Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist

by Judith Heumann

I was officially considered a danger to children because I couldn’t walk. I wasn’t contagious, but somehow I’d been deemed a contaminant.

How could the denial of my teaching license on the grounds of my inability to walk not be discrimination? I was perfectly mobile in my wheelchair.

For three years I’d been counting on the ACLU. Every time I’d gotten worried about what might happen when I went to get my license, I’d reminded myself that if things went south, the ACLU would help me.

But now the ACLU was telling me it was my fault for having my disability. I was dumbfounded.

I was so tired of being called a fire hazard I could vomit.

“We have waited too long, made too many compromises, and been too patient. “We will no longer be patient. There will be no more compromise. “We will accept no more discrimination.”

The West Coast leadership team was almost all women. Would we have been considered too confrontational and unwilling to compromise if we were men?

In 1980, Ed and I and another colleague, Joan Leon, cofounded the World Institute on Disability (WID). The three of us became the codirectors of the organization. WID was a global think tank.

The CRPD is an international human rights treaty intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities.

Disability is a natural aspect of the human condition.

When whole groups of people become segregated from others in our society, it weakens the fabric of our democracy.