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Becoming the Rolling Quads: Disability Politics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 October 2018

Scot Danforth
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Abstract

Historical analyses of 1960s university campus activism have focused on activities related to the civil rights movement, Free Speech Movement, and opposition to the Vietnam War. This study supplements the historiography of civil disobedience and political activity on college campuses during that tumultuous era with an account of the initiation of the disability rights movement with the Rolling Quads, a group of disabled student activists at the University of California, Berkeley. This small group, with little political experience and limited connections to campus and community activists, organized to combat the paternalistic managerial practices of the university and the California Department of Rehabilitation. Drawing from the philosophy and strategies of the seething political culture of 1969 Berkeley, the Rolling Quads formed an activist cell that expanded within less than a decade into the most influential disability rights organization in the country.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 58 , Issue 4 , November 2018 , pp. 506 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © History of Education Society 2018 

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References

1 Henry Bruyn, interview by Susan O'Hara, Dec. 1, 1999, transcript, Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement Oral History Series, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (hereafter cited as DRILM), 9.

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33 The second-year project evaluation contained summaries of the total DOR expenditures for each of the eighteen clients and projected state welfare savings based on expected future salaries in the students’ expected fields of professional employment. See Savino, Michael T. and Belchick, Gerald D., Vocational Rehabilitation of the Severely Disabled in a University Setting, Second Year Report (Sacramento: California State Department of Rehabilitation, 1970), 23–27Google Scholar. See also Lucile Withington, interview by Sharon Bonney, transcript, March 23, 1998, DRILM.

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40 A year later, in fall quarter 1969, Billy Charles Barner was the first African American to be housed in the Cowell residence program. Barner, interview.

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56 Willsmore, interview. The letters include Rolling Quads to Rod Carter, Sept. 1969; Larry Biscamp to Rod Carter, Sept. 18, 1969; Cathrine Caulfield to Rod Carter, Oct. 9, 1969; James Donald to Rod Carter, Oct. 8, 1969; John Hessler to Rod Carter, Sept. 21, 1969; Herbert R. Willsmore to Rod Carter, Sept. 19, 1969; Larry Langdon to Rod Carter, Sept. 19, 1969; Donald Lorence to Rod Carter, Sept. 17, 1969; and Ed Roberts to Rod Carter, Sept. 1969. All are located in box 1, DSPR.

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70 “Students Accuse State Worker.”

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