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VIDEO: BEING HEUMANN


VIDEO: BEING HEUMANN


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The first day of school is typically a happy day, full of wonder and excitement
for both parents and their children. Every year, kids explore their new
classrooms and make new friends, and their parents proudly share first-day
photos on social media.

Yet in 1950s Brooklyn, New York, when Judith Heumann’s parents took her to
school for the first time, it was anything but a joyous occasion. The
five-year-old, rendered unable to walk after she contracted polio when she was
two, had no way into the building. There wasn’t a ramp for her wheelchair. Once
they finally made their way inside, they were told she couldn’t attend the
school because she was a “fire hazard.”

But her parents, German-Jewish immigrants who immigrated to the U.S. in the
1930s and lost family during the Holocaust, weren’t going to take “no” for an
answer. Their daughter would be going to school.

As Heumann’s father worked long hours at a butcher shop, her mother fought for
her child, becoming her champion. This eventually saw Heumann enrolled in a
school for disabled children and then a public high school.

Heumann inherited her mother’s tenacity, becoming an inspiration due to her
lifelong, nonstop fight for the rights of the disabled community.

Igniting Her Passion
After high school, Heumann attended Long Island University. It proved a
challenge due to the lack of accessibility. She needed to ask for help anytime
she went into the bathroom or exited the building.

In her first display of activism, she organized students to demand ramps for
access to classrooms.

Heumann also attended Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled people in the
Catskills region of New York, and later worked there as a counselor. It was at
the camp where she met many of those who would become leaders in the disability
rights movement.

Following college, she applied to become a teacher. But the New York Board of
Education refused to give her a license, worried she wouldn’t be able to
evacuate herself in a fire. She sued and got the job, becoming the first teacher
in the state to use a wheelchair.

Changing the Laws




When President Richard Nixon vetoed Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act,
which would force organizations, such as hospitals, universities, and museums,
to remove barriers to accessibility for all Americans, Heumann took part in a
protest in which eighty disability activists stopped traffic on New York City’s
busy Madison Avenue.



She also organized and took part in the “504 sit-in,” the longest nonviolent
occupation of a federal building in U.S. history, at the San Francisco office of
the U.S. government’s Health, Education, and Welfare department during President
Jimmy Carter’s administration. When the protesters were denied anything to eat,
the Black Panthers helped by providing them with food. The protests worked, and
regulations were signed into U.S. law in 1977.



Heumann also cofounded the World Institute on Disability and the Berkeley Center
for Independent Living, and she worked in the Clinton and Obama presidential
administrations and for the World Bank, championing the rights of those with
disabilities worldwide.


Her work over the years helped the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act
come to fruition.

Heumann continued to travel and champion those with disabilities into her
seventies. In 2020, her memoir Being Heumann was published and became a
bestseller. She passed away in March 2023, at the age of seventy-five. With the
incredible life she lived, it’s no wonder she is considered the mother of the
disability movement.

Watch: As Heumann told PBS News Hour, “People look at us as the label of our
disability. It is a part of who we are but it isn’t who we are.” Learn even more
about her in this profile from People magazine.


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Heumann told The Daily Show host Trevor Noah she doesn’t like the term
“able-bodied” people. She prefers to use “non-disabled” because the likelihood
of acquiring a disability, temporarily or permanently, is statistically very
high.

Next Steps: Crip Camp is a documentary about Camp Jened, the summer camp for
teens with disabilities and how those who attended, including Heumann, started a
disability rights revolution. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in
2020, winning the Audience Award, and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Consider checking it out on Netflix, where it's currently streaming.


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