In short order, Lomax became an active participant in the Oakland BPP’s “serve the people” community organizing efforts.9Schweik, S. (2011). Lomax’s matrix: Disability, solidarity, and the Black power of 504. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1371 This included, among other things, setting up free food and medical care clinics for the poor and working-class Black residents of the city. As part of this initiative, Lomax wanted to bring disability politics and services into the picture. He began collaborating with Ed Roberts and Donald Galloway in the attempt to integrate an ILC outreach center into the life of Oakland. The BPP in turn grew more aware and active around issues pertaining to the discrimination against disabled and elderly people in the realm of transportation and housing, which enjoyed increased coverage in the party newspaper, The Black Panther.
Later, when a coalition began to materialize around the plan to occupy the HEW building as an agitational pressure in support of Section 504, the BPP and Lomax were well acquainted with the nature of the struggle for disability justice and its immanence to the oppression of countless members of the Black community. As a result, Lomax, fellow BPP member and Lomax’s attendant Chuck Jackson, Dennis Billups, and other Black disabled activists both inside and outside of the BPP were centrally involved with the 504 struggle from the start.10Schweik, S. (2011). Lomax’s matrix: Disability, solidarity, and the Black power of 504. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1371
It is no exaggeration to say that the success of the 504 sit-in owes just as much to the involvement of the BPP and other Black activists as it does to movement leaders like Cone, Judy Heumann, and myriad other supporting social movements. At key junctures, the BPP mobilized to save the sit-in from collapsing under the weight of state repression and countermovement measures. At one point early in the occupation of the HEW building, federal police blocked off the entrances to any further incoming participants; they also prohibited the delivery of any food into the protesters. Corbett O’Toole, one of the HEW occupants, recalls:
One of the people with us was a black man who was part of the Black Panthers. He called up the Panthers and said, “I’m here in this demonstration.” … They thought that anybody that challenged the federal government’s domain over their lives and were fighting for self-sufficiency and rights were cool people. And they had one guy in there and so they showed up.
They were running a soup kitchen for their black community in East Oakland and they showed up every single night and brought us dinner. The FBI [guarding the building entrance] was like, “What the hell are you doing?” They answered, “Listen, we’re the Panthers. You want to starve these people out, fine, we’ll go tell the media that that’s what you’re doing, and we’ll show up with our guns to match your guns and we’ll talk about who’s going to talk to who about the food. Otherwise, just let us feed these people and we won’t give you any trouble” – and that’s basically what they did.
I think the secret history of the 504 sit-in is that we never, ever would have made it without the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers fed us dinner – they fed 150 people of which only one was a Panther – every single night for the whole demonstration. We never would have survived without them.11Pelka, F. (2012). What we have done: An oral history of the disability rights movement. University of Massachusetts Press, pp. 272-3.
Beyond providing crucial logistical assistance and a powerful boost of moral solidarity to the cause of the 504 protesters, the BPP helped to publicize, agitate, and solicit community support for the struggle. The Black Panther regularly featured news items on the progress of the struggle and explained the issues at stake to its readership. For instance, one issue of the newspaper carried an interview with Dennis Billups, “a young blind Black man from San Francisco … one of the active and enthusiastic participants in the ongoing occupation of the HEW offices by handicapped and disabled people fighting for their civil and human rights.”12Schweik, S. (2011). Lomax’s matrix: Disability, solidarity, and the Black power of 504. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1371 Billups’s interview reads like a stunning call to action:
To my brothers and sisters that are Black and that are handicapped: Get out there, we need you. Come here, we need you. Wherever you are, we need you. Get out of your bed, get into your wheelchair. Get out of your crutches, get into your canes. If you can’t walk, call somebody, talk to somebody over the telephone; if you can’t talk, write; if you can’t write use sign language …. We need to do all we can. We need to show the government that we can have more force than they can ever deal with …13Schweik, S. (2011). Lomax’s matrix: Disability, solidarity, and the Black power of 504. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1371
After the signing of the 504 regulations and the declaration of victory by the HEW protesters, The Black Panther ran a special issue devoted to the struggle, including interviews, analysis, and a primer on the legal details of “504: Civil Rights for the Disabled.”14Handicapped win demands – End H.E.W. Occupation. (1977, May 7). The Black Panther, 1, 6. Retrieved December 12, 2020, from http://www.disabilityhistory.org/BlackPantherParty_504.html The front-page headline screamed in capital letters, “HANDICAPPED WIN DEMANDS – END H.E.W. OCCUPATION.” The lead article, notwithstanding the relative unfamiliarity with a disability-positive framework betrayed by its word choice, presented a touching assessment of the significance of the struggle itself, noting that in addition to the victory that was the actual signing of the 504 regulations by the U.S. Secretary of the HEW, there was also
another victory, a triumph of the human will, actually, achieved here in the Bay Area. It is the type of victory that can’t be pinpointed by any one single act … Its expression came in many ways; for instance … when a young Black woman came up to Brad Lomax, a Black Panther Party member victimized by multiple sclerosis … and embracing him in his wheelchair, remarked, “Thank you for setting an example for all of us;”
In a very real sense, ending the HEW occupation was like breaking up a family – a farewell to the tightly knit, caring, human community the disabled demonstrators and their aides formed among themselves….
Over and over the significant themes were repeated at the rally – “human rights,” “equal access,” “and end to segregation,” “finally feeling like a human being” – all summed up by Kitty Cone when she simply yelled into the microphone the one thought behind all the smiling emotions, “WE WON, WE WON, WE WON!”15Handicapped win demands – End H.E.W. Occupation. (1977, May 7). The Black Panther, 1, 6. Retrieved December 12, 2020, from http://www.disabilityhistory.org/BlackPantherParty_504.html
Theorizing Blackness and Disability
The 504 struggle epitomized the possibilities of a reified politics of solidarity between the struggles for disability and racial justice. The theoretical implications embodied by the history of 504 continue to feature prominently in the ideations of scholars and activists concerned with the overlapping, intersecting, and underappreciated epistemologies of a disability Black studies.16Artiles, A. (2013). Untangling the racialization of disabilities: An intersectionality critique across disability models. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 10(2), 329-347. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1742058X13000271; Campbell, F. A. K. (2008). Exploring internalized ableism using critical race theory. Disability & Society, 23(2), 151-162. https://doi-org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/10.1080/09687590701841190; Erevelles, N., & Minear, A. (2013). Unspeakable offenses: Untangling race and disability in discourses of intersectionality. In L.J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader [eBook edition]. (4th ed.). Routledge; Erkulwater, J. L. (2018). How the nation’s largest minority became white: Race politics and the disability rights movement, 1970–1980. Journal of Policy History 30(3), 367-399. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/698511; Liasidou, A. (2014) The cross-fertilization of critical race theory and Disability Studies: Points of convergence/ divergence and some education policy implications, Disability & Society, 29:5, 724-737, DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2013.844104; Mollow, A. (2017). Unvictimizable: Toward a fat black disability studies. African American Review 50(2), 105-121. doi:10.1353/afa.2017.0016; Schweik, S. (2011). Lomax’s matrix: Disability, solidarity, and the Black power of 504. Disability Studies Quarterly, 31(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v31i1.1371.