Ed Roberts was born on January 23, 1939. He died on March 14, 1995. We salute Ed's contributions to the civil rights of people with disabilities by adding two interviews to our website.

In 1993, Ed gave a first-person account of his college days at the University of California, Berkeley, to Lucy Gwin at Mouth Magazine. This interview, entitled "Our Man on the Moon," has been lightly edited and posted at the Council's website section about Ed.

"Whenever we start by believing people can't do it, we set up systems to do it for them. Charities do that. At the University of California, Berkeley, in the beginning, people's attitude was that I would get my PhD and then go live in a nursing home. Society's expectations of us—very low expectations—have tremendous power over us. We were very clear philosophically. We were beginning to talk about disability issues as civil rights issues."

"Our Man on the Moon" >> [ [link removed] ]

Ed Roberts

Ed also provided a first-person account of how Independent Living was born on the University of California, Berkeley campus and then moved off-campus. That 1993 interview was lightly edited and is entitled, "Independent Living: Born on Campus."

"What would I do differently if we were starting Independent Living today (1993)? First, I would do a lot more training, getting people in touch with the history and philosophy. Today, we are not grounded in our own ideology.

Second, I would build more leadership as we go along. Give people the same basic activist training we got at UC Berkeley [in the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the free speech movement, the civil rights movement] in the Sixties.

Third, the leadership would be around political advocacy and political change, rather than one advocate working to get services for one person. We discovered that over and over. All things change when you get political power. Politics changes lives."

Independent Living: Born on Campus >> [ [link removed] ]

*Disclaimer:* Please note that we did not update the term "cripple" because that is what Ed was called, and he wanted to repeat the terminology that college officials used to describe him.

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