1977 April 5

“504” Sit-in at HEW by Disability Rights Activists

 

Disability rights activists staged a sit-in at U.S. Health, Education and Welfare headquarters on this day, because HEW Secretary Joseph Califano had refused to develop meaningful regulations to implement Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act (passed on September 26, 1973).

The section of the law provided for expanded programs for disabled persons. Califano issued the regulations three weeks later.

Congress passed the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) on July 26, 1990. The ADA served as the model for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was signed on March 30, 2007. The U.S. Senate has still not ratified the Convention, however, because of conservative opposition. See December 5, 2012 for a Senate vote on ratification that failed.

The first federal law supporting the rights of the disabled was the Smith-Fess Act, which President Woodrow Wilson signed on June 2, 1920, and which provided federal support for vocational rehabilitation for people with physical disabilities.

Watch a Trailer for Lives Worth Living on the Disability Rights Movement:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqXieHAE2Q

Learn more: Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (2012)

And more:  Kim Nielsen, A Disability History of the United States (2012)

View the 31-point Minnesota ADA Legacy project here

Learn more at the National Disability Rights Network: http://www.ndrn.org/index.php

And more at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund: http://dredf.org/

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