Judith Heumann, a well-known advocate for the rights of disabled people, died at the age of 75 in Washington DC on Sunday. Heumann was an internationally identified leader of the disability rights movement whose activism led to the implementation of a major ruling in the United States. After acquiring polio as a child, she became the first wheelchair who worked as a lecturer in New York City.
Heumann was “widely considered as ‘the mother’ of the disability rights movement”, according to a message posted on her website announcing her death. She was at the forefront of major disability rights protests, supported spearheading the path of laws, and established national and international advocacy organizations, it added.
Heumann also served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations and had more than 20 years of non-profit experience. Barack Obama said he was “fortunate” to work with Heumann, and paid tribute to her life-long dedication to fight for civil rights.
The American Association of People with Disabilities also led praises, saying her leadership “advanced the rights and inherent dignity of people with disabilities”.
Judith Heuman was born in 1947 in Philadelphia and grown in Brooklyn, New York, she acquired polio when she was two years old and lost the capability to walk. She was not permitted to attend preschool, because her wheelchair was considered a “fire hazard”, and when she ultimately got into a school at age nine, she recounted being treated as a “second-class citizen”.
Her parents fought for her rights as a child, and she went on to study speech therapy at Long Island University and achieved a master’s in public health from the University of California, Berkeley.
In the 1970s, she won a case against the New York Board of Education and became the first teacher in the state to use a wheelchair. Her struggle for civil rights led to her staging a 24-day sit-in at a San Francisco federal building in 1977, an event which ultimately supported paved the way for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.
Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives – job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example.
It is not a tragedy to me that I’m living in a wheelchair.”
Judith Heumann.
Heumann went on to serve in the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001 as an assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services in the Department of Education and was designated special adviser on International Disability Rights by Barack Obama.
She also co-authored her biography, Being Heumann, and its Young Adult version, Rolling Warrior, and was featured in the Oscar-nominated documentary, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution.
