As people celebrate the ideals of independence and freedom this month, those with disabilities should take time to remember Justin Dart, Jr., one of the initiators of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which is 15 years old this month.
A Spoiled Rich Kid
“He was a very spoiled, rich kid,” his widow, Yoshiko, says. “That’s how he described himself. He broke all the rules that he could.” His grandfather, Charles Walgreen, founded the Walgreen’s drug store chain. His father Justin Dart, Sr., joined the Walgreen Company, later starting his own companies, Rexall Drug and Chemical and Dart Industries. Justin’s mother, Ruth, was an intellectual. “She introduced the first English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago from Russia. Justin wanted his own identity.” He acted out, crashing his father’s car and shooting at neighbors’ windows. “From the beginning, he was rebellious.”
In 1948, at the age of eighteen, Justin contracted polio. “Indirectly, he was told by doctors that he was going to die in a few days,” Yoshiko explains. “He was the son of a prominent businessman in Los Angeles, and no doctor wanted to let his son die in his hospital.” Justin’s father found a Seventh Day Adventist Hospital in Los Angeles, California to take him in. “Justin was saved, physically and spiritually.” He stayed there for almost a year, and became friends with the staff. “He learned the importance of love there,” Yoshiko says. He also discovered Gandhi’s philosophy: “Find your own truth, and then live it.”
“That was a very important revelation in his life,” Yoshiko says. “He had been unhappy, and was searching for the meaning of life.” Through the love of those doctors and nurses, he realized that he didn’t have to be rich to be successful; he only had to live his truth. “That message kept him alive,” says Yoshiko. “He told me that he felt he started his life after getting polio.” This feeling quickly became apparent. Justin relearned to drive, and secretly married his 16-year-old sweetheart. That marriage and a second would not last.
Dart attended the University of Houston in the early 1950s. He formed an integration club at the then-segregated institution. “The club had only five members. Three of them were people with disabilities. They were so engaged in fighting racial discrimination that they didn’t even think about their own rights.” In 1953, the university refused to award him a teaching certificate, because he was disabled. “He didn’t like it, but he didn’t protest.” He focused on the things that he could do. He received a bachelor’s degree in history and education, and became a teaching assistant.
Justin also helped to organize a new political party, the Harris County Democrats. “He went around the country and met with some CIO leaders, asking them how to form a successful political party. The Harris County Democrats is one of the major political parties in Texas today.” In 1954, Justin received his master’s degree in history from the University of Houston, then went on to study law at the University of Texas in Austin. “While studying, he realized that he wanted to get into business.”
Business in Japan
Justin’s father encouraged him to start Japan Tupperware. “The American company didn’t want to start a risky business in Japan. They believed that Tupperware wouldn’t replace traditional chinaware.” Yoshiko says. Nevertheless, Justin started Japan Tupperware in 1963. “I was one of the first women who applied for work there,” Yoshiko says. “This company was seeking outgoing Japanese women.” Yoshiko eventually became his assistant.
Justin sought to move people with disabilities out of institutions and into the workforce; Japan Tupperware gave him that opportunity. “He always had been interested in social change, trying to connect that spirit to business,” Yoshiko says.
The company held a fundraising event to raise money for the Japan Red Cross to distribute wheelchairs to those in need. This made Justin and his company instantly famous in Japan. Employees who sold Â¥ 25,000 (about $240, the cost of a wheelchair back then) worth of Tupperware would donate their 30% commission to the Japan Red Cross, while the company contributed the other 70%; 100% of the gross would go to charity. “We were excited. We were not only making money for the company, we were returning the profit to society.”
Justin hired 10 boys in wheelchairs to work in warehouses at Japan Tupperware. “I was in charge of salesmanship, explaining the company and how to speak in public. Most of these boys were so ashamed of their disabilities,” Yoshiko recalls. “They thought they’d live in institutions until they died.”
Dart’s success made people back home in the United States take notice. “We weren’t just a smaller company in the Far East anymore,” Yoshiko remembers. “We beat the American company in sales and the size of our sales force. The American counterparts tried to take control of the company. Justin couldn’t conform to the American system.” He and Yoshiko resigned.
Fighting Like Hell
The next year, while operating his greeting card company, Dart Card, Inc., Justin, Yoshiko, a photographer and an assistant traveled to Vietnam, to prepare a report to the World Congress of Rehabilitation International on disability conditions in the war-torn country. “We were shocked by the situation. At an orphanage, children with polio were left lying on a concrete floor in their own waste. One little girl, who must have known she was dying, reached out to Justin and looked into him, as if asking him to grant her eternal life. He was really shaken up.” Justin closed Dart Card, Inc., and spent the next eighteen months pondering the state of the world, through extensive reading, writing, and meditating.
By 1968, Justin and Yoshiko were married. Wondering what they could do to alleviate the kind of suffering that they had seen, they decided to take in Japanese girls that needed guidance, some of whom had disabilities. “We realized that changing even one young person’s life might be where we could contribute.” That year, Justin developed a concept called the “Revolution in ‘I’ Universe,” which encourages people to act on their own behalf. “Each individual has a God-given potential,” Yoshiko declares. “We need to recognize this, and fight like hell for our rights.”
Ten years later, the Darts moved to Texas, where they started meeting with the MIGHT advocacy group. “We learned about independent living centers in the USA,” Yoshiko says. After MIGHT received a grant from the Department of Education to start their own program in Austin, the Darts looked into how independent living centers were run. Afterward, they helped to found the Austin Resource Center for Independent Living (ARCIL), in 1980. “We communicated with leaders from different parts of the country about the disability situation, in general.”
This led to their participation in the Mayor’s Committee on the Handicapped in Austin, and Justin’s stint as chairperson of the Texas Governor’s Committee on Employment of the Handicapped. “Justin did an incredible job, which convinced the then-Republican Governor, Bill Clemens, to let him work with some Democratic disability leaders to draft a Texas Policy for Persons with Disabilities, followed by a Long Range Plan for Texans with Disabilities.” The initiatives discussed “were considered very good policies by other states.”
On the National Stage
In 1982, Justin was appointed to what is now known as the National Council on
Disability, by then-President Reagan. He became its vice-chair, proposing a national policy for persons with disabilities. In 1983, the Darts visited each state at their own expense, getting input from disability community members.
“Within the Texas state policy,” Yoshiko says, “he was suggesting that people with disabilities should have the same civil rights as anyone else, so he mentioned that to the National Council. The resultant National Policy for Persons with Disabilities was well-received by some Congressional people.” In 1985, the Darts moved to Washington, DC, to help the Council’s director, Lex Frieden, draft recommendations to Congress and the president, which included the Equal Opportunity Law, now known as the ADA. The report, Toward Independence, was submitted to Congress in February 1986.
Justin was soon appointed Commissioner of the Rehabilitation Services Administration. He met with service providers and people with disabilities around the country. “He wanted to work with them to get the job done,” states Yoshiko. “He was trying to bring people with disabilities into the Administration, and get their voices heard at the policy table, but a paternalistic attitude existed there. He had to fight a real uphill battle. Departing from the speech approved by the Department of Education, he made a Statement of Conscience to Congress, stating that a paternalistic bureaucracy was damaging to the goals of the disability community.” In 1987, Justin was forced to resign.
The next spring, Dart was appointed chairperson of the Congressional Task Force on the Rights and Empowerment of People with Disabilities. The Darts made another national trip. “Justin made a real concerted effort with leaders of organizations around the country to lobby their Congress people to ‘Pass ADA!’” On July 26, 1990, President Bush signed the ADA into law, which was followed by two big celebrations where the Congressional people, the Vice President, and representatives from the disability community spoke. That was a big day. Afterward, the Darts weren’t content to rest on their laurels. “In 1991, we traveled to each state to promote the harmonious implementation of the ADA.”
Then a Republican, Justin backed Bill Clinton’s 1994 pro-health care agenda and his 1996 Presidential re-election. In 1995, he helped form Justice For All, a coalition created to keep the core issues of the disability community at the forefront of politicians’ minds and those of the disability community. His message stated, in part: “science and democracy give us the potential to enable every person to live the human dream. Will we do it? Or will we, like great cultures past . . . go down the road . . . of what might have been? We need a revolution of empowerment!”
Final Act
Justin suffered a major heart attack in 1997, and doctors told him he wouldn’t live long. “He wanted to be in control of his own life. He decided to be under hospice care, and he lived for the next four and a half years at home.” In 1998, Justin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton, the highest civilian award in the United States.
“He considered himself a symbolic representative of the disability community that deserved the recognition,” remembers Yoshiko. “We developed hundreds of Presidential Medal of Freedom certificates for distribution, bearing each person’s name who worked for the rights of people with disabilities over the years. Justin was active until the week he died.”
In June 2002, Justin succumbed to heart failure, but the love that he inspired lives on. “He wanted to be remembered as a unifier. People can learn from Justin, a spoiled kid who became a loving human being.” Among others, former President Clinton and hundreds of disability community members attended Justin’s memorial service-a celebration of life, empowerment, solidarity, and love.
Yoshiko keeps Justin’s dreams alive, as outlined in With Liberty and Justice for All: Toward the Culture of Individualized Empowerment. After he died, Yoshiko had it published, and has since participated in several disability-related events, such as the Voices of Civil Rights national bus tour, which gathered accounts of discrimination from minorities. “The disability community is still experiencing discrimination, so I asked event organizers if they could participate. Organizers welcomed it.” We’ve all heard the statement “It’s not how much time you have, it’s what you do with it.” There can be no doubt that Justin Dart, Jr.’s was a life well-lived.
Lori A. Wood writes regularly for Orbit.
