12/20/2025
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Judy Heumann -- the renowned activist known as the “mother of the disability rights movement" -- was born on this day in 1947. Heumann, who used a wheelchair for mobility after surviving polio at the age of 18 months, helped lead the fight to establish the world's first comprehensive civil rights law protecting the rights of people with disabilities: the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). As she once observed, “when other people see you as a third-class citizen, the first thing you need is a belief in yourself and the knowledge that you have rights. The next thing you need is a group of friends to fight back with.”
Pictured here as TIME's Women of the Year for 1977, Heumann was at the center of multiple battles for civil rights for people with disabilities, most famously the 504 Sit-In. Organized by Heumann, Kitty Cone, and Mary Jane Owen, over 150 other activists occupied the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare for 25 days in 1977 demanding the implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, one of the first federal disability rights laws. The 504 Sit-In remains the longest sit-in ever at a U.S. federal building.
Equally importantly, Heumann helped change the narrative about disability, showing that the true burden of disabilities is how others respond to it: "Disability only becomes a tragedy when society fails to provide the things we need to lead our lives — job opportunities or barrier-free buildings, for example," she once said. "It is not a tragedy to me that I'm living in a wheelchair."
In the days before the ADA, Heumann was refused admission to public school because she was a "fire hazard" and offered two hours a week of in-home instruction instead. In 1970, she took the New York Department of Education to court after they refused to give her a teacher's license, citing their belief that she would not be able to evacuate her classroom in an emergency.
After the passage of the ADA in 1990, Heumann served as the U.S. assistant secretary of education, and took her advocacy global, traveling to more than 30 countries as they passed their own disability rights legislation. Until her last days, she kept up her fight for equality, noting how much progress still needs to be made. "Change never happens at the pace we think it should," she once wrote. "Gradually, excruciatingly slowly, things start to happen, and then suddenly, seemingly out of the blue, something will tip."
Her incredible story is told in a captivating picture book biography "Fighting for YES! The Story of Disability Rights Activist Judith Heumann" for ages 6 to 9 at https://www.amightygirl.com/fighting-for-yes
Judith Heumann was also the author of a powerful memoir for adult readers, "Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist" at https://www.amightygirl.com/being-heumann
Her memoir was adapted into a young readers edition, "Rolling Warrior: The Incredible, Sometimes Awkward, True Story of a Girl on Wheels Who Helped Spark a Revolution" for ages 10 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/rolling-warrior
For more books for children and teens starring Mighty Girls with disabilities of all varieties, visit our blog post "Many Ways To Be Mighty: 35 Books Starring Mighty Girls with Disabilities" at https://www.amightygirl.com/blog?p=12992
