In Memory of Judy Heumann (1947 – 2023)

Center for Independent Living Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund DREDF In Memoriam

There’s a larger-than-life photo of Judy Heumann in the rotunda of the Ed Roberts Campus in Berkeley, California, where DREDF’s office is located. We have rolled or walked past her image thousands of times, but the photo never just blends into the background—like Judy, it always draws our attention.

Photo mural from the 1977 504 Sit-in above a wheelchair ramp at the ED Roberts Campus. Photos of Judy Heumann speaking into a microphone, a white woman wheelchair user holding a sign stating, BACK DOWN ON AFFIRMATIVE CTION. YOU MIGHT BREAK YOUR NECK. SIGN 504. Another white woman holding a sign stating, ACCESS TO WORK, and a Black man with a sign reading, NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS. SIGN 504. Bits of more mural photos of other people to the right

The avalanche of tributes and shared memories of Judy since her passing on Saturday, March 4, 2023, is a testament to the depth and breadth of her love for disabled people around the world—we were her family, and we felt that. She made sure we knew our value and our power, and that we knew that we could collectively build an inclusive world.

Judy was one of DREDF’s board members, a title that does not do justice to what she meant to us and did for us. She worked at the Berkeley Center for Independent Living (CIL) when it started the Disability Law Resource Center (DLRC), which became DREDF in 1979. She was among the group of disabled people who understood disability as a social issue, how ableism shows up as discrimination, and the need for disability civil rights.

Disability Law Resource Center
Center for Independent Living © 1979

Front Row (L – R): Bob Funk, Susan Shapiro, Judy Heumann, Greg Saunders, Kitty Cone, Mary Lou Breslin, Hale Zukas, Glen Vinton. Middle Row (L – R): Linda Gill, Shirley Nakao, Jan Besson, Unidentified person, Arlene Mayerson, Unidentified person with medallion, Julie Landau, unidentified person, Gary Gill -stripes, cane, Lloyd Burton. Back Row (L – R): Unidentified person in Plaid Shirt, Alexandra Enders, Unidentified person, Olin Fortney, Vincent Creek, Melba Johnson, Paul Silver, Guy Guber.

Judy’s impact is vast. Each action she took built on the one before it. In her early life, she learned perseverance and patience from witnessing her mother’s ongoing advocacy to have her go to school with her non-disabled peers. Judy studied from home and attended segregated schools for disabled students for fourteen years before she entered Sheepshead Bay High School in ninth grade. Those years of segregation sparked her thinking about disability and identity. She wrote in her memoir, Being Heumann, an Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, “We were learning that despite what society might be telling us, we all had something to contribute.” She also recognized that she and her disabled friends were living and learning about what we now refer to as “disability culture.”

From her summer counselor gig at Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled youth and the subject of the award-winning documentary, Crip Camp, her lawsuit against the City of New York for refusing to grant her a license to teach because she used a wheelchair, founding Disabled in Action, co-leading the 1977 Section 504 Sit-ins, heading the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (an appointment made by President Clinton), being appointed by President Obama as the first Special Advisor on International Disability Rights for the U.S. State Department, to hosting The Heumann Perspective podcast, everything has been about her disabled siblings around the world.

Our sadness is matched with the knowledge that her legacy lives on in the law, and the many, many advocates she mentored.

Thank you, Judy. We love you. We will never forget you.

More tributes and articles about Judy