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Roy Wilkins, Journalist, and Administrator born

On this date in 1901, Roy Wilkins, a Black journalist and, activist, was born.

Wilkins was born in St. Louis, MO. He grew up in the home of an aunt and uncle in St. Paul, Minnesota's Rondo neighborhood; a beloved racially mixed community. Though poor, he was able to attend integrated schools in the city. Wilkins majored in sociology and minored in journalism while attending the University of Minnesota, supporting himself by doing a variety of odd jobs. He also served as night editor of the Minnesota Daily (the school newspaper) and edited a Black weekly, the St Paul Appeal. After receiving his B.A. in 1923, he joined the staff of the Kansas City Call, a leading Black weekly newspaper.

While in Missouri, Wilkins gained his first insight into segregation as an entrenched system and resolved to broaden his activities in the NAACP, which he first joined while in college. In 1931, Wilkins left the Call to serve under Walter White as assistant executive secretary. A year later, he substantiated charges of discrimination on a federally financed flood control project in Mississippi and played an instrumental role in getting Congress to take action about it. In 1934, he joined a picket march in Washington, D. C., protesting the failure of the attorney general to include lynching on the agenda of a national conference on crime.

For his protest, he suffered the first arrest of his career. Also in 1934, Wilkins put his editorial talent to work for the NAACP, succeeding W. E. B. DuBois as editor of the Crisis magazine (he held this post for 15 years). In 1945, after serving as an adviser in the War Department, he was a consultant to the American delegation at the United Nations conference in San Francisco. Wilkins was named acting executive secretary of the NAACP in 1949; the year Walter White took a year's leave of absence from the organization. At the same time, he functioned as chairman of the National Emergency Civil Rights Mobilization, a pressure group that sent numerous lobbyists to Washington, D. C. to campaign for civil rights and fair employment legislation.

Wilkins assumed his position as executive secretary of the NAACP in 1955 and established himself as one of the most articulate spokesmen in the civil rights movement. He testified before countless Congressional hearings, conferred with all the presidents, and wrote extensively for a number of publications. Although Wilkins and the NAACP became more militant in the 1970s, both he and the organization were, nevertheless, subjected to attack by even more radical groups, such as the Black Muslims. He never wavered in his determination to use all constitutional means at his disposal to help Blacks achieve the rights of full citizenship within the democratic framework of American society.

For a number of years, Wilkins was the chairman of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a group composed of over 100 national civic, labor, fraternal, and religious organizations. He was a trustee of the Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation, the Kennedy Memorial Library Foundation, and the Estes Kefauver Memorial Foundation. He was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Riverdale Children's Association, the John La Farge Institute, and the Stockbridge School, as well as Peace with Freedom, an international organization working toward the goals described in its name.

Among the numerous awards conferred on Wilkins were the Anti-Defamation League's American Democratic Legacy Award, the Alpha Phi Psi fraternity's Outstanding Citizen Award, the American Jewish Congress' Civil Rights Award, and the Boy Scout's Scout of the Year Award. He received the Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award of the University of Minnesota. In 1964, the NAACP honored him with its own Spingarn Medal.

Toward the end of his life, there was a reevaluation of Wilkins by younger Blacks. Recognition was given to the many positive things the NAACP had accomplished for Blacks under his leadership, and there was a growing understanding of how important he had been to Black America.

Roy Wilkins died in 1981.
To Become a News Editor & Publisher

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Roy Wilkins, Journalist, and Administrator born

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On this date in 1901, Roy Wilkins, a Black journalist and, activist, was born. Wilkins was born in St. Louis, MO. He grew up in the home of an aunt and uncle in St. Paul, Minnesota's Rondo neighborhood; a beloved racially mixed community. Though poor, he was able to attend integrated schools in the city.

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Clyde Bellecourt, Activist born

*Clyde Bellecourt was born on this date in 1936. He was an Ojibwe Native American Civil Rights organizer.

Clyde Howard Bellecourt was the seventh of 12 children born to Charles and Angeline) Bellecourt on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. Among his older siblings was his brother Vernon Bellecourt. White Earth was considered the largest and poorest of northern Minnesota's Ojibwe communities. Bellecourt pushed back against authorities in his youth, believing that they did not treat his family and other indigenous people with respect.

As a child, he could hear his parents speaking in low tones late at night in a language he did not understand. When he asked what they were saying, they told him to think about his education and do as well as possible. His years in school were not pleasant. He attended a reservation white Catholic mission school run by strict nuns of Benedictine order as a boy. The Bellecourt family moved to Minneapolis, in the Twin Cities, in the 1950s, encouraged by the federal government to seek a setting where there might be more job opportunities.

They found the city difficult, and Bellecourt reacted to perceived discrimination and feeling out of place; he regularly received detentions at school. Getting involved with urban street crime, Bellecourt was arrested. He was convicted and sentenced to the adult prison at St. Cloud for burglary. At 25, Bellecourt served out the remainder of his sentence at Stillwater Prison in southern Minnesota. There he met other Native Americans, many of them also Ojibwe.

Dennis Banks, Eddie Benton-Banai, and George Mitchell started a cultural program at the prison for Native Americans. While incarcerated, both men contemplated their pasts and Indian heritage to arrive at new visions of Indian politics that could deliver liberation outside the scope of an assimilated respectability. After working together in prison, they created a similar program in Minneapolis to aid urban Indians. This evolved into the American Indian Movement (AIM) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in July 1968. His older brother, Vernon Bellecourt, was also active.

This stance came to embody AIM's actions and directly connected them to the Black Power and antiwar movements whose efforts to reimagine American society were coming to a head at the exact moment. Under Bellecourt's leadership, AIM raised awareness of tribal issues related to the federal government. They monitored police harassment in Minneapolis, created welfare programs for urban Indians, and founded Indian' survival schools' in the Twin Cities to teach children life skills and help them learn their traditional cultures.

He initiated the Trail of Broken Treaties, a march to Washington, DC in 1972 to serve as a first step to renegotiating federal-tribal nations' treaties and relations. In addition, he founded non-profit groups to undertake economic development to benefit Native Americans. Bellecourt drew international attention in February 1973 for his role in leading Native American people to Wounded Knee in an armed takeover of the South Dakota town on the Pine Ridge reservation, the site of the 1890 massacre of Lakota men, women, and children.

The 71-day siege was an inspiration to all indigenous people, though it did not bring about immediate reforms sought by AIM activists. It did, however, succeed in bringing attention to the plight of Native Americans. The Black Panthers became an inspiration and a model for some Native American activists and the American Indian Movement (AIM), which led the most visible resistance campaigns in the 1970s. However, like the American Civil Rights movement for Blacks, Native American activism began earlier.

In the 1940s, federal and state legislatures began pursuing a policy as termination, which no longer recognized tribal governments, suspended government aid, privatized Native lands and resources previously held in common, and compelled Indians to assimilate into mainstream American cultural and economic practices. In response, in 1944, Indians from across the country formed the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), departing from organizing that had previously occurred almost exclusively along the lines of tribe and treaty.

As a legislative advocacy group, the NCAI played an instrumental role in eventually bringing termination to an end and in protecting Native rights and cultures by helping secure the passage of laws like the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Act, the 1968 Indian Civil Rights Act, and the 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act. He understood the connections between Native America and African America. Clyde Bellecourt, whose Ojibwe name is Nee-gon-we-way-we-dun, which means "Thunder Before the Storm." died of cancer on January 11, 2022.
To Become a Social Worker To Become a Childcare Worker

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Clyde Bellecourt was born on this date in 1936. He was an Ojibwe Native American Civil Rights organizer. Clyde Howard Bellecourt was the seventh of 12 children born to Charles and Angeline) Bellecourt on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. Among his older siblings was his brother Vernon Bellecourt.

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Yuri Kochiyama (May 19, 1921 - June 1, 2014) was a tireless political activist who dedicated her life to contributing to social change through her participation in social justice and human rights movements.

She was born and raised in San Pedro, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, her father, just out of surgery, was arrested and detained in a hospital. "He was the only Japanese in that hospital," Kochiyama recalls, "so they hung a sheet around him that said, 'Prisoner of War.'" He died shortly thereafter.

In 1943, under President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, Kochiyama and her family were sent to a concentration camp in Jerome, Arkansas, for two years. This experience and her father's death made Kochiyama highly aware of governmental abuses and would forever bond her to those engaged in political struggles. After being released, she moved to New York and married Bill Kochiyama, veteran of the all-Japanese American 442nd combat unit of the U.S. Army.

Kochiyama's activism started in Harlem in the early 1960s, where she participated in the Asian American, Black, and Third World movements for civil and human rights, ethnic studies, and against the war in Vietnam. She was a fixture in support movements involving organizations such as the Young Lords and the Harlem Community for Self Defense. As founder of Asian Americans for Action, she also sought to build a more political Asian American movement that would link itself to the struggle for Black liberation. "Racism has placed all ethnic peoples in similar positions of oppression poverty and marginalization."

In 1963, she met Malcolm X. Their friendship and political alliance changed her life and outlook. She joined his group, the Organization for Afro-American Unity, to work for racial justice and human rights.

As Vincent Intondi explains in an article about organizing against nuclear weapons:

On June 6, 1964, three Japanese writers and a group of hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) arrived in Harlem as part of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki World Peace Study Mission. Their mission: to speak out against nuclear proliferation.

Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist, organized a reception for the hibakusha at her home in the Harlem Manhattanville Housing Projects, with her friend Malcolm X.

Malcolm said, "You have been scarred by the atom bomb. You just saw that we have also been scarred. The bomb that hit us was racism." He went on to discuss his years in prison, education, and Asian history. Turning to Vietnam, Malcolm said, "If America sends troops to Vietnam, you progressives should protest." He argued that "the struggle of Vietnam is the struggle of the whole Third World: the struggle against colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism." Malcolm X, like so many before him, consistently connected colonialism, peace, and the Black freedom struggle.

Yuri was present on the day Malcolm X was tragically shot and killed in 1965. In the Life magazine article "Death of Malcolm X," she can be seen crouched in the background, cradling Malcolm X's head.

In the 1980s, Kochiyama worked in the redress and reparations movement for Japanese-Americans along with her husband Bill. Support for political prisoners - African American, Puerto Rican, Native American, Asian American, and progressive whites - was been a consistent thread in her work.

When Yuri died on June 1, 2014, Lehman College assistant history professor Robyn Spencer wrote:

I hope that remembrances of Yuri Kochiyama don't start and end with the snapshot of her caretaking Malcolm X in his last moments, just like the tributes that reduced Rev. Vincent Harding to only being Dr. Martin Luther King's speechwriter.

It compounds the tragedy when people, who represent the grassroots and plural nature of the 60s movement, are reduced upon death to their relationship with Great Men.

What I will remember about Yuri Kochiyama is her careful attention to mentoring and cultivating relationships. The salons she held in her apartment were influential to so many. They are mentioned in several books. She also dutifully collected and saved things.

Kochiyama came to the 1995 round-table on African American liberation movement leader Mae Mallory with a scrapbook full of memories, newspaper articles and the like. I have come across many of her handwritten letters in different archives.

It is a little known fact, for example, that in 1977,

Kochiyama joined the group of Puerto Ricans that took over the Statue of Liberty to draw attention to the struggle for Puerto Rican independence.

Kochiyama bridged people and movements, a true human rights activist.

Watch this remembrance clip from Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

This profile was adapted from various sources, including Asian American Women of Hope: Study Guide (1199 Bread and Roses Cultural Project, 1998).

Learn more about Kochiyama in her memoir Passing It On, the biography Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, the film Passion for Justice, and Yuri Kochiyama Solidarity Project website. There are additional resources below.

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May 19, 1921: Yuri Kochiyama Born - Zinn Education Project

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Political activist Yuri Kochiyama was born in San Pedro, California.

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On April 26, 1968, as an architecture student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kiyoshi Kuromiya and some friends held a demonstration against the use of napalm in Vietnam by announcing that a dog would be burned alive with napalm in front of the university library. Thousands turned up to protest, only to be handed a leaflet reading:

Congratulations on your anti-napalm protest. You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam.

Born in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, internment camp in 1943, Kiyoshi Kuromiya (May 9, 1943 - May 10, 2000) was a lifelong activist participating in several movements including civil rights, protesting the Vietnam War, LGBT rights, and AIDS/HIV advocacy.

Kuromiya spent the spring and summer of 1965 in the South fighting for civil rights, and became friends with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When King was assassinated, Kuromiya helped take care of the King children.

Kuromiya participated with the Gay Pioneers in the first organized gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations, "the Annual Reminders," held at Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell each Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969. He was one of the founders of Gay Liberation Front-Philadelphia and served as an openly gay delegate to the Black Panther Convention that endorsed the gay liberation struggle. Diagnosed with AIDS in 1989, Kuromiya became a self-taught expert on the disease, operating under the mantra "information is power." He founded the Critical Path Project, which provided resources to people living with HIV and AIDS, including a newsletter, a library, and a 24-hour phone line. [Adapted from LGBT History Month, NBC News, and ACT UP-New York.]

Learn more about Kuromiya in this remembrance video by friend Alfredo Sosa:

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Apr. 26, 1968: Kiyoshi Kuromiya Led Protest of Vietnam War Napalm - Zinn Education Project

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On April 26, 1968, as an architecture student at the University of Pennsylvania, Kiyoshi Kuromiya and some friends held a demonstration against the use of napalm in Vietnam by announcing that a dog would be burned alive with napalm in front of the university library.

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National Farm Workers Association/United Farm Workers of America

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National Farm Workers Association/United Farm Workers of America

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Begun in 1962 by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and other early organizers, the United Farm Workers of America is the nation's first enduring and largest farm workers union. The UFW continues organizing in major agricultural sectors, chiefly in California. The UFW has dozens of union contracts protecting thousands of farm workers, among them agreements with the some of the largest berry, winery, tomato, dairy and mushroom companies in California and the nation.

Many recent UFW-sponsored laws and regulations protect all farm workers in California, especially those at non-union ranches. They include the first state standards in the U.S. to prevent further deaths and illnesses from extreme heat and in 2016 the first law in the country providing farm workers in California with overtime pay after eight hours a day. The UFW continues to actively champion legislative and regulatory reforms for farm workers covering issues such as worker protections, pesticides and immigration reform.

History

The UFW has been inspiring farm workers across the U.S. to organize, mobilizing allies in the struggle, and spreading the "¡Sí se puede!" (yes it can be done) message for over 50 years.

In 1965, the mostly Filipino American members of another union went out on strike in the grape vineyards around Delano, CA. Cesar Chavez and the farm workers he had been organizing in the National Farm Workers Association joined the strike. This Delano Grape Strike grew to other growers and lasted 5 years.

In 1966, Chavez and a group of strikers set out on a 340-mile march from Delano to Sacramento to draw attention to plight of farm workers, and during this strike the union won its first contract. Thousands of supporters joined the marchers.

In 1967, the UFW began a boycott against all California table grapes, igniting faith-based groups, unions, and community organizations to join and publicize the boycott. During this time, the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. had increased the general public's awareness of the effects of racism. This climate of higher political consciousness contributed to millions of consumers joining the boycott (a nationwide poll in 1975 estimated 17 million Americans were boycotting table grapes).

Throughout the struggle, the UFW remained dedicated to principles of nonviolence; Cesar Chavez fasted for 25 days in 1968 to demonstrate this commitment. In 1975, UFW won the passage of the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, a landmark agreement recognizing the right of farm workers in California to organize. Since those early decades, the UFW has continued to win important victories for farm workers in agricultural industries across the U.S.

NFWM and UFW

NFWM and UFW share a long and rich history. NFWM began in 1920 as a ministry of charity and service through the National Council of Churches, providing food, clothing and day care to farm workers. When Cesar Chavez began organizing the UFW in the 1960s, he called on the religious community to change its emphasis from charity to justice. NFWM became the vehicle for people of faith to respond to that call and has continued in solidarity with the UFW throughout its history.

Key NFWM Actions in Support of UFW

During the mid-1960s, the UFW and California Migrant Ministries partnered in support of farm worker justice through boycotts of major California table grape growers. More state Migrant Ministries joined in and helped grow the grape boycott nationally into one of the major social movements of the 1960s and 70s.

State Migrant Ministries along with denominational partners, under the umbrella of the National Council of Churches, came together in 1971 and incorporated as NFWM.

After the victorious signing of union contracts by California grape growers in 1970, the UFW called on NFWM to support a national boycott of non‐union lettuce following major lettuce and vegetable strikes in the Salinas Valley.

In the 1980s, led by the UFW through the "Grapes of Wrath" Campaign, NFWM educated thousands of people of faith about the dangers of pesticides for farm workers and their children.

NFWM's growing base of supporters mobilized for the second grape strike and further UFW organizing efforts throughout the succeeding decade.

After Cesar Chavez's death in 1993, NFWM remained untiring supporters of the UFW. From the 1990s through 2000s, NFWM educated and mobilized supporters around the U.S. for UFW campaigns with companies including Coastal Berry Co., Pictsweet Mushrooms, Gallo of Sonoma and Threemile Canyon Dairy.

In 2005, NFWM supported the UFW-led effort to pass AgJobs (the first major immigration reform bill since the 1980s) and we continue following the UFW's lead on immigration reform legislation.

Since the early 2000s, NFWM has supported multiple UFW organizing campaigns including Giumarra, Darigold and Gerawan Farming and supporting significant California legislative victories such as the 2002 Mandatory Mediation law and the 2016 Over-time for Farmworkers law.

Learn how you can get involved!

Last updated 06/2018

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Begun in 1962 by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Gilbert Padilla, and other early organizers, the United Farm Workers of America is the nation's first enduring and largest farm workers union. The UFW continues organizing in major agricultural sectors, chiefly in California.

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'YELLOW PERIL SUPPORTS BLACK POWER': RECLAIMING THE WORD 'YELLOW'

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JOSEPH LITTAUA WRITES -- "Yellow Peril." When I first found out about the phrase, it was on my own, doing research for a social studies class in middle school. I don't quite remember the reason for the research, but the phrase stuck with me. Why would anyone be okay with being called "Yellow Peril?"

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The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by grassroots activists in Minneapolis in 1968, first sought to improve conditions for recently urbanized Native Americans. It grew into an international movement whose goals included the full restoration of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Through a long campaign of "confrontation politics," AIM is often credited with restoring hope to Native peoples.

AIM's rise occurred during a time of extreme hardship for Native Americans in the Twin Cities. A decade earlier, the federal government had passed the Indian Relocation Act, which promised good jobs and housing for Natives who moved from reservations into cities. Many of the thousands who migrated, however, found only low-wage labor, substandard housing, discrimination, violence, and despair. Their spiritual ceremonies, outlawed since 1884, were still illegal.

AIM's initial actions were meant to bolster Minneapolis's Native population. To aid victims of police abuse, they formed the AIM Patrol. AIM also helped establish the Legal Rights Center, which provided free representation to the poor, and the Indian Health Board, which provided Native-centric medical care. In 1972, AIM founded the Heart of the Earth Survival School.

Later that year, AIM widened its focus to the national stage, joining the Trail of Broken Treaties. The purpose of the walk-which began on the West Coast and ended in Washington, DC-was to demand that the government fulfill its treaty commitments. Upon arrival, AIM members occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs Building. After nearly a week, the Nixon administration agreed to consider their demands and pay for them to return home. The action made AIM a target of COINTELPRO, the FBI's covert operation meant to disrupt domestic political organizations.

In 1973, AIM received a request from Gladys Bissonette of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization. The traditional Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation were being terrorized by white vigilantes and supporters of tribal president Dick Wilson. In response, AIM joined the traditional Lakotas in occupying the village of Wounded Knee. Surrounded by hundreds of federal agents with military weaponry, the Natives battled government forces for seventy-one days. They demanded hearings on their treaty and investigation of the BIA. Two Native people, Buddy Lamont and Frank Clearwater, were killed. Major news organizations remained onsite throughout the conflict, reporting headlines across the world.

While three men-Dennis Banks, Clyde Bellecourt, and Russell Means-are generally acknowledged as leaders of AIM, many Native women also made extraordinary, often anonymous, sacrifices for the movement. Among these were Pat Bellanger, an original AIM member whose nearly fifty years of service to the movement earned her the nickname "Grandma AIM"; Sarah Bad Heart Bull, who was beaten and jailed in Custer, South Dakota, while protesting her son's murder; and Anna Mae Aquash (Mi'kmaq First Nation), who took up arms and fought alongside the men at Wounded Knee.

History may view AIM as a militant group, but AIM saw itself as a spiritual movement. Before, during, and after Wounded Knee, AIM members participated in Sun Dances, sweat lodges, and other long-hidden ceremonies, helping to coax them from the shadows.

In 1974, Banks and Means were tried for conspiracy and assault at the federal courthouse in St. Paul. After a nine-month trial, AIM declared victory when Judge Fred J. Nichols, citing government misconduct, dismissed all charges. The movement, however, had begun to splinter. Infighting, jealousy, and the FBI's efforts to divide them had sewn suspicion and paranoia. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash, whose body was discovered on Pine Ridge on February 24, 1975, marked the beginning of the end of a united AIM. Members blamed the FBI and one another, destroying trust within the movement.

AIM's last major action took place in 1978. The Longest Walk was commenced to protest the imprisonment of AIM activist Leonard Peltier and eleven federal bills that threatened treaty rights. Several hundred Natives marched from San Francisco to Washington, DC. The walk achieved much of its purpose: the anti-Native bills were defeated. But the greatest victory of the walk, and perhaps the movement, came on August 11, just days after protestors arrived: President Jimmy Carter signed the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, lifting the ban on Native American spiritual practices.

Bellecourt continued to lead the Minneapolis branch of AIM into the 2010s, fighting derogatory team names and police misconduct and founding the AIM Interpretive Center.

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The American Indian Movement (AIM), founded by grassroots activists in Minneapolis in 1968, first sought to improve conditions for recently urbanized Native Americans. It grew into an international movement whose goals included the full restoration of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Through a long campaign of "confrontation politics," AIM is often credited with restoring hope to Native peoples.

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 

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Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 

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(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee)

Written by Charlie Cobb, SNCC Field Secretary 1962-1967

Julian Bond's History of SNCC, Volume 1, "Opening Plenary," SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference, 2010, California Newsreel

Young activists and organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC (pronounced "SNICK"), represented a radical, new unanticipated force whose work continues to have great relevance today. For the first time, young people decisively entered the ranks of civil rights movement leadership. They committed themselves to full-time organizing from the bottom-up, and with this approach empowered older efforts at change and facilitated the emergence of powerful new grassroots voices. Before SNCC, with only a few exceptions, notably the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) during the 1930s and '40s, civil rights leadership always meant grownups.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) founded in 1942, grew during the 1960s because of a significant influx of young leadership into its ranks; but in that decade, there were more SNCC field secretaries working full time in southern communities than any civil rights organization before or since. Speaking on February 16, 1960 at the White Rock Baptist Church in Durham, North Carolina, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledged the emerging importance of young people: "What is new in your fight is the fact that it was initiated, fed, and sustained by students."

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The Story of SNCC - SNCC Digital Gateway

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(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Written by Charlie Cobb, SNCC Field Secretary 1962-1967 Julian Bond's History of SNCC, Volume 1, "Opening Plenary," SNCC 50th Anniversary Conference, 2010, California Newsreel Young... Read More

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Black-and-white photo of a bearded Ed Roberts in his motorized chair at a demonstration. Behind him a protester holds a sign, "Civil Rights For Disabled." Shown next to the photo is a quote from Ed Roberts about changing things and disability pride. Underneath is a linked reference to "Free Wheeling" on YouTube, the DREAM logo, and "Celebrating Ed Roberts Day - January 23, 2018. The quote and link are included in this story.

Last week, we celebrated Ed Roberts Day by remembering how the "father of the independent living movement" helped change the world's view of people with disabilities through his activism and community building. The beginnings of Roberts' activism can be traced back to 1962, when, as a community college student, he persuaded UC Berkeley to accept him into its undergraduate political science program.

At the time, disability resources and civil rights laws were not available to support Deaf and disabled students; campuses and classrooms were not accessible. Roberts was paralyzed from the neck down and needed a ventilator and an iron lung to survive. But the dorms at UC Berkeley could not bear the weight of an 800-pound iron lung, so Roberts had to live at the student health center, Cowell Hospital. On enrolling, Roberts became the first severely disabled student at UC Berkeley.

The Rolling Quads: Building Disability Community and Pride

Despite the skeptics, Roberts used his success as a student to convince the university to accept more quadriplegic students into its academic degree programs. To make the campus accessible for them, Roberts needed to add campus activism and community building to self-advocacy in his leadership skill set. He reflected on the powerful relationship between self-advocacy and activism in the 1995 documentary series, People in Motion:

The most important part of [changing things for people with disabilities] is working with other people. Moving away from your own problems to help somebody else. And that liberated me when I realized I could help others. It made me a lot freer to help myself. ( "Free Wheeling")

By developing his activism and collaboration skills with other disabled students, Roberts felt more able to advocate for himself.

The new students with severe physical disabilities moved in with Roberts at Cowell Hospital, and together they became known as the Rolling Quads. They started the first disabled-student-led campus organization in the U.S., the Physically Disabled Students Program. The organization provided disability services, such as transportation and wheelchair repair, and pushed for the removal of physical barriers to campus access, such as street curbs and stairs. As Roberts remembered years later, the Rolling Quads quickly learned that successful campus activism would require them to confront their own internalized ableism and develop disability pride:

[The Rolling Quads] realized that we could change some things. [But] first we needed to change our own attitudes about ourselves. Be proud of who we were and what we were. And go out and change things for others and for ourselves. ( "Free Wheeling")

For many students with disabilities, college is an important time to meet other Deaf, disabled, and chronically ill students and develop a positive disability identity and support network. But many of us arrive on campus with no prior exposure to disability as a positive identity and as a community with its own history and culture.

The Rolling Quads demonstrated that developing a positive disability identity and community is a crucial step for activists and organizations to create campus change. Today, student-led disability organizations and disabled activists on college and university campuses across the U.S. are carrying on the legacy of the Rolling Quads. Not only are these students making campuses more accessible, increasing available disability resources, and fostering inclusion in the classroom and in campus life, they are also countering stigma and ableism by developing disability pride and community on their campuses.

In honor of Ed Roberts Day on January 23rd, we picked four examples of student-led activism from 2017 to illustrate many ways one can be a campus activist and leader in the tradition of Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads.

The SDAC Develops Disability Identity with Disability 101

Like the members of the Rolling Quads, the members of the Students with Disabilities Advisory Council (SDAC) at Miami University in Ohio knew that students with disabilities needed to develop a positive disability identity before they could come together to create change on campus. When they first formed in 2016, the SDAC "recognized that we had to foster an environment where our members would feel comfortable and confident in their disability identities," according to founding SDAC leader and DREAM Board member Megan Zahneis. "Creating [disability] community was the purpose of SDAC," said Zahneis. "Once we established that rapport, we started thinking about ways to extend our reach to the rest of our campus."

The founding members of the SDAC felt that the best way for students with disabilities to develop disability pride is to learn some of the core concepts of disability studies - such as different disability models, the negative representations of disability in the media, and the prevalence of ableism in society. Then, they could deliver these same core concepts to other people on campus so others could understand the issues of the disability community.

One of the SDAC's first initiatives was to take what they learned from an Introduction to Disability Studies class to create the presentation slides for "Disability Studies 101: Changing Perceptions," which are embedded below.

The thumbnail for this embedded PowerPoint slide presentation reads, "Disability Studies 101: Changing Perceptions." The presentation, which has 37 slides, was developed by members of the Students with Disabilities Advisory Council (SDAC) at Miami University in Oxford, OH.

Zahneis reports that members of the SDAC often use these slides to deliver Disability 101 presentations to students, faculty and staff on campus. Our readers are free to use these slides to help produce similar presentations at their college or university.

Miami University recognized the SDAC as its Outstanding New Student Organization of 2017 for their initiatives - like the Disability 101 presentations - that helped create disability community and move the campus beyond just disability awareness. SDAC's graduate student advisor, Dan Darkow, was named Graduate Advisor of the Year and now works as an accommodations coordinator and continues as the SDAC advisor. The SDAC built a strong disability community by developing and presenting the Disability 101 project together. This has enabled them to add new projects to increase accessibility and decrease ableism on campus, like their 14 Disability Microaggressions infographic and a pitch to advocate for a disability cultural center.

Power2Act Builds Relationships to Create a Disability Community Center

Power2Act at Stanford University (pictured below) is another student disability group that acted on the urgent need to develop and support disability community on their campus. Since 2014, Power2Act leadership has advocated for a disability cultural center where disabled students and their allies can socialize, study, find support, and hold events. Progress toward this goal increased when member Zina Jiwadi became co-president of Power2Act in early 2016. Jawadi understood that a visible, standing source of disability pride would help change attitudes towards disability on campus. "Physical space increases visibility and enhances discussion about topics and issues pertaining to our community," Jawadi said in an early 2017 interview with student paper The Stanford Daily.

Eleven Stanford University students stand in a group. The front row holds a banner for Power@ACT: Abilities Coming Together. The logo is a wave with the wave's crest made by a golden spiral. The bottom of the banner reads, "A safe space for Stanford students with disabilities and their allies." Zina Jawadi, an Arab American undergraduate student, stands in the center of the front row wearing a Stanford tee. Photo: Bryce Tuttle

When Jawadi later became Disability Co-Lead in Stanford University's student government, she continued to build relationships with disabled and non-disabled students, faculty, staff, administration, and other organizations to support a disability community center until it became a reality. As part of Stanford Disabilities Week in October 2017, Power2Act partnered with other student organizations to open a disability cultural center on campus, called the Abilities Hub.

From this place of community pride, Jawadi envisions the possibility for futher campus change:

"By having a physical space for the disability community, we are not only increasing visibility of disability at Stanford but are also emphasizing the role of the disability community and its advocacy initiatives at Stanford,"

she said for a report in The Stanford Daily.

Duke Disability Alliance Includes Online Activism in Its Bid to Create Campus Change

While colleges and universities in the 1960s frequently saw on-campus protests, campus activists these days work online as well as in physical spaces to fight ableism, gain equal access, and secure more resources. Rather than protests, disability awareness week has become a regular event on many college and university campuses. But these events are not often student-led and include harmful disability simulations that evoke pity and misunderstanding in non-disabled participants. Online, these ideas of disability as a medical condition to pity and cure, and as a source of inspiration to help able-bodied folks overcome challenges, are a regular part of students' social media interactions.

Under the leadership of the Duke Disability Alliance, Duke University changed the name and the focus of its disability awareness week to Disability Pride Week in 2017. They reached out to students, faculty, administration, and other student organizations to put together a rich blend of on-campus and online activities that would move beyond awareness into acceptance and celebration of disability pride. Among the scheduled events were a student art exhibit and lecture, the #FightTheStigma social media campaign, a student roundtable on psychiatric drugs, individual pledges to use accessible routes on campus, and the NeuroDIVERSITY and Inclusion exhibition.

Subtitled "A creative approach to student activism," the NeuroDiversity and Inclusion exhibition is a collaboration between Duke Disability Alliance and students in a Modernism and Madness course taught by Dr. Marion Quirici. The now entirely online exhibition of disability activism features student works in many different forms - podcasts, poems, petitions, stories, photography, art, articles, and more. The collective purpose of the exhibition is to "overturn the stigma of mental disability and psychiatric challenges, to celebrate neurodiversity, and to explore the infrastructures of inclusion and exclusion in modern American life."

One exhibit is the Mad Studies podcast - "your podcast for breaking down stigma and bringing the voices of disability studies right to you" - created and hosted by undergraduate Winston Lindqwister. Although Lindqwister had no prior experience in video, audio, or captioning, he produced a series of nine lengthy interviews with prominent figures in mad and disabilities studies. These figures include disability rights attorney Shaun Neumeier, writer and activist Rachel Kallem Whitman, and an anonymous disability studies professor who withheld her name because of the stigma of mental illness at her university. A playlist of these interviews on YouTube is embedded below.

This thumbnail shows side-by-side video screens. The first screen shows host Winston Linqwister, an Asian American student with short black hair, wearing headphones. The second screen shows guest Mark Castrodale, a white man with short brown hair, who is a Critical Disability Studies researcher, writer, and instructor at Brock University. Clicking the image will take you to a playlist for the Mad Studies podcast.

Many students at Duke University contributed to making Disability Pride Week 2017 a rich experience for everyone online as well as on campus. And many of the online elements of the event continue to be sites for changing attitudes about disability today.

The #LiveOn Project at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

As Linqwister's podcast shows, not all campus activism needs to be limited to a physical campus; social media can be used to support students with disabilities on campus and online. And not all great campus activism is done through or with a student disability organization. For example, as part of Suicide Awareness Month in September 2017, Squeaky Wheelchair blogger, disability activist, and graduate student Kathleen Downes brought the #LiveOn Project to her campus at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The #LiveOn Project is a disability-led anti-suicide campaign of New York's Center for Disability Rights in which people with physical disabilities encourage others with disabilities to live on.

Downes, who is from New York, made a video for the project in early 2017, which is embedded below.

The thumbnail to Kathleen Downes' #LiveOn video shows a close-up of her face. She is a white woman with long wavy brown hair and wearing brown eyeglasses. Clicking the image will take you to her video. For a playlist of #LiveOn videos, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpQLor-2Hdg&list=PLrEjVzfBTQtuX7pn2HmtwRzPJ7pPLYXth.

In the video, Downes shares her own sense of disability pride that Ed Roberts said was crucial for successful activism: "Living with a disability has brought me experiences both joyful and challenging. All of these experiences make me who I am today and I am proud." Downes was so moved by her participation in the #LiveOn Project that she decided to bring it to her campus as a letter writing campaign:

"When I heard about the LiveOn campaign, I thought, 'That's awesome. That's something I want to be a part of.' We live in a society that is in so many ways discouraging to us . . . It's important to remind others with disabilities that we can have a good life, in spite of and because of our disabilities,"

as she told her student newspaper, The Daily Illini.

Downes used her social media influence to gather letters from all over the country, as well as her on-campus influence to gather letters from other students who have physical disabilities and struggle with mental health. She displayed the letters on a bulletin board at the University Housing office, where she was an intern with the Social Justice and Leadership Education group. In addition, the letters were posted to social media with the hashtag #LiveOn. In this way, Downes powerfully blended her on-campus and online activism to support people with disabilities and to change attitudes about their challenges.

Inclusive Leadership for Social Change

Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads learned quickly that disability pride and working with others were key ingredients to successful campus activism. This understanding has also been a key to success in the four examples of student-led disability activism described above. The legacy of Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads is not simply increased access to classrooms and college life or the legal protections from discrimination on the basis of disability granted by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. They also showed us that successful campus activism needs a solid foundation of disability pride and community to rise.

Campus activism emerges today in a variety of forms - forms that reflect the diversity of students with disabilities who develop them. By welcoming all our different perspectives and strengths to campus activism and student leadership, our collective ability to create change is strengthened. And as Ed said,

"We're going to develop leadership that has a fundamental difference. That is, it's inclusive. It believes in people, in our strengths together. And we are going to change our society" ( Ed Roberts: His Words, His Vision).

This is the legacy and promise of Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads.

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Ed Roberts and the Legacy of the Rolling Quads

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Last week, we celebrated Ed Roberts Day by remembering how the "father of the independent living movement" helped change the world's view of people with disabilities through his activism and community building. The beginnings of Roberts' activism can be traced back to 1962, when, as a community college student, he persuaded UC Berkeley to accept him into its undergraduate political science program.

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Minneapolis’ ‘long, hot summer’ of ’67 – and the parallels to today’s protests over police brutality

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After a riot broke out in 1967, Minneapolis officials squandered an opportunity to address the structural racism that led to George Floyd’s death and a wave of unrest across the country.