SYMHC Classics: Six Impossible Episodes - Other Ins

00:00:02
Speaker 1: 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 seventeen states regarding section five oh four of the Rehabilitation Act of nineteen seventy three. 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 five oh four itself is unconstitutional, so with today's language, Section five oh four begins quote, no otherwise qualified individual with a disability in 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.

00:01:12
Speaker 2: We have talked about Section five oh four 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 was in our episode Six Impossible Episodes Other INDs. As a note, Judy Human, who we talked about in this episode, died on March fourth, twenty twenty three. This episode originally came out February fifth, twenty twenty so enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.

00:02:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.

00:02:03
Speaker 2: Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.

00:02:05
Speaker 1: I started talking immediately as I could see that Holly was taking a.

00:02:09
Speaker 2: Drink of water.

00:02:12
Speaker 1: So not long ago on the podcast, we talked about the sit in movement in the United States of the nineteen sixties, 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 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.

00:03:15
Speaker 2: 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 time described it as a sit down strike. On August twenty first, nineteen thirty nine, 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 Gattis, Morris Murray, and Clarence Strange, and they were all between the ages of nineteen and twenty two. 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 know 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. With five black men sitting at five different tables in the library and refusing to leave, Green wasn't sure what to do. She sent the library's page, William Adam, to the home of the head librarian, Catherine Scoggin to tell her what was going on. Skagin went to city hall to discuss what was happening with the city planner and the chief of police.

00:04:46
Speaker 1: Soon police were on the scene of the library, and a sixth participant in this, who was fourteen 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 four his law office, which was nearby when the police got there. S W.

00:05:04
Speaker 2: Tucker had graduated from Howard University in nineteen thirty three, studied law on his own, and passed the Virginia Bar exam at the age of only twenty, a year too young to actually be sworn in. He had arranged the sit downstrike at the library, and his brother Otto, was one of the people sitting in. Back in nineteen twenty seven, 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.

00:05:47
Speaker 1: 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 three hundred 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. 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 fourteenth, nineteen forty. When SW. Tucker got a letter inviting him to register for a library card at that branch, he answered with a refusal, insisting that he reissued 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 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.

00:07:11
Speaker 2: Tucker went on to become the lead lawyer for the NAACP in Virginia, During his legal career, he argued before the US 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 twenty nineteen, a judge dismissed the disorderly conduct charges against the young men who sat in, which had never come to trial.

00:07:41
Speaker 1: 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 d wrecked 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.

00:08:13
Speaker 2: Next up, we have a relatively early moment in the movement for LGBTQ rights in the US, 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 nineteen twenty four. We covered that on the Show in twenty fifteen.

00:08:36
Speaker 1: The Mattachine Society was first founded in Los Angeles in nineteen fifty one, and then other chapters formed in other cities around the US after that. And in nineteen sixty six, members of New York City's Matachine Society challenged regulations that prohibited gay men from being served alcohol in New York's bars.

00:08:55
Speaker 2: Those regulations came from the New York State Liquor Authority in the form of an acquirement that bar patrons had to display quote orderly conduct. In the liquor authorities view, homosexuality was inherently disorderly, although the policy didn't specifically mention sexual orientation. Police frequently rated 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.

00:09:33
Speaker 1: On April twenty first, nineteen sixty six, three Matachine 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 Leisch, who was the head of the New York chapter of the Matachine Society, as well as Craig Rodwell and John Timmins. A fourth man, Randy Wicker, also joined them. As they went on, they had informed reporters of what they were doing ahead time, and they called it a sip in.

00:10:02
Speaker 2: 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.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: There are interviews I think it was with Dick Leish where he was talking about at this point, they were like, we've 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 were not disorderly. So they finally wound up at a bar called Julius's in Greenwich Village, which they thought would be hyper sensitive 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.

00:11:03
Speaker 2: The bartender had already put glasses in front of them and covered them with his hands, saying I can't serve you. Then this led to a dramatic photo captured by Fred macdera of the Village Voice, with a three man in coats and ties facing the bartender and the bartender covering their glasses.

00:11:20
Speaker 1: 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 nineteen sixty seven, 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 the Stonewall riots started after a police raid on June twenty eighth, nineteen sixty nine, that was another two more years after that Appeal's go or ruling had happened. We are going to take a quick sponsor break before we go on to some more actions. The Matachine Society sipin we talked about a moment ago was inspired by the nineteen sixties civil rights sit ins that we just covered on a podcast, and that was also true of our next active protest, which is the fish ins that took place in the Pacific Northwest in the nineteen fifties and sixties and beyond. But the context for that protest stretches all the way back to the nineteenth century.

00:12:37
Speaker 2: Isaac Ingele Stevens became governor of what was then Washington Territory in eighteen fifty three. 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 Native nations ceded land to the United States. These treaties ultimately assigned more than ninety percent of the total land to the United States, with the rest being established as reservation land.

00:13:11
Speaker 1: At least thirteen tribes and nations were signatories to these treaties, including then a Squally, the Pewallup, 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.

00:13:33
Speaker 2: 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.

00:13:55
Speaker 1: Of the territory, So the Native nations, I mean, this has been the case with all all of the Native American history that we've talked about on the showy. 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 Stevens 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. 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 gillnets, 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. 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.

00:15:39
Speaker 2: 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 reservation's 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 posted 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.

00:16:24
Speaker 1: 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 nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty seven, Indigenous people caught six and a half percent of the catch in the Pacific Northwest, White sport fishers caught twelve point two percent, and then commercial fishing operations took all the rest. More than eighty percent of the catch was through commercial fishing operations, not through indigenous people or sport fishers doing their own thing. I can tell you firsthand that that belief persisted into the seventies when I lived there as a kid. That does not surprise me at all.

00:17:19
Speaker 2: 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. 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. 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. Plus outside of the reservations, nets and traps, which were part of traditional indigenous fishing practices were outlawed.

00:18:19
Speaker 1: 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 and the nineteen fifties and early sixties, 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 earth or any of those kinds of things at this point as a trend among leadership.

00:19:04
Speaker 2: But not everyone agreed, and in nineteen sixty four, 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 Satayakum was arrested while fishing in nineteen fifty four, and he hoped that his arrest would lead to a court ruling that would clarify the Indigenous Nations treaty rights. Unfortunately, his criminal record went well beyond this act of civil disobedience. That whole story is outside the scope of this episode.

00:19:41
Speaker 1: So these fishians arranged by the SAIA started on February twenty seventh of nineteen sixty four, and they continued well into the nineteen seventies, sometimes as individual fishing events and sometimes as prolonged demonstrations that 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 second of nineteen sixty four, but wasn't ultimately charged with a crime.

00:20:19
Speaker 2: 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 sixth, nineteen sixty four, 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 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.

00:21:18
Speaker 1: 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 fish in movement. The demonstrators were repeatedly targeted by Game wardens and by police, including being beaten with clubs and sprayed with tear gas. On December seventh, police making an arrest rammed demonstrators canoe with their boat, which jumped to 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. After a brawl on October thirteenth of nineteen sixty four, 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.

00:22:14
Speaker 2: As was the case with the occupation of Alcatraz. This turned into an inter tribal 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 nineteen sixty eight, 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 forty.

00:22:48
Speaker 1: This movement continued into the nineteen seventies. On June seventeenth of nineteen seventy, the Washington State Sportsmen's Club, which was still insisting that Indigenous people were trying to get undeserved special privle that 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 fifteen day window in which net fishing would be allowed in the Pwallup River. By that point, more tribal leadership had started to support these protests.

00:23:19
Speaker 2: On February twenty eighth, nineteen seventy one, 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 nineteenth century. Judge George Bolt issued his decision on February twelfth, nineteen seventy four. 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 fifty percent of the available catch, including fishing outside their reservations. That was way better than the six and a half percent that they'd actually and fishing according to that earlier data. This was regarded as a huge wind 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 partied to those earlier treaties, and that included the Duwamish, Chinook, and Snowhomish 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, habitat loss, increasing ocean temperatures, all kinds of other factors. Back in twenty seventeen, we did an episode on Ed Roberts and the independent living movement which evolved in Berkeley, California In the nineteen sixties and seventies. Before this point, a lot of disability advocacy had really been focused on parents and caregivers of disabled people rather than onn disabled people's own self advocacy. The independent living movement really shifted that focus more towards self determination and self advocacy. 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 nineteen sixties and seventies, this move toward independence and away from pity and paternalism was just huge. One of the moments that came up in that episode is the passage of section five oh four of the Rehabilitation Act in nineteen seventy three and the sit in that followed it, But we didn't really spend much time on that at all. So Section five oh four 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.

00:26:16
Speaker 1: 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 five h four would actually be implemented and enforced. And this applied to every federal agency but the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare or HW. 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.

00:26:55
Speaker 2: But between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy seven nothing happened. Attorneys from the Office for Civil Rights drafted regulations and sent them to HW 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.

00:27:21
Speaker 1: By that point, disability rights activists were demanding for the regulations that the Office for Civil Rights had 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.

00:27:39
Speaker 2: 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 nineteen seventy three, so the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities decided to take action. They gave the HW an ultimatum either HW Secretary Joseph Klifano would sign the regulations as written by April fourth, nineteen seventy seven, or activists would start sitting in at HW offices on April fifth.

00:28:08
Speaker 1: April fourth came and went, and on April fifth, 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 one hundred people sat in for twenty six days.

00:28:24
Speaker 2: Unlike some of the other sit ins that we've talked about, they didn't show up during business hours and leave when HW 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 demonstrator's side. In San Francisco, Glide Memorial Church and the Black Panther Party provided meals.

00:28:52
Speaker 1: Over the course of the sit in in San Francisco, conditions in the building became increasingly difficult. Supporters had donated things like mattress 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.

00:29:26
Speaker 2: Eventually, a delegation from the San Francisco cit in was selected to travel to Washington, d C. 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. I cannot imagine how uncomfortable this trip was, especially for the people who were little, really in a moving van. Yeah, 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 it's high 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.

00:30:20
Speaker 1: Yeah. Secretary Kalifano finally signed these regulations on April twenty eighth of nineteen seventy seven. 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.

00:30:42
Speaker 2: 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 nineteen ninety, but actually implementing that has been a struggle as well, even now decades later.

00:31:08
Speaker 1: 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 thirty years. I have feelings about this. I do too. 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 five zero four 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 and classrooms with their non disabled peers whenever possible, could threaten deaf culture.

00:31:55
Speaker 2: That said, though beyond the regulations, activists who were part of these sit ins. I've also talked about their role in shifting non disabled people's perceptions of disability. In the words of Judith Human, who is 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.

00:32:31
Speaker 1: If you're curious, there was an episode of Drunk History on this that cast disabled people in the roles of all the five or four protesters, which shouldn't sound like some kind of accomplishment, but it is. Sadly.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, there was a lot in this middle act of the show. So we're going to take a quick sponsor break to.

00:33:00
Speaker 1: 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 and 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.

00:33:37
Speaker 2: 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 US Centers for Disease Control. It described an unusual outbreak of NUMOSISDS pneumonia in five previously healthy gay men in Los Angeles, and that was on June fifth in nineteen eighty one.

00:33:59
Speaker 1: In years following that, more than twenty eight thousand cases of AIDS were reported in the United States and more than twenty four thousan five hundred people had died. By the end of nineteen eighty six, there was no approved treatment for HIV, which is the virus that causes AIDS in the United States. The US 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.

00:34:37
Speaker 2: 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 Aid's Coalition to Unleash Power, or act UP, on March twelfth, nineteen eighty seven, in New York City. It's 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.

00:35:14
Speaker 1: 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.

00:35:48
Speaker 2: One of actup's tactics has been the die in, in which demonstrators lie down unmoving, usually in a public space, sometimes in roadways, blocking traffic. This is part of actup's very first protest on March twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven, when seventeen people lay down in the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street in New York City outside Trinity Church. 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 life saving 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 are being treated for AIDS, and quote immediate establishment of a coordinated, comprehensive and compassionate national policy on AIDS. 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 thlidamide. But in the early nineteen eighties, the FDA approval 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 nineteen eighty five. 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.

00:37:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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. So on September fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine, act UP held a rally and die in outside of the New York Stock Exchange to protest pharmaceutical company Burrows 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 Burro's Welcome had made AZT, so not long after the demonstration, they lowered the price for a year of AZT treatment, which had originally been ten thousand dollars per patient per year, to six four hundred dollars. Actup's very aggressive advocacy on this has often been credited with prompting the change, although Burrow's Welcome has maintained that they had already been planning to do it.

00:38:27
Speaker 2: Because of their tactics and the stigma surrounding both homosexuality and AIDS, actup's actions have been inherently controversial. One particular die in was particularly divisive. In December of nineteen eighty nine, act UP and Women's Health Action Mobilization demonstrated inside Saint 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.

00:39:02
Speaker 1: 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 forty 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 Petrellis loudly blew a whistle and shouted, you're killing us, and that tipped the protest into something that became a lot more chaotic.

00:39:36
Speaker 2: People were offended not only at the disruption of the church services, but also because one of the demonstrators, Thomas Keene, 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. 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 Dian's as a protest tool like today. On October fourth of twenty thirteen, there was a Dian at the New York Public Library after they put up an exhibit titled why We Fight Remembering AIDS Activism. One of Actup'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 it were not. Another took place on January first of twenty fourteen, after the inauguration of New York City Mayor 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 twenty eighteen, after the museum arranged a retrospective of the world of David Boynovitch, who was an act UP member before his death in nineteen ninety two.

00:41:06
Speaker 1: 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.

00:41:16
Speaker 2: Okay, So the last one the teaching 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. So for contexts, during the nineteen sixty four presidential election, part of Lyndon Bains Johnson's campaign was a peace platform, so people thought he was going to end American involvement in Vietnam. But on February thirteenth of nineteen sixty five, 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. There had been American personnel and 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. 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.

00:42:54
Speaker 1: 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. And a staff meeting on March seventeenth, after a lot of debate about this whole walkout and strike idea, anthropologist Marshall sallins 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.

00:43:35
Speaker 2: This led to the first teach in and held from eight pm on March twenty fourth, nineteen sixty five, until eight am the following morning. It was held in Angel Hall Auditorium, although the crowd was so larged that it spilled out to other parts of the campus, including the library steps. More than two thousand people attended, with about five hundred still there when the last lecture started. Women enrolled at the university had a 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.

00:44:09
Speaker 1: 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.

00:44:37
Speaker 2: Two days later, another teach in was held at Columbia University in New York City. More teachins followed, and on April seventeenth, nineteen sixty five, 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 Saint Louis.

00:45:01
Speaker 1: 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.

00:45:19
Speaker 2: On May fifteenth, that National teach In was held in Washington, d C. This was an all day event that was also broadcast on more than two hundred 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.

00:45:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course, there are people who wondered if that was a convenient excuse or an actual urgency. On May twenty first and twenty second, the largest teach in in this movement was held at the University of California at Berkeley, with thirty thousand people in attendance.

00:46:03
Speaker 2: The committee had followed up with McGeorge Bundy repeatedly after his cancelation 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. The teach in movement didn't really last beyond nineteen sixty five. 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. At the same time, the teaching 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 Salnds, 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.

00:47:18
Speaker 1: 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 went on to inspire people to take direct actions. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.