DART, JUSTIN (1930-2002)

American advocate

Justin Dart has been widely recognized as the founder of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) signedinto law on July 26, 1990. Dart's grandfather established the Walgreen's Pharmacy chain. However, Dart was also a highly successful entrepreneur himself who made his own fortune by introducing Tupperware to Japan during the mid-1960s. At age 18, he contracted polio and was admitted to the Seventh Day Adventist Medical University in Los Angeles. Doctors told him he had three days to live. While living on the polio ward, Dart found himself surrounded by the companionship and support of other disabled people. As he would explain later: “These beautiful people not only saved my life, they made it worth saving” (quoted on website: http://www.aapd-dc.org/justin- dart/jdobit.html). In 1951, Dart matriculated at the University of Houston where he studied to be a teacher. The university withheld his teaching certificate because he was a wheelchair user and posed an insurance risk to would-be educational institutions that might employ him.

President Ronald Reagan appointed Dart to be vice-chair of the National Council on Disability in 1981. During this time, the council members drafted a national policy on equal rights for disabled people; the document ultimately became the foundation of the ADA and advocated for an expansive inclusion of disabled individuals including psychiatric survivors and individuals with HIV/AIDS.