Ed Roberts

Polio reached Ed Roberts in 1953, hours after a March of Dimes benefit baseball game in San Mateo County. He was 14, and he walked into the hospital. He spent much of the next two years in one, and came home paralyzed below the neck except for two fingers and a few toes. He slept in an iron lung. Out of it he pushed air into his lungs with his throat and facial muscles, a technique called frog breathing. He finished Burlingame High School over a telephone line until his mother, Zona, made him attend in person once a week. The school then moved to withhold his diploma because he had taken neither physical education nor driver education. Zona went to the school board, and he graduated in 1959.

Berkeley admitted him in 1962 and had nowhere to put an 800-pound iron lung, so the health service gave him a room in an empty wing of Cowell Hospital. He took it on condition that the wing count as housing, not a ward. Other students with severe disabilities followed, called themselves the Rolling Quads, and built the Physically Disabled Students Program, the first student-led disability service in the country. In 1972 the same circle started the Center for Independent Living for people who were not students, and Roberts came back from teaching at Nairobi College to run it.

His argument was that disability is made, not suffered. What kept him out of a building was the stairs. What kept the Rolling Quads out of their own lives was a rehabilitation counselor who told them which classes to take and what to write a thesis about. In 1968 they organized and got her transferred. Services for disabled people, he held, belonged to disabled people. In 1975 Governor Jerry Brown appointed him director of the California Department of Rehabilitation, the agency whose counselor had refused to fund his education on the ground that he was too severely disabled ever to work. He held the post until 1983. In April 1977, while he ran it, activists led by Judy Heumann occupied the federal building in San Francisco for 26 days. Roberts testified at the hearing Congress convened inside.

He died at his home in Berkeley on March 14, 1995, at 56. His attendant said cardiac arrest, and later reporting called it a stroke. Two months on, a volunteer towed his empty wheelchair at the head of a memorial march in Washington. The Smithsonian took the chair that year. The title father of independent living is not exact: he did not found the Berkeley center he led, and Lex Frieden of Texas was better known in Washington. What is not in dispute is the count. Hundreds of independent living centers now run on the model. The Ed Roberts Campus opened at the Ashby BART station in 2011, and California marks January 23 as Ed Roberts Day.

Ed Roberts's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Cowell Residence Program other
  Began as one room in an empty hospital wing that he insisted be counted as housing 1962
• Physically Disabled Students Program other
  Berkeley — the first student-led disability service in the country, funded through the federal TRIO program 1970
• Center for Independent Living, Berkeley other
  Run by and for disabled people, and copied by hundreds of cities 1972
• World Institute on Disability other
  Co-founded with Judy Heumann and Joan Leon, seeded with his MacArthur money 1983

• 1953 aged ~14 Contracts polio at 14 He walked into San Mateo County Hospital. Two days later he was in an iron lung.
• 1959 aged ~20 Graduates from high school after the district moves to withhold his diploma He had completed neither physical education nor driver education. His mother took it to the school board.
• 1962 aged ~23 Enters Berkeley and moves into an empty wing of Cowell Hospital A local paper covered it under the headline Helpless Cripple Goes to School.
• 1968 aged ~29 The Rolling Quads get their rehabilitation counselor transferred She had been directing what they studied and threatened two of them with eviction.
• 1972 aged ~33 Returns from teaching at Nairobi College to lead the Center for Independent Living
• 1975 aged ~36 Jerry Brown appoints him director of the California Department of Rehabilitation The agency had once refused to fund his education. Some accounts date the appointment to 1976.
• April 1977 aged 38 Testifies inside the occupied federal building during the 504 sit-in Activists led by Judy Heumann held the San Francisco building for 26 days.
• 1984 aged ~45 Named a MacArthur Fellow He put the money into the World Institute on Disability.
• March 14, 1995 aged 56 Dies at home in Berkeley at 56 His attendant reported cardiac arrest. Later reporting identified a stroke.

• Judy Heumann 1947–2023
  Disability rights leader whose 504 sit-in and federal service shaped American accessibility law. co-founded WID with
• Jonas Salk 1914–1995
  Medical researcher who developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine. vaccine came two years late
• Franklin D. Roosevelt 1882–1945
  32nd President who led the nation through the Great Depression and most of World War II. polio, a generation earlier
• Helen Keller 1880–1968
  Deafblind author and lecturer who became the leading American advocate for blind and disabled people. the charity model he argued against
• Ralph Nader b. 1934
  Consumer advocate whose auto-safety campaign produced federal vehicle standards and a public-interest lobbying network. parallel rights movement