History Book: Breaking barriers

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JENNY ROUIGH, HOST: Today is Monday, August 25th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Jenny Rough.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

Think about all the places you go in a day: work, school, the store, maybe a ballgame. But for millions of Americans, those ordinary routines used to be out of reach. Thirty-five years ago, that began to change with the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy reports on why the law was needed and what has changed since then—starting with a person who faced the old barriers firsthand:

MARY LOU BRESLIN: The restrooms in my high school were not accessible so it wasn’t possible, actually, to use the restroom during the day.

MARY MUNCY: Mary Lou Breslin is the co-founder of the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. She talked to PBS about what life was like as a high school student confined to a wheelchair in the 1960s.

BRESLIN : But I finally figured out that I could go into a parking lot, put my foot up on a bumper, slide up to edge of my chair and pee on the ground.

And she wasn’t alone. People all over the country were wrestling with infrastructure that wasn’t made with them in mind.

JOURNALIST: A curb is just a curb and steps are just steps, unless you’re in a wheelchair. And even where the barriers have been brought down, attitudes can sometimes be even more formidable. From people to take up the handicap parking places, to employers who blame insurance policies for not hiring the disabled.

But as disabled veterans started coming home first from World War II, then the Korean and Vietnam wars attitudes started to change.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon signed a bill to establish funding for rehabilitating veterans and helping them find gainful employment. At the end of the bill, in section 504, these 45-words:

“No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States… shall, solely by reason of his handicap, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

After several years, that short passage became the basis for a movement.

NEWSCASTER: Well Isabelle, what’s going on now, is an overnight sit-in.

In 1977, demonstrators occupied buildings all over the country, demanding that the government start implementing and enforcing Section 504.

CHANTING: Sign 504.

They’re chanting “sign 504.”

Most of the occupations only lasted a few hours, maybe a day, but in San Francisco, it kept going and going.

NEWSCASTER: Well I’ve just gotten word that these people are now locked in the building. At 6:00 this building did close down.

The protesters had to rely on federal staff and volunteers to bring them food, blankets, and medicine. Some had to rely on them to help them turn over and eat.

Meanwhile, other activists went to Washington, DC, to negotiate with legislators.

PROTESTER: We’re down to the basic issue here. Are we going to perpetuate segregation in our society? We’re one of the largest minorities in this country.

Finally, after 28 days of occupying the building in San Francisco, the protesters got what they demanded.

SOUND: [CHEERING]

Federal officials signed legislation to enforce Section 504

But it was still an uphill battle.

Businesses were worried about the costs of making their buildings handicap accessible, or about being forced to hire people who couldn’t perform the role.

Over the next several years, the bill faced lawsuits, and new laws were shot down. Until 1988.

FRIEDEN: This is perhaps the most significant piece of legislation that’s been introduced.

That’s Lex Frieden. He helped craft the first iteration of the Americans with Disabilities Act, or the ADA, just in time for George H.W. Bush to court voters with disabilities.

BUSH: I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure the disabled are included in the mainstream. For too long, they’ve been left out, but they’re not going to be left out anymore. [cheering]

Congress shot down the first iteration of the ADA, but two years after Bush took office:

BUSH: We must not and will not rest until every man and women with a dream has the means to achieve it. And today, America welcomes into the mainstream of life all of our fellow citizens with disabilities.

Bush signed the current version of the ADA into law.

SHAWN THORNTON: Some of the first changes were in bathrooms.

Shawn Thornton is president of Joni and Friends.

THORNTON: Then also curb cuts began to appear pretty quickly. There were some parts of this that were very obvious and easy.

But other parts, are still being worked out like employment law. There are so many kinds of disabilities that it’s hard to write policy that covers them all while still being clear for the people who are implementing it.

But Thornton says at least people are trying.

THORNTON: I think that's what the ADA did, was create intentionality in our culture to include people with disability.

And he says that’s where the church can go above and beyond the call of the law.

THORNTON: Churches sometimes are excluded from a lot of the ADA stuff because of religious protections, but we want to as Bible teaching, Christ-centered churches, we want to show those values and go the extra mile, even in the area of ADA, to even go beyond it.

Thornton is also a pastor and says his church is constantly asking who would be excluded if they held an event say, on the lawn instead of inside? Or do they need to have extra helpers at a kids event?

Right now, there are between 45 and 75 million people living with some kind of disability in the United States and thanks to the ADA, the US is at least about thinking about how to bring them into public spaces.

THORNTON: Christ always was drawn to those who were the most marginalized in culture, and he was always looking for them and showing them value, because he saw that as the creator. He knew the dignity, inherent dignity they had being made in the image of God.

That’s this week’s History Book. I’m Mary Muncy.

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