Fred Fay and Fred Pelka (author of The ABC Clio Companion to the Disability Rights Movement) are activists for the civil rights of people with disabilities. This belated but still timely obituary is excerpted from a longer piece available at the American Association for People with Disabilities website, www.aapd.org [6].
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“Beloved colleagues in struggle… Our lives, our children’s lives, the quality of the lives of billions in future generations hangs in the balance. I cry out to you from the depths of my being. Humanity needs you! Lead! Lead! Lead the revolution of empowerment!”
Justin Dart, Jr., a leader of the international disability rights movement and a renowned human rights activist, died on June 21, 2002 at his home in Washington DC. He is survived by his wife Yoshiko Saji, their extended family of foster children, his many friends and colleagues, and millions of disability and human rights activists all over the world.
Dart was a leader in the disability rights movement for three decades, and an advocate for the rights of women, people of color, and gays and lesbians. The recipient of five presidential appointments and numerous honors, Dart was also a highly successful entrepreneur, using his personal wealth to further his human rights agenda by generously contributing to organizations, candidates, and individuals, becoming what he called “a little PAC for empowerment.”
Until the end, Dart remained dedicated to his vision of a “revolution of empowerment.”
Dart never hesitated to emphasize the assistance he received from those working with him, most especially his wife of more than thirty years, Yoshiko Saji. Time and again Dart stressed that his achievements were only possible with the help of hundreds of activists, colleagues, and friends. “There is nothing I have achieved, and no addiction I have overcome, without the love and support of specific individuals who reached out to empower me... There is nothing I have accomplished without reaching out to empower others.” Dart protested the fact that he and only three other disability activists were on the podium when President Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, believing that “hundreds of others should have been there as well.” After receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Dart sent out replicas to hundreds of disability rights activists across the country, writing “this award belongs to you.”
A turning point was Dart’s discovery in 1949 of the philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi. Dart defined Gandhi’s message as, “Find your own truth, and then live it.” This theme too would stay with him for the rest of his life. Dart attended the University of Houston from 1951 to 1954. He wanted to be a teacher, but the university withheld his teaching certificate because he was a wheelchair user. During his time in college, Dart organized his first human rights group — a pro-integration student group at what was then a whites-only institution.
Dart went into business in 1956, building several successful companies in Mexico and Japan. He used his businesses to provide work for women and for people with disabilities. It was during this time he met his wife, Yoshiko.
The final turning point in Dart’s life came during a visit to Vietnam in 1966, to investigate the status of rehabilitation in that war-torn country. Visiting a “rehabilitation center” for children with polio, Dart instead found squalid conditions where disabled children were left on concrete floors to starve. “That scene,” he would later write, “is burned forever in my soul. For the first time in my life I understood the reality of evil, and that I was a part of that reality.”
The Darts moved to Texas in 1974, and immersed themselves in local disability activism. His work in Texas became a pattern for what was to follow: extensive meetings with the grassroots, followed by a call for the radical empowerment of people with disabilities, followed by tireless advocacy until victory was won.
Dart is best known for his work in passing the Americans with Disabilities Act. In 1988, the Darts toured the country, visiting every state, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the District of Columbia, holding public forums attended by more than 30,000 people. Everywhere he went, Dart touted the ADA as “the civil rights act of the future.”
While taking pride in passage of the ADA, Dart was always quick to list all the others who shared in the struggle: Robert Silverstein and Robert Burgdorf, Patrisha Wright and Tony Coelho, Fred Fay, and Judith Heumann, among many others. And Dart never wavered in his commitment to disability solidarity, insisting that all people with disabilities be protected by the law and included in the coalition to pass it — including mentally ill “psychiatric survivors” and people with HIV/AIDS. Dart called this his “politics of inclusion,” a companion to his “politics of principle, solidarity, and love.”