January 2026 – Ed Roberts Day
Written by DNWML Community Engagement Coordinator, Eliot Carter
January 23 is Ed Roberts Day – a day where disability advocates celebrate the life of Independent Living activist Ed Roberts. As our Center for Independent Living turns 50 this year, I have been reading a lot about Ed Roberts lately – after all, he is sometimes called the Father of the Independent Living Movement for his role in founding the first CIL in Berkeley, California. Ed had already made history in his early 20s by becoming the first known wheelchair user to attend the University of California Berkeley in 1962. It was a struggle: first because he was told he could not get his high school diploma because he couldn’t complete his Driver’s Education requirement, then being told by UC Berkeley staff that they couldn’t accept him because of his disability, then struggling to find housing that would accommodate him (he ended up having to live in a nearby hospital). But he didn’t stop fighting – instead, he helped turn UC Berkeley into a magnet school for students with disabilities through organizing and advocacy. By the end of the 1960s, there were at least 12 students with physical disabilities living in that hospital ward working to transform their school so they could learn and thrive together.
Ed contracted polio at the age of 14, which caused severe mobility and breathing challenges. He was initially very depressed when he realized he would have a disability for the rest of his life. But he realized with proper management and attendant care (and later, a power wheelchair), he could still live, learn, work, and play in his community. “Everyone turned to look at me,” Ed said about being in public post-polio. “I looked at someone, right in the eyes, and they turned and looked away. That was when I realized that maybe it wasn’t my problem; maybe it was their problem. I checked myself out, and I realized two things. First, their looking at me didn’t hurt, physically; and secondly I realized, hey, this is kind of like being a star – and I’ve been a star ever since.” [1]
Ed helped start the Physically Disabled Students Program at UC Berkeley. The first goal of the program was to connect people with disabilities to care attendants, now typically called Personal Assistants or Direct Care Workers. The second was to create a wheelchair repair program with the help of engineering students. Eventually, they also kept lists of accessible housing units for students with disabilities. It was a huge success, with non-students in the Berkeley area using their services as well. It became apparent that they had started something special that should be made available for everyone, not just students. Soon, the first Center for Independent Living opened in 1972.
“Independent Living” would have rarely been associated with people with disabilities before 1972. It was still the norm to separate children with disabilities from their families and send them to live in institutions for years, if not their whole lives. Things were slowly changing – this was the year that the Willowbrook expose showed the country the terrible conditions inside New York City’s largest institution. California was starting to offer more community-based services as research started to show that people with disabilities’ potential to thrive was higher than physicians previously thought. When the Center for Independent Living pushed the City of Berkeley to install curb cuts, the benefit was felt by people with and without disabilities, as all people could get around their city easier. It was becoming clear that the “old ways” of thinking about disability were limiting for not just the disabled, but for everyone. The next cities to establish Centers for Independent Living were Boston, Houston, and Ann Arbor – no matter if you were in the east, west, north, or south, people with disabilities were realizing they deserved equal rights and autonomy.
Ed Roberts may be one of the most famous disability advocates of his time, but he certainly did not work alone. He called upon Judy Heumann, who had recently won a legal battle to get her teaching license in New York, to move to California to help start the CIL [2]. Another co-founder, Hale Zukas, helped engineer and advocate for accessible transit, buses, and elevators. He did so through a combination of his mathematical expertise and taking direct action, like chaining himself to the front of an inaccessible bus – all of this despite the recommendation his mother received to send him to an institution when he was born with cerebral palsy [3]. Ed was also making connections between the other civil rights struggles of the 1960s and 70s, seeing how discrimination and stereotypes were also holding back women and people of color. Ed would often comment that the same semester he was admitted to UC Berkeley, fall of 1962, James Meredith was being escorted into the University of Mississippi amidst riots as the first Black person to attend (while Roberts died in 1995, Meredith is still alive today at the age of 92).
Ed Roberts would often say that embracing Independent Living starts within ourselves as people with disabilities. “We realized we could change some things. First, we had to change our own attitudes about ourselves,” he said about his time at UC Berkeley, “to be proud of who we were and what we were, then go out and change it for others and ourselves. … When I realized I could help others, it made me a lot freer to help myself. [4]” For this year’s Ed Roberts day, whether you have a disability or not, I challenge you to take a moment to reflect on what negative things you might still believe about yourself and your future. Who might have made you believe those things? Would you want others in a similar situation to also believe those things about themselves? How might engaging with your community change how you see yourself?
1: https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels/6b.html
3: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jan/08/disability-rights-warrior-hale-zukas-life