Brad Lomax and the Americans With Disabilities Act
02-16-2022
By Derrick Dawson, MDIV Student
The Americans with Disabilities act of 1990, also known as ADA, was the United States Government's first step toward addressing the needs of U.S. citizens living with disabilities. Before the ADA, the lack of accessibility for disabled people created immovable barriers that made the lives of the disabled unbearable. They often led lives of profound isolation and loneliness, often without the means to do productive work, go to school or participate in social activities. They were often locked away, hidden from sight, ridiculed, and blamed for their condition. There was no internet, Facebook, Zoom, or other technology allowing disabled people to connect or participate in life outside of their homes or institutions. It’s difficult to imagine the impact of the ADA.
As a disabled person, I wasn’t just surprised when I heard about Brad Lomax. I was surprised and angry. Bradley Clyde Lomax (1950-1984) was a member of the Black Panther Party who began using a wheelchair after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis soon after graduating from high school in Philadelphia in 1968. Lomax helped found the Washington, D.C. chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1969, and in 1972 helped to organize the African Liberation Day demonstration on the National Mall. Lomax’s brother lived in Oakland, California, birthplace, and home of the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, during the height of the Civil Rights movement, and Lomax moved to Oakland in 1973 to be a part of that movement.
Lomax became involved in the disability rights movement after he landed in Oakland and found public transportation difficult and humiliating to navigate. Boarding a public bus required Lomax’s brother to lift him from his wheelchair, carry him onto the bus, then go back to get the wheelchair. In Berkeley, California, near Oakland, the Center for Independent Living (CIL), run and controlled by people with disabilities, offered disability-peer support and mentoring for disabled people. Lomax engineered the opening of a branch of CIL in East Oakland, which operated in conjunction with the Black Panther Party.
Disabled people like Lomax were invisible to me. Invisible might be a little too strong. I saw them – perhaps with pity or fascination. Maybe it was an awkward desire to try to help them, individually, in some way.
The disability rights movement, led by Judy Heumann and others, had coalesced into a broad, national disability coalition called the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD). Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which essentially said that no program receiving federal funds could discriminate against a person with a disability, had been signed into law in 1973. However, the passing of the law was ineffective because it did not define who was disabled, nor did it clearly state what constituted discrimination. Fearing the law’s potential cost, hospitals, corporations, and other entities fought to make sure the law would not be effective. For several years, no regulations were published.
ACCD was formed to push the regulations. ACCD planned protests and sit-ins at government buildings across the country, including the federal building in San Francisco. All of them failed except the one in San Francisco. They failed largely because disabled protestors could not physically endure the sit-ins for extended periods. There were no ventilators, food, water, personal assistants, etc. The San Francisco protestors endured for 28 days, forcing the signing of the regulations. The effort was successful because it included people with a wide diversity of disabilities from different racial, social, and economic backgrounds – including disabled children, Glide Memorial Church, the Bay Area’s gay and lesbian communities, and other groups. Local politicians provided mattresses and water hoses for showers.
Brad Lomax was among the protestors. When the protestors ran out of food, Lomax arranged for the Black Panthers to provide the protestors meals for the duration of the sit-in. The San Francisco movement was intentional in drawing parallels to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, including borrowing freedom songs from that earlier movement.
The Section 504 regulations established the operational principles that would become the legal basis for the ADA, which became law ten years after the San Francisco sit-in. After the ADA became law, disabled people were imbued with a new sense of pride, strength, community, and confidence. For the first time, they understood that their isolation and segregation stemmed from societal, institutional, and systemic policy, not from some personal defects on their part. The isolation was not merely their problem to solve. Their experiences with segregation and discrimination were not just their problems. We should know the history of the movement of disabled people who forced the creation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and we should know the role of Bradley Clyde Lomax, a member of the Black Panther Party.
Photo by Tingey injury-law-firm on Unsplash
