Patient No More: People with Disabilities Securing Civil Rights

Description

In the face of government ignorance, we persisted and won. No one gave us anything.

Organizer Kitty Cone

Discover a remarkable, overlooked moment in U.S. history when people with disabilities occupied a government building to demand their rights and won. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 made it illegal for any federally funded facilities or programs to discriminate against disabled people, but four years later one missing signature stood in the way of the law taking effect.

At last, in April of 1977, frustration turned into bold action. A diverse coalition launched protests across the country, and in San Francisco, more than 100 people began a 26-day occupation of the Federal Building to insist on getting civil rights. On April 30, the occupiers emerged victorious from the longest unarmed take-over of a federal building in US history after the Head of Health Education and Welfare (HEW) had finally added his signature to the 504 regulations.

Patient No More provides content that can be applied to the classroom to satisfy the disability curriculum requirement of California’s 2011 Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act. In addition, the traveling exhibit includes exhibition text in braille, large-print panels, audio description tracks, and audio-described and captioned videos to make the show as accessible as possible.

The colorful freestanding panels provide a flexible layout, are easy to install, and are designed to fit a variety of venues – including, but not limited to, libraries, museums, community centers, lobbies, and government buildings.

Patient No More is presented by the Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability at San Francisco State University, made possible with support from California Humanities, and traveled by Exhibit Envoy. Learn more about the exhibit and the history of the 504 protests at patientnomore.org.