‘We want to ride’: the 1978 protest that sparked the disability rights movement

0:00Joseph Shapiro:I'm Ayesha Roscoe. This is a Sunday story from Up First. Let's go back in time to this exact day 36 years ago. It's when President George H.W. Bush picked up his pen and signed the landmark piece of legislation. And welcome to every one of you out there in this splendid scene of hope spread across the South Lawn of the White House. The legislation was the Americans with Disabilities Act. An immense civil rights law. Disabled people could no longer be excluded from jobs, public transit, restaurants, stores and hotels. As he put his name on the law, President Bush thanked the biggest stakeholders, who were perhaps the loudest in advocating for the bill.

0:48Joseph Shapiro:The tens of millions of Americans with disabilities. And to all of you, I just want to say your triumph is that your bill will now be law. and that this day belongs to you. And on behalf of our nation, thank you very, very much. One major act of inclusion the law provided involved independence. The ADA opened the door to Americans with disabilities to live and receive care in their own homes, to live within their community rather than in a nursing home or institution. It's a hard-fought right gained after years of activism. Today on The Sunday Story, NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Stephanie Wolfe of Colorado Public Radio are going to share their reporting on this bedrock of disability rights in the U.S.

1:43Joseph Shapiro:We'll be right back. This message comes from Capital One with the Venture X Card. Earn unlimited double miles, a$300 annual Capital One travel credit, and access to airport lounges. Capital One. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at CapitalOne.com. This message comes from MidiHealth, a virtual care platform for women in paramenopause and menopause. Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kathleen Jordan shares the wide range of symptoms they work to address for women in midlife. There's dry eyes, dry hair, dry skin, there's dry mouth, trouble sleeping, panic and anxiety attacks. When we ask patients about common symptoms, on average, they report six.

2:28Joseph Shapiro:MidiHealth, committed to helping women in midlife with paramenopause and menopause care. Accessible via telehealth visits at joinmidi.com. This message comes from Dell Technologies. Get long-lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series 3 Intel Core. Now from$699 with exclusive student pricing from$599. Visit Dell.com slash deals. We're back with the Sunday story and an episode about the disability rights movement in America. Now I'm going to hand it over to NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Colorado Public Radio's Stephanie Wolfe. I was on the South Lawn of the White House 36 years ago today as a reporter to cover the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

3:17Joseph Shapiro:People came from all over the country with every kind of disability. It was a celebration. Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. God bless you all. I've covered the disability rights movement for decades now. The ADA and all those protections won by the disability community, they're all tied to this right for independent living. And that's the idea that disabled people want the same lives as everyone else, to go to school, to get jobs, to live with family and friends, to be part of their community. They didn't want to live in institutions and nursing homes where, before the ADA, people often lived if they needed daily medical and personal care.

4:03Joseph Shapiro:Independent living is about getting that care in their own homes.

4:08Stephanie Wolf:And that's why we want to start our story by telling you about Nikki Bishop. Bishop has a neuromuscular condition called spinal muscular atrophy type 2.

4:18Joseph Shapiro:I was diagnosed when I was about 5 years old. And basically the person just gets progressively weaker as they age.

4:25Stephanie Wolf:Bishop's 39. She was just a kid when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. So she grew up in a world where so much more was possible for her as a person with significant disabilities. She has a full life now. She's a licensed clinical social worker in the Denver area and a disability advocate. I've run into her at the Colorado State Capitol before as she lobbied in support of different disability rights bills.

4:51Joseph Shapiro:So I could walk until I was about nine years old, but always had sort of struggle walking and then just progressively got weaker as I aged

5:01Stephanie Wolf:to the point where I have really limited upper mobility, cannot walk at all. So Bishop relies on attendants who come to her house to help her live this very full life. They help her get out of bed, get dressed, bathed, and ready for work. Because Bishop can't move her body on her own, she depends on AIDS about 23 hours a day. It's expensive care, hundreds of thousands of dollars a year if she had to pay for it herself. Private insurance, the kind you get through your job, doesn't pay for it, but Medicaid does. That's the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled. It allows Bishop to have not just her full-time career, but also to be a parent to a nine-year-old.

5:48Joseph Shapiro:This is my son, Adrian.

5:50Stephanie Wolf:Without the disability civil rights movement, Bishop thinks she'd probably be in a nursing home today. Just the amount of opportunities that I've had, you know, and I'm incredibly grateful for that.

6:02Joseph Shapiro:But like with the Gang of 19 and, you know, that generation of advocate, they paved the way for me so that I could be successful. The Gang of 19. This nearly forgotten group of activists is a big reason Bishop is where she is today. In 1978, in Denver, this gang, really it was just a small group of young people in wheelchairs, carried out an extraordinary act of civil disobedience. It helped set in motion an era of activism that won rights like getting Congress to pass the ADA.

6:36Stephanie Wolf:We want a right! We want a right! We want a right! It's a fierce title, the Gang of 19. But the group of young people met in a place where they had almost no power. A suburban Denver nursing home, and not a good one.

6:51Joseph Shapiro:No activities, nothing to do, warehouse, physical injuries, bed sores, a lot of bed sores. This is Denver civil rights attorney John Holland talking to us about that nursing home, Heritage House. It was a cesspool. I mean, they had cockroaches and cereals. Debbie Tracy, I had a photograph of her with flies in her face. She couldn't move her arms. She's just covered in flies. Heritage House was not a place where these young people could thrive. After all, Holland would later sue that nursing home for mistreatment and neglect. But the nursing home would also prove to be a turning point in their lives.

7:33Joseph Shapiro:That's where they met a man named Wade Blank, and he would show them they were capable of extraordinary things. Blank, who died in 1993, wasn't disabled. He was a Presbyterian minister who turned to political action. Blank was a student in seminary in Chicago when he marched with Martin Luther King at Selma. He did civil rights work in big cities, and he was a chaplain at Kent State. But after four students were shot during a protest against the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, Blank said he felt burned out. He needed a change. He moved to Denver. And he took a job at Heritage House, the nursing home, on the wing with the young residents.

8:12Joseph Shapiro:He was horrified by conditions there. So was his colleague, Barry Rosenberg. Most of the people who were there were not there because they wanted to be there, that there was no place for them.

8:23Stephanie Wolf:The young residents of the nursing home received support through Medicaid. Back then, it only paid for long-term medical and personal care inside nursing homes. Institutionalization of Americans with disabilities of all ages was common back then.

8:39Joseph Shapiro:We realized that some of it was a civil rights issue, you know.

8:44Stephanie Wolf:Wade Blank, with the help of Rosenberg, began taking these young people out into the community. They went to rock concerts and on camping trips.

8:52Joseph Shapiro:I had this Volkswagen van and I took people everywhere. It was a taste of freedom. And Blank kept pushing for more. He wanted the nursing home to feel more like a college dorm for these young residents. He got them to register to vote. He wanted them to make decisions for themselves, like what they wanted to eat and when they wanted to go to sleep. He wanted them to have more agency over their own lives. He challenged the way things were done. Blank had this idea, which some viewed as radical, that these young people should live in their own homes and get their care there. The nursing home eventually fired him.

9:28Stephanie Wolf:That same year, in 1975, Blank co-founded a Denver group to help find housing and provide other services, including attendant care, for these young people who'd been stuck at the nursing home. They called it Atlantis Community.

9:43Joseph Shapiro:Wade felt that there was people who were lost and were brilliant people who lived and were undiscovered.

9:53Stephanie Wolf:Blank convinced the city to lease public housing to residents leaving the nursing home. But once these young people in wheelchairs were living out in the community, they quickly learned getting around town was tough. Sidewalks lacked curb cuts, those sloped ramps down from the sidewalk to the roadway you see in most intersections today. So those with physical disabilities couldn't easily and safely get from one block to another. And even if they could, city buses weren't accessible.

10:22Joseph Shapiro:Wade Blank understood that riding a bus was a symbol of American civil rights. Here's Blank speaking to that in an old interview with a TV news outlet. You can measure how a society views an oppressed group by how they treat them in public accommodations. And you can't say hire the handicapped and then not have public transit be wheelchair accessible.

10:42Stephanie Wolf:Things came to a head when civil rights attorney John Holland learned that the Denver Metro Transit Agency was going to purchase more than 200 new buses.

10:51Joseph Shapiro:And they were not going to make them wheelchair accessible, although lifts had been invented.

10:59Stephanie Wolf:Holland immediately called Wade Blank. And I said, you hear about the buses?

11:05Joseph Shapiro:He said, I did. I said, well, how would you like to be a plaintiff? They sued, but lost in court. Blank felt they needed a new tactic. He was a student of the civil rights movement and of civil disobedience. So in that summer of 1978, just days after they lost their court case, he asked the disabled people he'd met at the nursing home to take their fight to the streets of downtown Denver, to one of the busiest intersections in the city, at a bus stop near the state capitol building. We have a right to ride on the buses, so I think that probably it'd be a good idea to go out and board a few buses.

11:44Stephanie Wolf:Blank directed one of them, a man named George Roberts, to get in line for the bus in his wheelchair.

11:50Joseph Shapiro:So on July 5th, George Roberts sent patiently at the bus stop waiting for the next bus to come. When the doors opened, he said, can I get on? This is Blank at a commemoration event for the protest. He recalled that since there was no wheelchair lift, the driver was confused. And when the bus driver closed the door saying no to George, we gave a hand signal and all the other 18 moved into the streets and blocked that bus. I mean, it was incredibly easy as long as you had the will to do it.

12:28Stephanie Wolf:Brian McLeod is one of the last living disabled activists from this demonstration.

12:33Joseph Shapiro:Once the bus is stopped, you have somebody immediately go to the door of the bus.

12:41Stephanie Wolf:A second person rolled their wheelchair in front of the bus.

12:44Joseph Shapiro:And then have a third person go to the side of the bus where the driver can't pull out and go on his way. So he's basically trapped. He knows he's screwed. He can't move anywhere. Nineteen people in wheelchairs surrounded the two city buses. They held signs that said things like taxation without transportation. And they chanted in the streets.

13:11Stephanie Wolf:They would become known as the Gang of 19. And they were demanding access to get onto the bus and ride.

13:19Joseph Shapiro:And we stayed in the streets all night until 10 o 'clock the next day, July the 6th. That was our shot around the world. When the police came after the buses were occupied, the police came and they shouted and they got in people's face and no one budged.

13:36Stephanie Wolf:This is Barry Rosenberg again. He came to the demonstration to help the protesters.

13:41Joseph Shapiro:No one spoke. No one talked back. They just sat and were quiet. The Gang of 19 had been taught how to do civil disobedience by Wade Blank. They knew to stand their ground, and that created a problem for the police. Well, they weren't going to arrest anybody in a wheelchair. That was pretty obvious. Bill Rome was a personal care attendant. Not only would the optics look bad, but the actual process of trying to get them off the street and getting them into wheelchair inaccessible vans to take to the police station, I just don't think that was on their itinerary. The police could not figure out how to arrest people in wheelchairs.