Famous “Capitol Crawl:” Disabled People Lobby for Passage of Americans with Disabilities Act
Sixty disabled people on this day put aside their wheelchairs and other mobility devices and literally crawled up the 83 stone steps on the west side the the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, to lobby for passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The event became famous as the “Capitol Crawl.”
The ADA bill had passed the Senate, but was held up in the House Public Works and Transportation Committee. About 250 disability rights activists converged on on Washington on this day to lobby for the bill. At the Capitol Building they were joined by about 750 supporters and/or observers.
The hero of the “Capitol Crawl” was 8 year-old Jennifer Keelan from Phoenix, Arizona, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Using only her upper body, she crawled up all 83 steps to the top, exclaiming at one point, “I’ll take all night if I have to.” She didn’t need all night.
The event was not Jennifer’s first protest in support of disability rights. Two years earlier when she was 8 years-old she participated in a protest in Phoenix, Arizona. And the year before that, when she was 5 years-old, she and her mother participated in a protest in San Francisco.
Today, Jennifer Keelan Chaffins is an educator and motivational speaker. For more information, go to her web site.
Four months and two weeks after the “Capitol Crawl,” President George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law on July 26, 1990.
The ADA provided a model and inspiration for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (May 30, 2007). The United States Senate has never signed the Convention. On December 3, 1982, the United Nations declared December 3rd the International Day of Disabled Persons.
Learn more; get the book “All the Way to the Top” here
Learn more about the Capitol Crawl here
And read oral histories of the Capitol Crawl here
View many pictures of the Capitol Crawl here
Read More: Fred Pelka, What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (2012)
Learn more about the rights of persons with disabilities: https://www.aclu.org/disability-rights
And learn about the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act here