Johnnie Lacy
Johnnie Lacy, was born in a lumber town in Huttig, Arkansas in 1937. She spent her early years in both Arkansas and Louisiana, before moving to McCloud California. Lacy was no stranger to adversity, growing up in segregated schools and experienced racial and gender discrimination in both southern states as well as in McCloud California. The discrimination of her formative years would shape her desire to fight for civil rights and anti poverty (Pelka, 2012, p. 69). After high school Lacy attended Chico State University where she was one of six African Americans out of 1,200 Students. In 1956 Lacy contracted Polio at the young age of 19 while working on her nursing degree at San Francisco State University in a high risk environment while living in Oakland. She doesn’t know where she got Polio but suspects it was from the hospital where she was working. What started out as neck pain, headaches, and blurred vision resulted in a considerable battle with the disease requiring a two year recovery(Landes & Lacy, 1998). From then on Lacy could no longer walk and had significant paralysis, but she returned to school at San Francisco State in 1958 where she experienced discrimination for being disabled. She decided to become a speech therapist but was denied entry into the program by the head of the department because of her disability. Lacy knew “She couldn't be discriminated if she was just a woman or just a black woman but because she was disabled then they could get away with discrimination (Roberts, 2010)”. Lacy later went to graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, where she was exposed to the different civil rights movements and particularly the disability rights movement. Lacy was the first executive director of The Community Resources for Independent Living in Hayward, California, from 1981 to 1994. Additionally Lacy served on the state Attorney General's Commission on Disability and contributed a lot to the nonprofit community of Hayward. Retirement did not slow Johnnie down, she remained active and served on the Hayward city and community commissions, as well as the Commission on Personnel and Affirmative Action. Lacy also served on the Mayor's Disability Council of San Francisco. Johnnie Lacy passed away on November 15, 2010 (Pelka, 2012, p. 69). She will be remembered for her hard work and service has been described as; fearless, ferocious, defiantly black and disabled, confident, and heroic.
Citations: 1. Pelka, F. (2012). What we have done an oral history of the disability rights movement. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press. Brief summary of Bay Area civil rights activist Johnnie Lacy, page 69
2. Tribute to Johnnie Lacy. (n.d.). Retrieved February 25, 2019, from http://crilhayward.org/Tribute-to-Johnnie-Lacy/ Community Resources for Independent Living's tribute to civil rights activists Johnnie Lacy
3. Motion picture on VHS. (1998). USA: Regional Oral History Office/The Regents of the University of California. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from https://archive.org/details/cabeuroh_000258
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