SYMHC Classics: Six Impossible Episodes - Other Ins

This 2020 episode covers direct action demonstrations and protests that have some similarities to the sit-in movement. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 1:16Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 2:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Happy Saturday. I don't think we've done an installment of Six Impossible Episodes as a Saturday classic before. Maybe we have, but I think today is a first. This classic is inspired by a lawsuit that has been filed by 17 states regarding Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This filing is initially focused on the Biden administration's inclusion of gender dysphoria as a protected disability under this act. But the lawsuit also argues that Section 504 itself is unconstitutional. So with today's language, Section 504 begins, quote, "No otherwise qualified individual with a disability in

• 2:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  the United States shall, solely by reason of his or her disability, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance or under any program or activity conducted by any executive agency or by the United States Postal Service." We have talked about Section 504 and how disabled people, supported by a broad coalition of allies, successfully demonstrated for the US government to actually write the regulations needed to implement and enforce this law, four years after it had been passed. That

• 3:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  was in our episode, Six Impossible Episodes: Other Ends. As a note, Judy Hume, who we talked about in this episode, died on March 4, 2023. This episode originally came out February 5, 2020, so enjoy.

• 4:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 4:12Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 4:16Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 4:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  I started talking immediately as I could see that Holly was taking a drink of water.

• 4:24Tracy V. Wilson?

  So not long ago on the podcast, we talked about the sit-in movement in the United States of the 1960s. And today, we're kind of coming back to that theme with an addition of six impossible episodes. For listeners who are new to our show, this is when we take a shorter look at six topics that, for one reason or another, we can't quite tackle as a standalone episode. That can be for all kinds of reasons, including how much information is available and how broad the topic itself is. This time, we are looking at what I'm just calling other ins. So other direct action demonstrations and similar protests that have some similarities to that sit-in movement that we talked about earlier. A couple of today's topics might

• 5:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  have worked as whole episodes, but I really like having them as part of this collection because together, they illustrate a wide variety of ways that these kinds of demonstrations have worked in the United States. They point out some similarities and differences in these movements. So we're keeping them all together today.

• 5:28Holly Frey?

  And our first event took place in Alexandria, Virginia. A lot of articles about it today call it the Alexandria Library Sit-In. But accounts and newspaper reports from the Times described it as a "sit-down" strike. On August 21, 1939, a group of young black men tried to get library cards at the whites-only library on Queen Street in Alexandria, Virginia, which is the Kate Waller Barrett Branch Library today. Their names were William Evans, Otto L. Tucker, Edward Gaddis, Morris Murray, and Clarence Strange. And they were all between the ages of 19 and 22.

• 6:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So they each came into the library, one at a time, and asked Alice Green, who was the assistant librarian on duty, if they could register for a library card. She told each of them no, that the library was for whites only. And then, from there, each of them would pick a book from the stacks and then sit down at a table to read it, or at least to try to read. Later on, some of them gave interviews where they talked about being way too nervous to actually concentrate on what was on the page. So, once one person had gotten a book and sat down, the next person would come in and do the same thing.

• 6:38Holly Frey?

  With five black men sitting at five different tables in the library and refusing to leave, Greene wasn't sure what to do. She sent the library's page, William Adam, to the home of the head librarian, Catherine Scoggan, to tell her what was going on. Scoggan went to City Hall to discuss what was happening with the city planner and the chief of police.

• 6:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Soon, police were on the scene of the library. And a sixth participant in this, who was 14-year-old Bobby Strange, had been tasked with keeping watch over the library and then going to get attorney Samuel Wilbert Tucker, known as SW, from his law office, which was nearby when the police got there.

• 7:16Holly Frey?

  SW Tucker had graduated from Howard University in 1933, studied law on his own, and passed the Virginia bar exam at the age of only 20, a year too young to actually be sworn in. He had arranged the sit-down strike at the library, and his brother Otto was one of the people sitting in. Back in 1927, SW and Otto had been arrested after refusing to give up their seat on a trolley to a white passenger. So, they already had some experience in civil disobedience. SW and a friend had also been denied library cards shortly after the library opened. He was hoping to use that as part of a court case to force the library to integrate. The sit-in was part of that plan as well.

• 7:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  SW Tucker had also gotten a photographer to document the scene. And that photographer captured a picture of the demonstrators being escorted out of the building by police. What you won't see if you look at this photo online is that by the time that happened, a crowd of about 300 angry spectators, along with some other reporters, had also gathered around the building. The demonstrators were charged with disorderly conduct, and Tucker arranged for their release from jail.

• 8:28Holly Frey?

  In terms of Tucker's legal action, the library was taxpayer-funded, and black residents paid taxes but weren't allowed to use it. So, his hope was that the courts would force the library to allow equal access to black residents. But rather than integrate the library, the city of Alexandria rushed through approvals for a new library for Black patrons, the Robert H. Robinson Library, which opened on February 14, 1940.

• 8:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  When S.W. Tucker got a letter inviting him to register for a library card at that branch, he answered with a refusal, insisting that he be issued the card he had already applied for at the library that had already existed. He went on to write, quote, "Continued delay beyond the close of this month in issuing me a card for use at the library on Queen Street will be taken as refusal to do so, whereupon I feel justified in seeking aid of court to enforce my right."

• 9:24Holly Frey?

  Tucker went on to become the lead lawyer for the NAACP in Virginia. During his legal career, he argued before the U.S. Supreme Court several times, including in the attempts to overturn public school segregation in Virginia. Today, an elementary school in Alexandria is named in his honor, and the former Robinson Library is the Alexandria Black History Museum. In October 2019, a judge dismissed the disorderly conduct charges against the young men who sat in, which had never come to trial.

• 9:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  So one of the really interesting things about this sit-in is that it used the same strategy that the NAACP and other civil rights organizations were using really extensively later on. It's not like nobody had ever thought to do this, but he was sort of doing something that would become a really huge part of the movement later, and that was pairing direct action with legal action. The Alexandria sit-in predated the parts that we really think of as the most active parts of the civil rights movement, but this strategy was really similar to a lot of what was going on later on.

• 10:25Holly Frey?

  Next up, we have a relatively early moment in the movement for LGBTQ rights in the U.S. back when it was more commonly known as the "homophile movement." The Mattachine Society was one of the earliest gay rights organizations in the United States. One documented as being older is Chicago Society for Human Rights, which was founded in 1924. We covered that on the show in 2015.

• 10:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Mattachine Society was first founded in Los Angeles in 1951, and then other chapters formed in other cities around the US after that. And in 1966, members of New York City's Mattachine Society challenged regulations that prohibited gay men from being served alcohol in New York's bars.

• 11:07Holly Frey?

  Those regulations came from the New York State Liquor Authority in the form of a requirement that bar patrons had to display, quote, "orderly conduct." In the Liquor Authority's view, homosexuality was inherently disorderly, although the policy didn't specifically mention sexual orientation. Police frequently raided bars that were believed to have a gay clientele, and bars posted signs saying that men had to be facing the bar while drinking. This was part of an overall climate of homophobia, stigmatization, and harassment, and it was not unique to New York. Other states had similar policies, some of which specifically referenced homosexuality.

• 11:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  On April 21, 1966, three Mattachine Society members went to bars in New York City with the hope of being denied service so that then they could file suit and try to get that policy overturned. They included Dick Leish, who was the head of the New York chapter of the Mattachine Society, as well as Craig Rodwell and John Timmons. A fourth man, Randy Wicker, also joined them as they went on. They had informed reporters of what they were doing ahead of time, and they called it a sip-in.

• 12:14Holly Frey?

  This turned out to be a little easier said than done, though. The men's first choice had been a bar that had a sign posted in the window that said, "If you're gay, go away." But as soon as the staff there realized that there were reporters on the premises, they closed down for the day. At their next stop, the men told the bartender that they were homosexual, but that they would not be disorderly, and they asked to be served. And in that case, the bartender served them, which is what happened at their next stop as well.

• 12:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  There are interviews, I think it was with Dick Leish, where he was talking about at this point, they were like, "We've got to get turned down at the next bar, or we're going to have to table this for later because we're going to be, like, too inebriated to make the argument that we're not disorderly." So they finally wound up at a bar called Julius's in Greenwich Village, which they thought would be hypersensitive to their presence there because it had recently been raided by police. The same as before, they sat down at the bar, they told the bartender that they were gay, but they were going to remain orderly, and they said that they wanted to be served. The bartender had already put glasses in front of them and covered them with his hands, saying, "I can't serve you then."

• 13:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  This led to a dramatic photo captured by Fred McDara of The Village Voice with the three men in coats and ties facing the bartender and the bartender covering their glasses. With the help of the ACLU, the men filed legal action against the state liquor board and the bar. New York City's Commission on Human Rights got involved with it as well. So, under the threat of a lawsuit, the liquor board changed the policy. Then in 1967, which was just a few years later, a New York Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the case Kerma Restaurant Corporation versus State Liquor Authority, and that court ruling specifically said that homosexuality was not inherently disorderly. That ruling did not end discrimination at New York's bars, though.

• 14:05Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Stonewall riots started after a police raid on June 28, 1969. That was another two more years after that appeals court ruling had happened. We are going to take a quick sponsor break before we go on to some more actions.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 14:24Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 14:52Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 15:04Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 15:16Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 15:23Speaker 01

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• 16:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 17:44Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 18:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  The Mattachine Society's sit-in, we talked about a moment ago, was inspired by the 1960s civil rights sit-ins that we just covered on the podcast. And that was also true of our next act of protest, which is the fish-ins that took place in the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s and 60s and beyond. But the context for that protest stretches all the way back to the 19th century.

• 18:26Holly Frey?

  Isaac Ingalls Stevens became governor of what was then Washington Territory in 1853. One of his objectives as governor was to secure as much land as possible from the indigenous tribes and nations who were living in the Pacific Northwest. As we discussed in our recent two-parter on the occupation of Alcatraz, he did this through treaties. And these treaties detailed the terms under which the Native nations ceded land to the United States. These treaties ultimately assigned more than 90% of the total land to the United States, with the rest being established as reservation land.

• 19:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  At least 13 tribes and nations were signatories to these treaties, including the Nisqually, the Puyallup, and the Muckleshoot, although the exact number is a little complicated because Stevens treated individual villages as separate tribes when he was negotiating these treaties, under the idea that a smaller group would have less negotiating power.

• 19:22Holly Frey?

  These treaties covered a lot of points in the relationship between the indigenous nations and the United States. But one important point was fishing rights. While there were multiple treaties at work, they all had similar language here. The, quote, "right of taking fish at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations is further secured to said Indians in common with all citizens of the territory."

• 19:45Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, the Native nations, I mean, this has been the case with all of the Native American history that we've talked about on the show. Like, they, a lot of these treaties were heavily skewed in favor of the United States versus the indigenous tribe or nation. In this case, though, all of the nations involved refused to sign the treaties without that point about fishing rights. Because not only was fishing a major source of food, but the fish and the act of fishing also held religious and spiritual significance. And from Stephen's point of view, he was totally willing to make that concession for very pragmatic reasons. Because if the indigenous people did not retain their fishing rights, then the government was going to be obligated to provide them with some other kind of food source.

• 20:28Holly Frey?

  At first, the indigenous nations were able to exercise their rights to fish in the waterways around the Pacific Northwest, using their traditional methods, which included using gill nets, which are like underwater walls made of netting. There just weren't that many non-indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest yet. And at first, those who were there were more interested in other industries, like lumber.

• 20:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  But as the non-indigenous population started to grow, indigenous people started having more trouble exercising those rights. And that also was true as federal policy toward indigenous people went through all of those shifts that we talked about in the occupation of Alcatraz episodes. The state of Washington started to interpret that treaty language as meaning that the indigenous people had fishing rights only on their reservations. And that was in defiance of some federal court rulings, which weren't always totally clear and decisive, but they generally upheld the native people's rights to fish in other waterways as well.

• 21:28Holly Frey?

  These restrictions made it increasingly difficult for indigenous people in the Pacific Northwest to fish. The best runs for salmon and steelhead trout were outside of the reservations' boundaries. On top of that, during the period of allotment, the reservations themselves got smaller. Then, when the federal government implemented its termination policies, which were supposed to get rid of the reservations and make Native people, quote, "subject to the same laws and entitled to the same privileges and responsibilities as are applicable to other citizens of the United States." The state of Washington, and to a lesser extent Oregon, became increasingly focused on enforcing fishing and conservation laws, specifically when violated by Native people, even though those treaties were still in place.

• 22:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, it's like the state laws were contrary to the treaty language, but the treaties had not been abolished in any way. They were still in effect. Running alongside all of this was a perception among predominantly white sport fishers that the Indigenous people were what was to blame for declining populations of salmon and steelhead trout. And this was in defiance of actual data. Between 1958 and 1967, Indigenous people caught 6.5% of the catch in the Pacific Northwest. White sport fishers caught 12.2%. And then, commercial fishing operations took all the rest. More than 80% of the catch was through commercial fishing operations,

• 22:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  not through Indigenous people or sport fishers doing their own thing.

• 23:01Holly Frey?

  I can tell you firsthand that that belief persisted into the 70s, when I lived there as a kid.

• 23:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  That does not surprise me at all.

• 23:08Holly Frey?

  I remember hearing neighbors, adult neighbors, discuss how they wanted to go fishing, but then said very disparaging things about the Native population and how they had ruined it for everyone.

• 23:19Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, we talked in our behind the scenes after the Greensboro Lunch Counter sit-ins episode about how like, we'll be doing research on something and the whole topic is angering, but then there will be one element that just is particularly viscerally angering. And the things that were said about like, the Indigenous people are trying to get something for nothing. Like, I got so angry over and over in this part of it.

• 23:44Holly Frey?

  And eventually, the only safe place for an Indigenous person to fish in the Pacific Northwest was on a reservation. Outside a reservation, Indigenous fishers were being harassed, arrested, and jailed, and having their equipment confiscated by police, including their boats.

• 24:01Holly Frey?

  Plus, outside of the reservations, nets and traps, which were part of traditional indigenous fishing practices, were outlawed.

• 24:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this was still a few years away from the occupation of Alcatraz and the rise of an intertribal movement for indigenous rights that we just discussed back in November. In the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s and early 60s, most tribal leaders were taking a more conciliatory approach to things. The National Congress of American Indians was explicitly not in favor of the direct action methods that the civil rights movement was using, finding them really to be too aggressive and contradictory to indigenous culture. So like, there was a banner hanging from their headquarters at one point that said something along the lines of, like, indigenous people don't demonstrate. Like, they were not in favor of sit-ins or marches or any of those kinds of things at this point as a trend among leadership.

• 24:53Holly Frey?

  But not everyone agreed. And in 1964, the survival of the American Indian Association, SAIA, was established with a focus on direct action and civil disobedience. One of the organization's demonstrations was a series of fish-ins around the Pacific Northwest. They were not the first people to do this. For example, Robert Satyacum was arrested while fishing in 1954, and he hoped that his arrest would lead to a court ruling that would clarify the indigenous nation's treaty rights. Unfortunately, his criminal record went well beyond this act of civil disobedience. That whole story is outside the scope of this episode.

• 25:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  So these fish-ins arranged by the SAIA started on February 27 of 1964, and they continued well into the 1970s, sometimes as individual fishing events and sometimes as prolonged demonstrations at established encampments with fishing going on throughout that whole time. The demonstrators had legal and strategic advice from Jack Tanner, who was the director of the Tacoma, Washington, chapter of the NAACP. They also had the attention of celebrity supporters, including Marlon Brando, who was arrested at a fish-in on March 2 of 1964, but wasn't ultimately charged with a crime.

• 26:08Holly Frey?

  These fish-ins attracted a lot of criticism. At least at first, many indigenous leaders disagreed with the strategy entirely, preferring to focus on compromise. Jack Tanner's colleagues in the civil rights movement criticized his involvement, saying it was taking his focus away from Black Americans. The Washington State Sportsman's Club, which was a lobbying organization that had a lot of influence over the state game department, described Native people as trying to flaunt the rules and get special privileges. On December 6, 1964, they issued a statement encouraging the state to get rid of all fishing regulations, quote, "to allow such waters to become barren until such time as the Congress

• 26:49Holly Frey?

  of the United States or the courts of our land sets up enforceable regulations that will allow the state to carry on a reasonable fisheries management program." This was kind of a burn-it-all-down mentality. Overall, the white media portrayed the Indigenous protesters as backward and lawless.

• 27:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  So, nonviolence was a core part of the strategy for the civil rights movement in the United States for a lot of the time, but that wasn't really entirely the case in the fishing movement. The demonstrators were repeatedly targeted by game wardens and by police, including being beaten with clubs and sprayed with tear gas. On December 7, police making an arrest rammed demonstrators' canoe with their boat, which dumped the demonstrators into the water. It is not entirely clear whether that was an accident or intentional. At some encampments, Native people carried firearms to defend themselves, and at others, they fought back with things like stones and paddles.

• 27:47Tracy V. Wilson?

  After a brawl on October 13 of 1964, the ACLU agreed to defend some of the demonstrators. At first, the ACLU really focused on people who had been charged with interfering with police, and then they later expanded it to include defending people who were arrested for fishing.

• 28:03Holly Frey?

  As was the case with the occupation of Alcatraz, this turned into an intertribal movement, with supporters from other Native nations traveling to the Pacific Northwest, from other parts of North America, to support the demonstrators. The movement also gradually gained more support among non-Indigenous people, including members of the American Friends Services Committee and the Black Panther Party. In September of 1968, a massive protest was planned that pulled together all these populations. It was supposed to involve five days of fishing, but it went on for more than 40.

• 28:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  This movement continued into the 1970s. On June 17th of 1970, the Washington State Sportsman's Club, which was still insisting that indigenous people were trying to get undeserved special privileges at the expensive white sport fishers, filed a lawsuit. But the judge did not find in their favor. The judge found in favor of the indigenous nations granting a 15-day window in which net fishing would be allowed in the Puyallup River. By that point, more tribal leadership had started to support these protests.

• 29:09Holly Frey?

  On February 28th, 1971, the SAIA asked the US Attorney General to file suit against the state of Washington for violating the treaties that the Native nations had signed all the way back in the 19th century. Judge George Bolt issued his decision on February 12th, 1974. This came to be known as the Bolt Decision, and it was one of a series of court cases that were all part of this. It ruled that the Native tribes that were party to those treaties were entitled to 50% of the available catch, including fishing outside their reservations.

• 29:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  That was way better than the 6.5% that they'd actually been fishing, according to that earlier data. This was regarded as a huge win for the indigenous people. But of course, it did not fix everything. Non-indigenous fishers were outraged and tried to stage their own fish-ins as like a counter-demonstration. The ruling also didn't apply to landless indigenous nations or ones that had not been party to those earlier treaties, and that included the Duamish, Chinook, and Snohomish peoples. Native nations in the Pacific Northwest are also still reliant on fishing for food, and the populations of those fish has continued to decline through the effects of commercial fishing,

• 30:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  habitat loss, increasing ocean temperatures, all kinds of other factors.

• 30:32Holly Frey?

  Back in 2017, we did an episode on Ed Roberts and the independent living movement, which evolved in Berkeley, California in the 1960s and 70s. Before this point, a lot of disability advocacy had really been focused on parents and caregivers of disabled people rather than on disabled people's own self-advocacy. The independent living movement really shifted that focus more towards self-determination and self-advocacy.

• 30:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  So this kind of language about independence has been evolving in more recent years to include the idea of interdependence, because really, all of us depend on other people in some ways. And when it comes to disability, a lot of times, that interdependence is really stigmatized. Obviously, that's a brief sum up, not the entirety of the philosophy at this point. But in terms of the 1960s and 70s, this move toward independence and away from pity and paternalism was just huge.

• 31:28Holly Frey?

  One of the moments that came up in that episode is the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act in 1973, and the sit-in that followed it. But we didn't really spend much time on that at all. So, Section 504 was the first federal law regarding civil rights for people with disabilities. It read, quote, "No otherwise qualified handicapped individual in the United States shall solely on the basis of his handicap be excluded from the participation, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

• 32:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  So that sounds pretty great. But this law was just the starting point. Like, how do you define, to use the language of the law, what handicapped means? What did or didn't classify as discrimination? Federal agencies needed to create their own regulations regarding how Section 504 would actually be implemented and enforced. And this applied to every federal agency. But the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, or H-E-W, I don't know if maybe people say that Hugh, that was selected as the lead agency. They were to set their regulations first, and then the other agencies would follow.

• 32:44Holly Frey?

  But between 1973 and 1977,

• 32:48Holly Frey?

  Nothing happened. Attorneys from the Office for Civil Rights drafted regulations and sent them to H E W. But rather than publishing them for public comment, the department sent them to Congress, and then Congress sent them back. It went on for so long that in the meantime, President Richard Nixon, who had signed it into law, was impeached, and then his successor Gerald Ford had been replaced by Jimmy Carter.

• 33:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  By that point, disability rights activists were demanding for the regulations that the Office for Civil Rights had drafted be put into place. Instead, the Carter administration set up a task force to study and revise them, and that task force did not include any disabled members.

• 33:28Holly Frey?

  It became clear that this study and revision process was going to weaken the proposed regulations that the Office for Civil Rights had recommended back in 1973. So the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities decided to take action. They gave the H E W an ultimatum. Either H E W Secretary Joseph Calafano would sign the regulations as written by April 4, 1977, or activists would start sitting in at H E W offices on April 5.

• 33:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  April 4 came and went, and on April 5, demonstrators took over the federal buildings that housed eight different regional offices. Most of these sit-ins lasted for a day or two, but in San Francisco, more than 100 people sat in for 26 days.

• 34:13Holly Frey?

  Unlike some of the other sit-ins that we've talked about, they didn't show up during business hours and leave when H E W closed for the day. Activists took over the building and stayed, which was really possible thanks to the involvement of lots of other organizations, including civil rights and gay rights groups, church organizations, and politicians who were on the demonstrators' side. In San Francisco, Glide Memorial Church and the Black Panther Party provided meals.

• 34:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  Over the course of the sit-in in San Francisco, conditions in the building became increasingly difficult. Supporters had donated things like mattresses and a shower attachment that could be used with a sink faucet, but people had to sleep in shifts because there were not enough sleeping spaces. The building's restrooms overall were not accessible. Nobody had any privacy. And in some cases, it wasn't just uncomfortable, it was potentially life-threatening. For example, people who used catheters or ventilators didn't necessarily have caregivers or other people on hand who knew how to operate and care for these devices.

• 35:16Holly Frey?

  Eventually, a delegation from the San Francisco sit-in was selected to travel to Washington DC to meet with legislators. People donated funds for plane tickets for people who could travel by air. The International Association of Machinists rented a moving truck with a lift and used it to transport people who used wheelchairs. Once in Washington, they met with senators to go over the original regulations, point by point, answering senators' objections one by one.

• 35:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  I cannot imagine how uncomfortable this trip was, especially for the people who were literally in a moving van.

• 35:50Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like, my mom uses a wheelchair that she can't really transfer out of to get into a vehicle. So like, there's a special vehicle with a ramp and tie-downs for her chair. Like, and that is not a comfortable trip a lot of the time. This was literally a moving van with no windows, driving people across the country.

• 36:10Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 36:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Secretary Calafano finally signed these regulations on April 28th of 1977. They included general provisions, along with regulations on employment practices, program accessibility, primary and secondary education, post-secondary education, health, welfare, and social services, and government procedures.

• 36:31Holly Frey?

  Overall, this was a major success for the disability rights movement. But at the same time, enforcement was a huge issue. Opponents argued that the work and expense involved made the regulations impractical or impossible to implement. The regulations also served as a template for the Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990. But actually implementing that has been a struggle as well, even now, decades later.

• 36:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, I remember there being headlines, I feel like it was late last year, about, maybe we don't need to implement this because it's just too expensive. And people were like, you have had 30 years. I have feelings about this.

• 37:11Holly Frey?

  I do, too.

• 37:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  We should also note that, as is the case with any group, disabled people are not a monolith, and accessibility looks really different for different disabilities. Different parts of the community have different perspectives, depending on all kinds of issues. During the 504 sit-in, for example, some members of the deaf community felt like they were excluded. And the deaf community also thought that some of the regulations, like a requirement for educating disabled children in classrooms with their non-disabled peers whenever possible, could threaten deaf culture.

• 37:44Holly Frey?

  That said, though, beyond the regulations, activists who were part of these sit-ins have also talked about their role in shifting non-disabled people's perceptions of disability. In the words of Judith Hume, who was part of the sit-in and is an international disability rights advocate today, quote, "Through the sit-in, we turned ourselves from being oppressed individuals into being empowered people. We demonstrated to the entire nation that disabled people could take control over our own lives and take leadership in the struggle for equality." She went on to say, quote, "We overcame years of parochialism."

• 38:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  If you're curious, there was an episode of Drunk History on this that cast disabled people in the roles of all the 504 protesters, which shouldn't sound like some kind of accomplishment, but it is.

• 38:33Holly Frey?

  Sadly, yes.

• 38:34Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sadly, yes.

• 38:35Holly Frey?

  There was a lot in this middle act of the show, so we're gonna take a quick sponsor break.

• 39:15Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 40:00Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 40:59Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 41:27Speaker 05

  Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, "The Gales of November: A Chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 Shipwreck." "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. "The Gales of November, now in paperback."

• 42:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  To return to our six impossible episodes. The idea of respectability has come up in a lot of our episodes on the civil rights movement in the United States. It came up in our recent episode on the Greensboro sit-ins and the other sit-ins. It's come up in today's shows so far, even when we haven't called it out specifically. A lot of these demonstrations that we have talked about have involved people who took a lot of care, to always be very polite and very well dressed. And this has been a strategy in a lot of social movements, but it's definitely not the only strategy, which is really illustrated by what we're about to talk about.

• 42:37Holly Frey?

  The first official reporting of what came to be known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome came in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which is a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. It described an unusual outbreak of pneumocystis pneumonia in five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles, and that was on June 5th, 1981.

• 42:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  In just five years following that, more than 28,000 cases of AIDS were reported in the United States, and more than 24,500 people had died by the end of 1986. There was no approved treatment for HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS in the United States. The U.S. federal government had been incredibly slow to respond, and at that point, President Ronald Reagan had not made any public statements on the crisis at all. A really lengthy drug approval process also meant that people with HIV were dying while they waited for access to drugs that were already extending people's lives in other countries.

• 43:37Holly Frey?

  People who were affected by this, who had either contracted HIV or who knew and loved people who did, were outraged. This was particularly true among gay men who were disproportionately affected. In response to all of this, Larry Kramer and other activists formed the AIDS Coalition to unleash power, or ACT UP, on March 12, 1987, in New York City. Its purpose was to use direct action to force the government, drug companies, public health agencies, insurance companies, everyone involved in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV and AIDS to get moving immediately.

• 44:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  So ACT UP still exists today and is still directly involved in AIDS advocacy because this is not over. Throughout its existence, the organization has become known for demonstrations that are angry and aggressive and militant and just viscerally affecting. As one example, ACT UP has organized marches to Washington DC in which people have scattered the ashes of loved ones who died from AIDS-related diseases on the White House lawn. Some who have participated in these marches have said that if that is not enough to prompt the government to act, that they would start using bodies.

• 44:48Holly Frey?

  One of ACT UP's tactics has been the die-in, in which demonstrators lie down unmoving, usually in a public space, sometimes in roadways blocking traffic. This was part of ACT UP's very first protest on March 24, 1987, when 17 people lay down in the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street in New York City, outside Trinity Church.

• 45:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  At this demonstration, the protesters had a very clear set of demands that they had written up ahead of time. They wanted the FDA to immediately release potentially lifesaving drugs, to eliminate double-blind studies in which HIV-positive patients were given placebos, and to make these drugs affordable. They also demanded a massive public education campaign, protections against discrimination for people who were being treated for AIDS, and, quote, "immediate establishment of a coordinated, comprehensive, and compassionate national policy on AIDS."

• 45:42Holly Frey?

  Okay. When it comes to those drug standards, in general, people think of controlled studies and double-blind trials as helpful in making sure that the drugs that make it to market are safe and effective. We talked about some of that in our two-part episode on thalidomide. But in the early 1980s, the FDA approval process took up to nine years. That was much longer than people lived after being diagnosed with HIV, especially before the test for the disease was approved in 1985. Since there had been very little public education on the disease, most people were diagnosed after contracting an opportunistic infection, at which point they just did not have long to live.

• 46:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, people like, people couldn't wait that long. And then also the idea that somebody could be in a study, like, somebody who was HIV positive could be in a study where they would be given a placebo. Like, they didn't have time to wait until that study was over to find out whether they could get the actual drug or not.

• 46:37Holly Frey?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Tracy V. Wilson?

  So on September 14th, 1989, ACT UP held a rally and die-in outside of the New York Stock Exchange to protest pharmaceutical company Burroughs Welcome, which manufactured AZT, which by that point was the only drug in the United States that was approved to treat HIV. Demonstrators had also made their way into the building and dropped a banner from a balcony that said, "Sell Welcome." So, one of the things they were protesting was how expensive Burroughs Welcome had made AZT. So, not long after the demonstration, they lowered the price for a year of AZT treatment, which had originally been $10,000 per patient per year, to $6,400. ACT UP's very aggressive advocacy on this

• 47:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  has often been credited with prompting the change, although Burroughs Welcome has maintained that they had already been planning to do it.

• 47:27Holly Frey?

  Because of their tactics and the stigma surrounding both homosexuality and AIDS, ACT UP's actions have been inherently controversial. One particular die-in was particularly divisive. In December of 1989, ACT UP and Women's Health Action Mobilization demonstrated inside St. Patrick's Cathedral during high mass. They were both there to protest John Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, who was influential in city politics and who opposed things like sex education, abortion access, AIDS education, and condom distribution.

• 48:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, a lot of that also applied to the Catholic Church in general. So, this demonstration included a die-in in the cathedral's aisles. More than 40 people were arrested, with some of the demonstrators being carried out of the cathedral on stretchers. ACT UP had initially intended this demonstration to be somewhat quiet, to sort of go into the church, have their die-in in the aisles, without otherwise causing a lot of disruption. But as it developed, Michael Petrelli loudly blew a whistle and shouted, "You're killing us." And that tipped the protest into something that became a lot more chaotic.

• 48:37Holly Frey?

  People were offended not only at the disruption of the church services, but also because one of the demonstrators, Thomas Keen, threw a host wafer from the communion service on the floor. He later said that he did not realize how offensive that would be to Catholics who believed that the communion host was the body of Christ. Even within ACT UP, some people began to argue that the tone of these demonstrations was turning off potential supporters.

• 49:02Tracy V. Wilson?

  So overall, these demonstrations have been credited with like getting more effective AIDS policy happening more quickly. And as we said earlier, ACT UP is still using die-ins as a protest tool like today. On October 4th of 2013, there was a die-in at the New York Public Library after they put up an exhibit titled "Why We Fight: Remembering AIDS Activism." One of ACT UP's slogans at that event was "AIDS is not history," because this idea that we were remembering activism sort of suggests that we are done with it now, and we're not. Another took place on January 1st of 2014 after the inauguration of New York City Mayor

• 49:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  Bill de Blasio, because at that point, ACT UP had been trying to meet with him about his AIDS platform for months without success. ACT UP repeated the "AIDS is not history" theme at the Whitney Museum in 2018 after the museum arranged a retrospective of the work of David Voinarovic, who was an ACT UP member before his death in 1992. ACT UP again felt that the Whitney's presentation made it seem as though the AIDS epidemic was in the past rather than being a critical current issue.

• 50:15Holly Frey?

  Okay, so the last one, the Teach-In Movement during the Vietnam War. This one is a little bit different. It wasn't exactly a direct action meant to force the US government to end its military involvement in Vietnam. Instead, it was an educational tool that inspired people to take on direct actions of their own.

• 50:33Tracy V. Wilson?

  So for context, during the 1964 presidential election, part of Lyndon Baines Johnson's campaign was a peace platform. So people thought he was going to end American involvement in Vietnam. But on February 13th of 1965, which was less than a month after being inaugurated, Johnson authorized a bombing campaign that was known as Operation Rolling Thunder, as well as combat troop deployments to Vietnam. And there had been American personnel in Vietnam before that, but not in a combat capacity. People who had voted for him, thinking that he was going to end American involvement in the war, felt really betrayed.

• 51:09Holly Frey?

  That spring, the faculty committee to stop the war in Vietnam at the University of Michigan was discussing ways to demonstrate against the war and against what they saw as the militarization of their academic disciplines. As one example, social scientists had been recruited to work on a military-funded counterinsurgency program called Project Camelot, which was meant to study cultures primarily in Latin America. And of course, people in hard science fields had seen the development of weapons like the atomic bomb. Academics had also seen their work branded as a communist threat during the Cold War, with accusations that they were indoctrinating students against the United States. There was a lot going on with the education community.

• 51:54Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, and at first, these particular professors and other educators were focused on a walkout in which classes would be canceled and faculty would instead give anti-war lectures somewhere off campus. But people raised some concerns about whether that was in the best interests of students and whether people would perceive it as the professors not being committed to their work. In a staff meeting on March 17th, after a lot of debate about this whole walkout and strike idea, anthropologist Marshall Silens said, "I've got it. They say we're neglecting our responsibilities as teachers. Let's show them how responsible we feel. Instead of teaching out, we will teach in all night."

• 52:35Holly Frey?

  This led to the first teach-in, held from 8:00 PM on March 24th, 1965, until 8:00 AM the following morning. It was held in Angel Hall Auditorium, although the crowd was so large that it spilled out to other parts of the campus, including the library steps. More than 2,000 people attended, with about 500 still there when the last lecture started.

• 52:58Holly Frey?

  Women enrolled at the university had a curfew at the time, but it was waived so that they could attend. In addition to the faculty involvement, Students for a Democratic Society were also part of the event.

• 53:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  This event included lectures and discussions that were meant to educate attendees on things like the military industrial complex and Cold War rhetoric and US foreign policy, the effects of weapons like napalm and phosphorus bombs. There were at least two different bomb threats during the event, with police clearing the building after one of them. And counter demonstrators were inside and outside the building shouting pro-war slogans like "Better Dead Than Red."

• 53:37Holly Frey?

  Two days later, another teach-in was held at Columbia University in New York City. More teach-ins followed, and on April 17, 1965, an inter-university committee for a public hearing on Vietnam was established. Participating schools included the University of Chicago, MIT, University of Wisconsin, Wayne State University, and Washington University in St. Louis.

• 54:01Tracy V. Wilson?

  The committee published a pamphlet called "The Meaning of the National Teach-In." It began, quote, "The Teach-Ins were born in protest against United States policy in Vietnam. However, they are vehicles for a larger purpose. They are a means of discussion and debate without which democracy lacks significance."

• 54:19Holly Frey?

  On May 15, that National Teach-In was held in Washington DC. This was an all-day event that was also broadcast on more than 200 radio stations. It included discussions about US policies and context of the war, along with debates between supporters and opponents of US policy toward Vietnam. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy was supposed to be at the National Teach-In, but he canceled at the last minute for a trip to the Dominican Republic that was described as urgent.

• 54:49Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, of course, there were people who wondered if that was a convenient excuse or an actual urgency. On May 21 and 22, the largest teach-in in this movement was held at the University of California at Berkeley with 30,000 people in attendance.

• 55:03Holly Frey?

  The committee had followed up with McGeorge Bundy repeatedly after his cancellation at the national teach-in. The committee's hope was that they would schedule some kind of opportunity for the debate and discussion that he was supposed to have been a part of, and that did finally happen with a televised event in July.

• 55:20Tracy V. Wilson?

  The teach-in movement didn't really last beyond 1965. Over time, people started to become concerned that it had shifted from being an explicitly anti-war movement about educating people to one that was more focused on a debate between two sides. As the anti-war movement became more radical, activists started seeing the teach-ins as too conservative.

• 55:42Holly Frey?

  At the same time, the teach-in movement is marked as a critical moment in the early anti-Vietnam war movement. Carl Oglesby of Students for a Democratic Society called it "a stroke of genius" that, quote, "put the debate on the map for the whole academic community. And you could not be an intellectual after those teach-ins and not think a lot and express yourself and defend your ideas about Vietnam." According to Marshall Salins, it also shifted some of the counterculture movement from one that was ideologically pacifist and pro-civil rights to one that was overtly political and more likely to take direct action.

• 56:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  I think this is, I mean, there's so much discussion of the anti-war movement during Vietnam, which could be really divisive, and I don't know if "could be" was even a strong enough word. Like, it was really divisive and became really militant in a lot of places. And so this, to me, feels like this kind of nice precursor that was about basically educating people about all of the context, like, all the context for what was happening in Vietnam, all the context for what it could mean in, like, the world of global history, all of that, that then, like, went on to inspire people to take direct action.

• 57:03Tracy V. Wilson?

  Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email address is [email protected]. And you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 57:28Speaker 01

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• 57:55Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 58:28Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio and partnership with Argenx, listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 59:02Speaker 05

  Livrite, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. "Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book," writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.

• 59:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.