Ed Roberts, hero of Berkeley's disability rights movement, gets his first biography

"As a professor of Disability Studies at Chapman University, Scot Danforth was intrigued with a group of UC Berkeley students known as the Rolling Quads, initially made up of a dozen students in 1969 that expanded in less than a decade into the most influential disability rights organization in the country, Danforth writes. His article on the Quads appeared in the History of Education Quarterly in 2018."

"In researching the article, Danforth was surprised to discover that no one had written a biography of Ed Roberts, who would go on to become one of the founders of the disability rights movement and helped lay the groundwork for the Americans with Disabilities Act. I decided to take it on, said Danforth, a full-time professor, even if it felt, honestly, like too much. Danforth's book, An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights, was published on Oct. 14."

A group of UC Berkeley students known as the Rolling Quads began with about a dozen students in 1969 and expanded within a decade into the country's most influential disability rights organization. Ed Roberts, paralyzed by polio from childhood and consigned to sleep in an iron lung, refused to accept a life of limitation and pity. Roberts became the first severely disabled student at UC Berkeley in 1962, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science and completing Ph.D. coursework without finishing a dissertation. Berkeley's Free Speech movement and anti-Vietnam activism provided an ideal backdrop for Roberts and a new generation of activists. Roberts helped found the disability rights movement and contributed to groundwork that led to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Read at www.berkeleyside.org