‘We want to ride’: the 1978 protest that sparked the disability rights movement

**Ayesha Rascoe** (0:00)
I'm Ayesha Rascoe, this is The Sunday Story from Up First.
Let's go back in time to this exact day 36 years ago. It's when President George HW. Bush picked up his pen and signed the landmark piece of legislation.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:16)
And welcome to every one of you out there in this splendid scene of hope spread across the south lawn of the White House.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (0:25)
The legislation was the Americans with Disabilities Act, an immense civil rights law. Disabled people could no longer be excluded from jobs, public transit, restaurants, stores and hotels.
As he put his name on the law, President Bush thanked the biggest stakeholders, who were perhaps the loudest in advocating for the bill, the tens of millions of Americans with disabilities.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:53)
And to all of you, I just want to say your triumph is that your bill will now be law.
And that this day belongs to you. And on behalf of our nation, thank you very, very much.

**Ayesha Rascoe** (1:06)
One major act of inclusion the law provided involved independence. The ADA opened the door to Americans with disabilities to live and receive care in their own homes, to live within their community, rather than in a nursing home or institution. It's a hard-fought right gained after years of activism.
Today, on The Sunday Story, NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Stephanie Wolf of Colorado Public Radio are going to share their reporting on this bedrock of disability rights in the US. We'll be right back.

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**Ayesha Rascoe** (2:53)
We're back with The Sunday Story and an episode about the disability rights movement in America. Now, I'm going to hand it over to NPR's Joseph Shapiro and Colorado Public Radio's Stephanie Wolf.

**Joseph Shapiro** (3:06)
I was on the south lawn of the White House 36 years ago today as a reporter to cover the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
People came from all over the country with every kind of disability. It was a celebration.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:20)
Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down. God bless you all.

**Joseph Shapiro** (3:29)
I've covered the disability rights movement for decades now. The ADA and all those protections won by the disability community, they're all tied to this right for independent living. That's the idea that disabled people want to live the same lives as everyone else, to go to school, to get jobs, to live with family and friends, to be part of their community. They didn't want to live in institutions and nursing homes where, before the ADA, people often lived if they needed daily medical and personal care.
Independent living is about getting that care in their own homes.

**Stephanie Wolf** (4:05)
And that's why we want to start our story by telling you about Nikki Bishop. Bishop has a neuromuscular condition called spinal muscular atrophy type 2

**Nikki Bishop** (4:15)
I was diagnosed when I was about five years old. And basically, the person just gets progressively weaker as they age.

**Stephanie Wolf** (4:22)
Bishop's 39 She was just a kid when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law.
So she grew up in a world where so much more was possible for her as a person with significant disabilities. She has a full life now. She's a licensed clinical social worker in the Denver area and a disability advocate. I've run into her at the Colorado State Capitol before, as she lobbied in support of different disability rights bills.

**Nikki Bishop** (4:48)
So I could walk until I was about nine years old, but always had sort of struggle walking. And then just progressively got weaker as I aged to the point where I have really limited upper mobility, cannot walk at all.