He applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights, and reported the following:
A reader opening to page 99 would almost get an accurate understanding of my book.Learn more about An Independent Man at the University of California Press website.
Page 99 glimpses the preliminary sparks that foretell the blazing fire to follow. My book tells the story of the origins of the American disability rights movement through the life of activist leader Ed Roberts, a quadriplegic man who organized disabled students at the University of California, Berkeley, in the late 1960’s. He helped develop a national network of over four hundred independent living centers, self-help units where disabled people assist one another to live successfully in the community. Roberts traveled the world spreading the outrageous idea that people with all kinds of disabilities could live full and rich lives.
On page 99, the graduate student Roberts met with his mentor, the brilliant Professor Jacobus tenBroek. Roberts and his hippy friends, an activist crew of a dozen students with physical disabilities, crafted the radical idea that their troubles were not caused by their failing bodies. Late night rap sessions in the infirmary campus housing yielded the crucial idea that what held them back was the many social and architectural obstacles in the larger society. The students planned a new kind of organization uniting people with many disabilities to work for dramatic social change.
Jacobus tenBroek seemed the perfect person for the upstart Roberts to consult. A blind man, the great scholar was the dedicated leader of the National Federation of the Blind, a coalition of blind people advocating for their own well-being. His prescient speeches presaged the political path forward that resulted ultimately in the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.
TenBroek blasted the paternalism of the traditional blindness charities. Looking down upon blind people with pity, the nondisabled charity leaders acted to control a population they viewed as deficient. TenBroek called for blind people to lead the way to their own emancipation.
Roberts asked his mentor if people with other types of disabilities could join the National Federation for the Blind to create the revolutionary, multi-disability political organization that Roberts envisioned. Sadly, the Professor disagreed.
Roberts knew tenBroek was wrong. The disability rights revolution required unity. In 1980, Roberts worked with Canadian activists Henry Enns and Jim Dirksen and hundreds of disabled advocates from across the planet to found Disabled Peoples International, the first worldwide organization fighting for the rights of all disabled persons.
--Marshal Zeringue
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