I did a paper on her for one of my college classes! She’s so cool! Here’s some facts!
She’s Jewish and born to immigrant german parents who migrated in the 1930s
She has been in a wheelchair for nearly her entire life due to contacting polio at a very young age.
Due to her wheelchair, she was actually barred from most schooling including kindergarten as her wheelchair was deemed as a “risk.” because it could be “in the way” if there was a fire.
She was the first wheelchair teacher in New York after suing when she was once again denied her license for the same reasons she was denied kindergarten.
She worked as the Assistant Secretary of Education for OSERS for 8 years
Her parents, especially her mother, were big parts in her becoming an activist as her mother Ilse was a community organizer and fought hard to get her daughter as much education as she could, it was her activism that helped her daughter and other disabled children be allowed to enroll in High School instead of being separated into a specific disabled school. (We don’t have time to go into all that but tldr; those schools sucked and its a genuine accomplishment disabled kids no longer have to learn in like, cramped attics that didn’t teach anything)
She was a founder of the organization Disabled in Action! She didn’t just organize sit-ins, she helped RUN the organization that was organizing them!
The president she butted heads with the most was Richard Nixxon, this isn’t that important I just know everyone loves when he gets dunked on
She helped CREATE THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT!!! I cannot express to you just how important that is, if you have basically any kind of disability, this act is a big reason you were able to go to a public school instead of being shoved into a warehouse.
The Black Panthers helped with the 504 sit-in! They helped bring food because the organization also included black disabled people, and one of the members of both, Brad Lomax, asked for help!
She had a podcast! You can go listen to that podcast right now!
Honestly just check out her website in general
She also founded the Berkeley Center for Independent Living!!
Honestly I could keep going on but she’s genuinely one of my heroes and was an amazing person who it is not an underestimate to say changed the world for the better.
May her memory be a blessing!!! May the disabled community always remember how much of it was built on the work and back of a disabled Jewish woman!!!
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