This month is the 49th anniversary of the historic 504 sit-in in San Francisco. This article is an excerpt from a grant-funded project for the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund.
The year was 1977. Four years had already gone by since the Rehabilitation Act (H.R. 8070) was passed by a Democrat-majority Congress and signed into law by President Nixon in 1973. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was historic legislation that would prohibit any institution that receives federal funding from discriminating on the basis of disability. It was written by John Wodatch, an attorney with the Office of Civil Rights, in consultation with the disability community.
Until the regulations were implemented by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), however, there was no mechanism for enforcement, because the law had yet to be interpreted by the various federal agencies as to how to apply the regulations in practice. Some of the important questions that remained to be answered in regards to Section 504 included how disability was to be defined, and what counted as disability-based discrimination. The disability rights community grew impatient as the subsequent Ford administration declined to implement the regulations, and they feared that 504 would continue to remain unimplemented under the Carter administration, which succeeded President Ford.
Corbett O’Toole recounts that as the community waited for the regulations to be issued, disabled people were already bringing discrimination cases to the courts, but there could be no consistent interpretation of the law without the implemented regulations. For example, wheelchair users who were unable to board public buses sued on the basis that the city and county transportation systems were required to be accessible under Section 504 since these municipalities received funding from the U. S. Department of Transportation. In one of those cases, a judge determined that no discrimination took place, because the bus driver wasn’t responsible for the wheelchair user being unable to board. However, a judge ruled in a different case that disability required an affirmative duty by the municipality to make the buses accessible. “The regulations would provide a consistent, coherent interpretation of 504’s legal intent rather than leaving it up to any judge who heard a 504 case to interpret what the law meant,” wrote the late Kitty Cone, an anti-war activist, wheelchair user, and key organizer for the 504 sit-in.
At the start of his 1976 presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter went to Warm Springs, Georgia—a site of significance for many disabled people—and promised the disability community that, as president, he would issue the 504 regulations. But, after Carter entered the White House, the new HEW secretary, Joseph Califano, balked at signing the regulations, caving to both internal and external pressures to water them down. Internally, HEW officials wanted to remove federal protections for substance users. Externally, from private industry and other impacted entities including hospitals and universities, there were concerns about the anticipated costs that would be incurred from the requirement to make buildings accessible.
The American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD), a national cross-disability advocacy group founded in 1975 with Judy Heumann and Ed Roberts, learned from inside contacts in the Carter administration that HEW was planning to water down the regulations. “If you ended up with some sort of concept of separate but equal in the HEW regulations that would apply to institutions of education, you could then see them being embodied in, say, a Department of Transportation 504 regulation, which would say that you don’t have the right to ride the mainline transit but you will have your separate little transit system—your paratransit system,” noted Cone. “Everybody knew that ‘separate’ for people with disabilities is not ‘equal.’ That’s one of the reasons why it was very important.”
Judy Heumann issued a public declaration that unless the 504 regulations were implemented in their original form, there would be demonstrations on April 5, 1977.
“And they laughed at us,” recalls O’Toole. Thanks to prevailing perceptions of disabled people as objects of charity, pity, and ridicule, nobody at HEW regarded the activists as little more than a nuisance. Heumann, a board member of the ACCD, planned to organize sit-ins at the eight regional HEW offices around the country. “If they watered the regulations down into something that codified segregation, and then issued them, then we would be in the position of having to respond to something that was a fait accompli,” explained Cone. “But, by having a sit-in, we sort of took the power back and said, ‘Okay now, you respond to us.’”
Toward the end of 1976, Cone was working as director of attendant referral at the Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, and became good friends with Heumann, who was deputy director. In March of 1977, after ACCD announced its plans to hold demonstrations, Heumann personally recruited Cone to organize the sit-in at HEW’s San Francisco office. The 504 Emergency Coalition, an ad hoc alliance of the various independent living centers and disability affinity groups in the area, would be the front-facing agent of the operation, building alliances and bringing big-name speakers to the outdoor rally at the Civic Center Plaza on April 5. Cone’s responsibility was to coordinate the sit-in behind the scenes with various committees assigned to handle press, food, fundraising, and first aid. To minimize the chances that authorities would learn about their plans ahead of the event, the sit-in itself was never discussed publicly or at coalition meetings. Not even Heumann was informed that the occupation might last several days. Some members of the internal committees, however, were told to bring their sleeping bags.
“People all over the country were not thinking of people with disabilities as an oppressed minority or a group deserving of civil rights,” observed Cone. “It just was not part of the public consciousness. So a sit-in was a really good tactic to show that we were a civil rights movement and part of the whole history of struggling for progress for our community.”
Cross-movement organizing was fundamental to the ideological coherence, logistics, and optics of the 504 demonstrations in the Bay Area. The Black Panther Party, NAACP, Service Employees International Union (SEIU), AFSCME, the National Organization for Women, the California Central Labor Council, Glide Memorial Church, the San Francisco Council of Churches, and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) were all involved, either endorsing the 504 Coalition, sending delegates to speak at the rally in San Francisco, or playing a more active role in providing material support. IAM provided the transportation that would fly a contingent of the San Francisco activists to D.C., allowing them to organize at their Washington headquarters, even throwing a banquet when they arrived. Brad Lomax, a member of the Black Panther Party, and his attendant, Chuck Jackson, were participants in the sit-in and also joined the delegation that was selected to go to Washington to represent the disability community.
On the day of the rally, Kitty Cone was nervous, but not because she was standing on a stage, giving a speech to a large, diverse crowd—a testament to the 504 Coalition’s successful organizing. Cone wondered, would they manage to get inside the HEW building? And then, suddenly, as her speech was ending, Judy Heumann gave the signal. “Let’s go up there and ask them what’s happening with the 504 regulations! Let’s go up there and demand to know why they haven’t issued them! Everybody, let’s go!” Over a hundred people rushed the doors, many in wheelchairs.
Once inside, the protestors confronted Joseph Maldonado, the regional HEW director whose office was on the fourth floor of the United Nations Plaza, the building that housed the HEW offices. Poor Maldonado had no idea what was happening, and Judy Heumann was relentless in badgering him with questions, to the delight of the press. Many of the protesters who managed to get inside the building had no idea that there was going to be a sit-in, let alone that it would last twenty-five days. Many decided to stay even though they had made no preparations and required medical assistance and attendant care. Some of the attendants who entered the building with the protesters stayed and volunteered to help. Everyone became involved in organizing and sustaining the occupation at some level. One person created a makeshift refrigerator to store people’s medications by connecting the air conditioning unit to an old refrigerator box that they picked up outside. The local McDonald’s sent over free food for the first few days until they realized they were supporting the takeover of a government building.
At night, protesters slept inside the HEW office spaces and the conference room. Judy Heumann slept in the elevator. In the mornings, they would conscientiously clean up after themselves so the HEW staffers could work. For twenty-five days, staffers diligently reported for work, as protesters were scattered about their offices. “There was this buoyant, exuberant, victorious feeling shared by everybody. People didn’t know what was going to happen, but we knew that we were there, and we had seized the building,” recalled Cone. Law enforcement, including the FBI, tightened security around the building, refusing to allow food and other supplies from entering in order to starve out the “band of disabled malcontents,” as one reporter described them.
Although the role of the Black Panther Party during the 504 sit-in has been historically minimalized, their involvement was vital to ensuring its longevity and success. As the scholar, Sami Schalk, describes in her book, Black Disability Politics, “The occupation could not have lasted as long and as safely as it did… without the extended network of supportive groups and organizations, such as the BPP.” The Black Panthers brought warm meals inside the building and provided mobile showers, ensuring the protesters’ daily sustenance and hygiene throughout the twenty-five days of the sit-in. In contrast, the sit-in at the HEW headquarters in D.C. disbanded before the next day arrived as law enforcement had effectively blocked all provisions of supplies.
In her memoir, Corbett O’Toole recounts that during the early days of the sit-in, the first time the Black Panthers attempted to bring dinner to the protesters, the FBI wouldn’t let them enter the HEW building. The Panthers explained to the FBI that they planned to bring food inside the building every night for the demonstrators and then leave. If the FBI tried to stop them, they promised that more Black Panthers would show up.
“The FBI soon backed down,” writes O’Toole. But, the FBI then tried to scare the demonstrators into evacuating the building by claiming that there was a bomb threat. According to O’Toole, the protesters responded, “Well you know, if we die, we die,” and they all went back to sleep. “The occupation army in wheelchairs,” as one reporter described the demonstrators, “shows no signs of calling it off.”
As news of the sit-in spread nationally, including coverage in The New York Times, civil rights leaders including Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond, the co-founder and president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, came to visit the demonstrators inside the building. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the same union representing the HEW employees who were working inside the occupied offices in San Francisco, wrote a formal letter declaring their support for the demonstrators. Mayor George Moscone of San Francisco, along with the director of San Francisco General Hospital, visited the protesters inside the building and brought blankets, pillows, towels, and medication, just to spite the feds. TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, had its press on site, conducting interviews with the activists.
Even as the San Francisco sit-in was generating positive publicity and press coverage, however, the demonstrators were receiving reports from ACCD in Washington that Carter’s 504 task force was moving forward with plans to water down the regulations. An impromptu congressional hearing inside the HEW building in San Francisco was organized with House Representatives George Miller, Jr., and Phil Burton. “It was showmanship on one hand,” said Cone, “but it also was a very effective way to get the issues out and into the Congressional Record and get HEW to respond and to get the voice of the disability community.” Eugene Eidenberg, a HEW representative from D.C., came and testified, inciting both the demonstrators and Representative Burton when he used the verboten words, “separate but equal.” Eidenberg fled from the hearing with Representative Burton chasing after him, and locked himself into one of the offices.
The sentiment among the sit-in leaders in San Francisco was that the ACCD leadership in Washington was failing to move the needle. A delegation that included Judy Heumann, Kitty Cone, Brad Lomax, and Patrisha Wright was therefore selected to go to Washington to intervene. “There was a certain amount of friction between Frank Bowe [head of ACCD] and us,” recalled Cone, “because I think that he considered us sort of a raggle-taggle batch of pretty wild-eyed people. I think he felt that they did things in Washington differently than we did them in California, that Washington had a certain protocol of how you brought about change.”
There was also concern among the delegation that Bowe, who was considered a “Washington insider,” was a bit too willing to compromise with Califano, who was now eyeing up to twenty-five parts of the regulations to water down. When they arrived in Washington, the delegation formed an ad hoc base inside a church near Dupont Circle, thanks to the intervention of Debbie Kaplan, who was director of the Disability Rights Center in D.C. Every evening inside the church they would strategize on how to get press coverage and meetings with people in President Carter’s administration. They organized a demonstration at Lafayette Park where several congresspersons, including George Miller, and cross-movement activists, including Brad Lomax, gave speeches. Ron Kovic, the disabled Vietnam War veteran whose life story would be portrayed by Tom Cruise in the Oscar-nominated 1989 film, Born on the Fourth of July, joined the delegation in Washington to lend his support.
Two key meetings resulted from the delegation’s work in Washington that ultimately led to a promise from the Carter administration to sign the 504 regulations. First, the delegation secured a public meeting at the Capitol Building with Senator Alan Cranston, who was one of the architects and original cosponsors of the 504 legislation. At this meeting, dramatically played out in front of the press, Cranston read down the list of proposed changes that Califano was considering, and the demonstrators cogently rebutted every point.
President Carter and Secretary Califano were more elusive. The demonstrators had been hounding Califano since the first night they arrived in Washington, when they held a candlelight vigil outside his house, which sat on a cul-de-sac in an upper-crust neighborhood in D.C. The next morning the protesters were still there, demanding to speak with the HEW director. Califano slipped out the back door and ran into the woods behind his house. When the protesters tried to confront President Carter at his church, which was just four blocks from where the protesters had set up headquarters, Carter slipped away using the side entrance. Heumann commented to the press afterwards, “I am absolutely mortified that President Carter is allowing this to go on. His open door policy certainly is not very open.”
The delegates finally secured a meeting with President Carter’s Chief Domestic Policy Adviser, Stuart Eizenstat. The delegates were reassured that Califano would sign a version of the regulations that preserved the original intent of Section 504, so they decided to return to California, feeling confident in their victory. And the regulations were indeed signed by Secretary Califano on April 28, 1977, shortly after the delegation arrived back in San Francisco.
Historically, although the movement had been gestating for years, the 504 sit-in is widely considered the “public birth of the disability civil rights movement.” It was a sophisticated operation of civil disobedience worthy of its predecessors in the larger civil rights movement, and most importantly, it was highly visible and received mainstream press coverage depicting disabled people as political activists, leaders, and constituents with agency and political influence. Disabled people were no longer in the shadows — passive objects of the public’s capricious imaginations, to be pitied, hidden away, or villainized.
The 504 sit-in represented the movement’s maturity and the transcendence of disability “as an issue of civil rights rather than as an issue of charity and rehabilitation at the best, pity at the worst,” said Cone. “The thing I remember the most is our victory march out of the building into a rally. And everyone’s feeling a total empowerment because we were a group of people who society had viewed as the weak, the vulnerable, without any real resource to power. And here, we had won this tremendous victory.”
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, enacted in 1973, implemented by HEW in 1977, was finally legally enforceable. The regulations gave disabled people, for the first time, rights similar to those of other protected classes under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Although Section 504’s protections were technically narrow in scope in that they only applied to federally funded programs and activities, in reality their impact was extensive. As the legal scholar and historian, Karen M. Tani, notes, “Functionally, these provisions were anti-discrimination mandates for K-12 public schools, almost all colleges and universities, many health care providers, and many state and local agencies, ranging from libraries to transit operations.”
“The critical thing about Section 504 and the victory, of course, was that for the first time we had real civil rights protection. It was never enforced the way that it should have been, and I think that a lot of the requirements of Section 504 never became a reality until the Americans with Disabilities Act,” said Cone, reflecting on the legacy of the sit-ins. “But the key principles that were embodied in Section 504, like reasonable accommodation, undue hardship, definition of disability—those kinds of concepts that were laid out in the regulations and most basically the concept of people with disabilities as a group deserving of civil rights protection, deserving of protection against discrimination, was the basis for all the legislation that followed over the next couple of decades.”
For further reading:
DREDF, 504 Sit-in 20th Anniversary
Judy Heumann, Being Heumann
Karen M. Tani, After 504: Training the Citizen-Enforcers of Disability Rights
Lennard Davis, Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights
Sami Shalk, Black Disability Politics