Ed Roberts

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Edward Verne Roberts (January 23, 1939- March 14, 1995) was the first student with severe disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley. He became one of the founders and one of the greatest leaders of the disability rights movement.

Biography

Early life

Ed contracted polio as an adolescent in 1953. For the first year of his illness, he spent all of his time in a hospital. Eventually he left the hospital, but had to spend vast expanses of time in an iron lung. For a while, he thought of himself as a "helpless cripple," but eventually he graduated from high school after he and his mother worked to have the physical education and drivers license requirements of graduation waived. He noticed the large amount of attention that his disability gained him, and decided to use this attention for positive purposes.

Activism

Ed Roberts is often called the father of the disability rights movement. His career as an advocate began when a high school administrator threatened to deny his diploma because he had not completed driver's education and physical education. After attending the College of San Mateo he was admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. He had to work hard, including suing the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation because they thought he was too disabled. It was a battle to get Berkeley to accept him, because, as a dean explained, "We've tried cripples before and it didn't work."

He matriculated in 1962, two years before the Free Speech Movement transformed Berkeley into a hotbed of student protest. When his search for housing met resistance in part because of the iron lung that he slept in at night, the director of the campus hospital offered him a room in an empty wing. Ed accepted on the condition that it be treated as dormitory space. Other significantly disabled students joined him there over the next few years.

They began calling themselves the 'Rolling Quads'. In 1968 when two were threatened with a loss of services by a Rehabilitation Counselor, the Rolling Quads organized a successful protest that led to the counselor's transfer. Their success on campus inspired the group to advocate for curb cuts, opening access to the wider community, and to create the first student-led disability services program at a university.

The student program in turn led to the creation of the Berkeley Center for Independent Living. Roberts assumed leadership of the fledgling organization and guided its development as a model for disability advocacy and self-help services across the nation. In 1976 Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ed Roberts Director of the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation. He served in that post until 1983 when he co-founded Center for Independent Living and World Institute on Disability.

He earned B.A. (1964) and M.A. (1966) degrees from UC Berkeley in Political Science. He became an official Ph.D. Candidate (C.Phil.) in political science at Berkeley in 1969, but did not complete his Ph.D. ^[1]

Awards and Recognition

Ed Roberts received numerous awards for his activities. In 2008 ground will break for a multi-agency independent living center, to be known as the Ed Roberts Campus.^[2]

See also

• Independent Living
• List of disability rights activists

References

• Shapiro, Joseph P. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement. Random House, 1993.

External links

• Ed Roberts Campus
• World Institute on Disability article by Joan Leon
• Ed Roberts tribute from the Center for Independent Living
• A biographical article on Ed
• Another biographical article on ed
• The story about Ed's wheelchair being donated to the Smithsonian
• Independent Living Resources: Remembering Ed Roberts

Research resources

• Finding Aid to the Edward V. Roberts Papers, The Bancroft Library