Johnnie Lacy

Through the many oral histories taken to document the disability rights and independent living movement, UC Berkeley offers a black woman's perspective on disability. Johnnie Lacy caught the polio virus in 1957 when she was 19 and studying nursing in college. After over forty years using a wheelchair and working at community development for poor, minority, and disabled populations, Lacy has insight into each aspect of her identity.

The transcript of David Landes' 1998 interview with Lacy runs over 130 pages, but here are a couple longish snips that I found interesting:

Landes: It sounds like you identified primarily by your poverty and as an African-American woman.

Lacy: I think it's a little bit more than that, though. And that is, that's a dilemma that I faced over the years in terms of the way other people perceived me and the way I react to that perception and the fact that I've kind of gone back and forth in terms of my own identification. For example, now I identify much more with my disability than with my poverty or my race. It's mainly out of reaction to other people's perception of me.

One of the things that I've learned is that I cannot allow myself to fall into the trap of being identified by others, that I have to have a sense of my own personal identity. And that sense is very much tied into who I am as a woman of color and as a disabled person, and I try not to distinguish between the three identities anymore. It's almost like what's happening now with multi-racial youth who in the sixties were described as having an identity problem when they became frustrated and angry at other people's perception of who they were.

In the sixties, for example, if you were mixed with black, no matter what other race you were, you were identified and perceived as black. And I think that is pretty much the same kind of perceptions that I was dealing with in terms of my disability and my ability to identify--if other people didn't see it as a part of me, then I denied in some ways that it was also a part of me because it was very important that I relate to my peers. And so I over the years have become much more--I don't want to use the word "adept" because that's not really--self-identified and much more persistent about my own perceptions than I have been about what other people's perceptions are.

and

Landes: So how do you see the relationship of the disability rights movement to other movements for social justice, for example, the struggle against racism and sexism?

Lacy: Movements are pretty much the same.

Landes: What connections to do you see among the three?

Lacy: That's the problem, I think, is that most movements don't take the time to recognize their similarities. As a matter of fact, they see their life blood as emphasizing the differences. I've been looking at some interesting kinds of features about Martin Luther King in the last few weeks, and I heard one person say that the reason that Martin Luther King was killed was because he recognized the similarities, and his efforts to pull together the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement created a kind of fear in government that made them feel the need to eradicate Martin Luther King.

The quote that I think about a lot in regards to this is his comment that "injustice anywhere means injustice everywhere." When you think about that, the realization of what impact that might have if it were pulled together as a concrete movement, where all of the have-nots come together to try to create a difference in their lives.

Landes: Are you hopeful about the possibilities of a more united movement for social justice that would include disability rights on the agenda, along with the rights of people of color and women?

Lacy: Yes, I'm hopeful. I guess maybe the reason I can be hopeful is out of my own experience, not recognizing the commonalities between civil rights and disability rights, although I think early leaders certainly espoused these commonalities. It was always seen by me and a bunch of other blacks as a way of "dissing" these groups, you know, saying they're copying off of our civil rights movement. They're not really interested in civil rights as much as they are in drawing the comparison that will allow them to make their movements stronger.

And I've heard these comments many, many, many times. I heard it around the women's movement; I heard it around the Raza movement; and then the disability movement. That somehow or other, African Americans see civil rights as being the personal property of African Americans and have yet to really, really stop and think about the similarities. But I think if Martin Luther King could see it and--not placing myself in the same vein as Martin Luther King--but if I can see it, that gives me hope that at some point others will.

There's a brief video clip, as well.