Feminist to Know: Judy Huemann

Judith (Judy) Heumann was an important disability rights activist in the U.S., often called the “mother of the disability rights movement.” One of Heumann’s first challenges was as an elementary school student, when her Brooklyn public school denied her an education because she used a wheelchair. Heumann’s parents challenged this, and she was eventually allowed to attend her public elementary school. This tension was mirrored later when Heumann eventually sued the city of New York for the right to work as an elementary school teacher. She won her suit, becoming the city’s first wheelchair-using teacher.

After she won her discrimination suit against the Board of Education, Heumann was drawn to disability rights advocacy, becoming a leader in the field. Throughout her career, she was successful in achieving landmark disability rights. For example, Heumann was an organizer of San Francisco’s 1977 504 sit-in, which we wrote about in the April 2022 edition of the Provocateur. In the sit-in, hundreds of protestors occupied the Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco in order to pressure President Nixon to outlaw federal agencies from discriminating on the basis of ability. This collective action would lead to Section 504, which was the first piece of legislation to treat disability as a protected class, and would lay the groundwork for the A.D.A.

Heumann continued to advocate for the civil rights of disabled people for the rest of her life, including founding the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (which would help to launch the Independent Living movement), serving in the Clinton and Obama administrations, and serving as an advisor to the World Bank. 

In Judy’s own words: “Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings…It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair.”