Eunice Fiorito was a charmer—a blind, red-headed woman who came on strong. Tall and physically imposing, always beautifully dressed and scented, with a Midwestern twang that put you right at ease. But beneath that sugary crust she was bold as brass.
Fiorito was part of the second wave of the founders of the modern New York City Disability Rights Movement. A native Chicagoan who lost her sight as a teenager, Fiorito came to New York City and earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Columbia University, graduating in 1960.
She was living at the 34th Street YMCA at the time, where she became friends with Anne Emerman, later a Director of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. They traveled the City together; as Anne described it to me, “I was the eyes, she was the power.” In 1970 Fiorito became Coordinator of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on the Handicapped. She did so well that in 1972, when Mayor Lindsay upgraded the Advisory Committee into the Mayor’s Office of the Handicapped (MOH, today known as the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities, or MOPD), Fiorito was named its first Director.
During the OPEC Oil Embargo, in the Spring of 1974, Fiorito took MOH to its most radical moment, helping coordinate a huge demonstration against the State’s gas rationing program, because it did not provide an exemption for disabled drivers. Hundreds of demonstrators turned out, right in front of Governor Malcom Wilson’s midtown Manhattan office. After being rebuffed by the Governor’s staff they poured out onto the street and blocked traffic on Sixth Avenue for hours, in the middle of a workday—WITHOUT a permit! Mayor Abraham Beame was furious.
In 1977 Fiorito went national, as co-leader of the Section 504 Sit-Ins, perhaps the greatest direct action in the history of American disability activism. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities in any program or activity that received federal funding. But it wasn’t self-enforcing—implementing regulations had to be passed first, and by 1977, four years after Section 504 passed, no regulations were in place.
Fiorito had co-founded (with Franke Bowe) and was then President of the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities (ACCD). In February 1977 ACCD sent a letter to President Carter and HEW Secretary Joseph Califano warning that unless Section 504 regulations were issued by April 4, ACCD would hold sit-ins at HEW offices across the country. On April 5, with regulations still unsigned, sit-ins began nationwide—most famously in San Francisco, where the occupation ran a staggering 23 days, ending only after Califano signed the regulations.
Fiorito thus helped implement the first federal civil rights for people with disabilities—a direct precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Read all 35 stories of the New York-based leaders profiled in our ADA 35 edition.