Points of Access: Rehabilitation Centers, Summer Camps, and Student Life in the Making of Disability Activism, 1960–1973

This essay revises our understanding of two key movements in the late twentieth-century United States: disability rights and student protest. It locates the origins of the disability rights movement in the experiences of adolescents with disabilities at rehabilitation centers and summer camps. It traces the social roots of political activism from these institutions through higher education, where the intertwined processes of consciousness-raising and network formation transformed activists’ understanding of accessibility—both physical and social. Segregated from many aspects of campus life, disabled college students drew on their experiences and networks from their adolescence to fight for equality on their college campuses. They formed their own organizations and fraternities, took sledgehammers to inaccessible curbs, and lobbied for barrier-free environments. As disabled students graduated, they carried with them their local successes, tactics, and rights consciousness, spearheading the movement for national antidiscrimination legislation.