Making Your Place in a World Not Made for You: The Story of Brad Lomax
By Sam Larue
Brad Lomax (1950-1984) was a famed Black Panther member and disability activist who led and participated in several community projects run by the Black Panther Party. He is perhaps most famed for his participation in the 504 Sit-In in San Francisco in 1977, as well as his appearance in the 2020 documentary Crip Camp. His participation in the sit-in was vital in the passage of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by Congress, one of the first federal laws guaranteeing civil rights protections for disabled people. Lomax’s role in influencing policy in the United States relied upon his lived experience as a Black disabled person, his acute understanding of coalition building, and his principled Marxist beliefs to uplift those most oppressed under settler colonial capitalism.
Lomax engaged with disability politics largely because he was disabled. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1969, Lomax was a wheelchair user for the rest of his life. As his ability to walk deteriorated, he began to understand the power of communalist thinking and praxis (Connelly 2020). His friends aided him with mobility constantly, showing how the American liberal ideal of pure independence and individualized success is unreachable for most people. Living in a country with little to no protections for disabled people exposed Lomax to the need for communities to fill in the gaps that federal and state governments leave in social services. Without civil rights and legal protections, basic survival can only happen for disabled people with the support of disabled and non-disabled community members. This need for communal support and uplift reflects Lomax’s push for communal politics in his organizing.
However, no singular aspect of a person’s identity wholly defines them. Lomax’s Blackness was also central to his political development. Due to his inter-communalist understanding of the horrors of imperialism, he refused to enlist in the U.S. military (pre-diagnosis) as the Vietnam War escalated. While the United States inflicted horrific violence on the Vietnamese people in the name of maintaining semi-feudal colonial relations in Southeast Asia, it also violently oppressed the New Afrikan people seeking freedom from racial hierarchy and police violence.[1] This extended to the mistreatment of Black soldiers enlisted in the U.S. forces invading Vietnam, who bore racist violence from their white peers, as well as white officers placing them in the least advantageous, deadliest combat positions (Connelly 2020). This contradiction motivated Lomax to adopt more radical politics of liberation in activism with Blackness at its center. He founded the Black Panther chapter in Washington, DC, and organized the African Liberation Day march at the United States Capitol in 1972 (Connelly 2020). As an organizer, he was more than just a rank-and-file party member, but a motivated ideologue and steadfast leader. His militant anti-colonial philosophy differentiated him from the majority-white disabled activists of the time, giving him a clearer view of the proletarian disability struggle.
Lomax’s membership with the Black Panther Party granted him many connections to other movement leaders in the United States. His partisanship undoubtedly influenced the decision to move to the Black Panther Party epicenter in Oakland, California in the early 1970s. His relocation placed him in contact with another influential organization, the disability justice group known as the Center for Independent Living (CIL). Lomax influenced CIL Director Ed Roberts to increase formal relations with the Black Panthers, open a CIL location in East Oakland under Panther leadership, and hold more events co-sponsored by both organizations (Schweik 2011). This connection was one of many examples of community outreach the Oakland chapter of the Panthers engaged in to connect with fellow marginalized and colonized peoples. Outreach is hugely important for a Marxist mass organization, something a principled party member like Lomax would understand well. This bond proved to be a major step in not only uniting Black and disabled liberation struggles but also in the short-term benefits of the 504 Sit-In.
Lomax’s legacy is tied to the 504 Sit-In in San Francisco. The 504 Sit-In was vital in establishing federal civil rights for disabled Americans. Organizations like the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities planned the protest in response to the Carter administration’s inaction to meaningfully enforce the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The “504” in question refers to Section 504, which entitles disabled people to legal protection from disability discrimination. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), Joseph Califano Jr. delayed signing off on the section for a long time, many suspecting it as a method of weakening regulations for the state. In protest of Califano’s slothfulness, disabled protesters occupied the regional HEW director’s office in San Francisco as part of a nationwide mobilization with similar protests occurring in cities like Boston and Denver (Connelly 2020). The protest body was strikingly white, as were its main organizers Judy Heumann and Kitty Cone. This demography can be incredibly daunting for non-white organizers, rife with microaggressions and unrecognized labor. Despite this hardship, Lomax would prove hugely important to the sustenance of the 25-day sit-in.
Lomax utilized his connections to the Black Panther Party to gain their support for the 504 Sit-In. The Panthers sent hot meals and supplies to the occupiers throughout the event, building solidarity networks between the communities. They also platformed the event through the party newspaper, with the work of Black disabled party figureheads like Dennis Billups (Schweik 2011). Protesters present in the office building credited the Panthers and Lomax specifically for their help sustaining the event. According to white disability activist Corbett O’Toole, “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” (Pelka 2011, 273). This coordination only took place because of the organizing savvy of Brad Lomax, the lone connection between the two parties.
Following the conclusion of the sit-in, protesters sent a delegation to Washington, D.C., to pressure Califano to sign the regulations into power. By the votes of his comrades, Lomax, and his trusted aide Chuck Jackson were among the 25 representatives sent to the nation’s capital. With this added pressure, Califano signed Section 504 into law in 1977. While the law’s standards limited its scope just to federally funded programs, the regulations would far supersede this narrow area. Section 504 would go on to serve as the legal basis for the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 (Connelly 2020). This massive victory, which guaranteed the first civil rights for disabled people in the U.S., could not have happened without the tenacious fighting of the sit-in protesters, including Lomax and Jackson. As an advocate, Lomax exemplified the principle that progressive movements must uplift the most oppressed to the forefront of society. His vital role in every stage of the 504 Sit-In proves his determination and ambition.
The major role that Lomax played in sustaining the vitality of the 504 Sit-In makes his erasure from disability history even more painful. Academia paints disability history in the United States as lily-white, especially compared to the real history of the United States as a violent settler colony (Vaden 2022, 341). Lomax’s case is a microcosm of the historical erasure of the Black Panther Party’s community health programs. The party engaged in many such programs to help New Afrikan people at the local scale, with city health clinics specializing in primary care and sickle cell anemia screenings. Alongside the Oakland chapter’s partnership with the Community of Independent Living, the Panthers demonstrated a commitment to dismantling medical discrimination among internally colonized peoples. Academic and popular retellings of Black Power history often minimize this history, with a prioritization on their militancy and internationalism. While these aspects of the Panthers are hugely important, popular narratives that maintain this focus often overlook how these community actions made them popular among the Black proletariat and reinforced their political ideologies. It means that white society forgets stories like those of Dennis Billups and Brad Lomax. When people brush past these stories, either by accident or on purpose, the recounted historical document of Blackness in the U.S. gets increasingly distorted. For this reason, the hidden history of the 504 Sit-In is even more meaningful.
[1] African diaspora in the US, particularly from the Deep South.
Works Cited
Connelly, E. A. (2020, July 8). “Overlooked no more: Brad Lomax, a bridge between civil rights movements”. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/obituaries/brad- lomax- overlooked.html
Pelka, F. (2012). What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement (1st ed.). University of Massachusetts Press.
Schweik, S. (2013). “Lomax’s Matrix: Disability, Solidarity, and the Black Power of 504”. In: Wappett, M., Arndt, K. (eds) Foundations of Disability Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https:// doi.org/10.1057/9781137363787_6
Vaden, M. (2022). “CRT, Information, and Disability: An Intersectional Commentary”. Education for Information, 38(4), 339-346. https://content.iospress.com/articles/education-for-information/efi220055
