it. Do that every time. Such an odd
I love it.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
I feel like we should start to bake in little
secret messages for kitties. Now for kitty cats.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, one time, a long time ago, somebody sent us
a note that said, hey, was there maybe a cat
in the background at this time? Code in this episode?
Because all of a sudden my cat was very interested,
and I think at that point I had started recording
at home, but we hadn't told listeners that was happening.
I was like, there's.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Not not who knows.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
Possibly these pictures are all really adorable, so cute.
Speaker 1 (38:07):
Thank you so much. Also, Anna, thank you for fostering.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Yeah. So it's such a big important step in animal
welfare in the US, and you clearly have a very
big heart and I appreciate it. Foster families for animals
also make a huge, huge difference in how those animals
live as pets afterward. The fact that our kittens whose
(38:32):
mother was feral were incredibly well socialized and tolerated having
their nails clipped and you know, great around people. I
really credit with the family that took care of them
after their mother returned to the feral colony, because they
were not thriving in the shelter. So thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
Anna.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
If you would like to send us a note about
this or any other part podcast, we're at History Podcasts
at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our
show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like
to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:19):
visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
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