An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights

The first biography of one of the founders of the disability rights movement, An Independent Man chronicles the life of an activist who reimagined the meaning of equality and inspired generations of reformers.

Before Jonas Salk’s vaccine, polio was a social death sentence. The disabled were expected to disappear into their limitations, pitied by those around them. This might have been the story of Ed Roberts, paralyzed and consigned to sleep in an iron lung. But Roberts insisted on what all people deserve: a full life.

Scot Danforth deftly captures Roberts’s adventurous personality and radical vision, chronicling his life from his student activist days at the University of California, Berkeley, in the early 1960s to his career highlights of establishing the pioneering Center for Independent Living and directing California’s Department of Rehabilitation. By insisting that disabled persons are valuable members of society, and by translating his ideas into action, Roberts laid the ground for the Americans with Disabilities Act and the ongoing movement for equality.

Scot Danforth is the Jack H. and Paula A. Hassinger Chair in Education and Professor of Disability Studies at Chapman University.