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Spring 2011

The Man Who Gave the Ed Roberts Campus Its Name

Jerry Brown swears Ed Roberts in as director of the California Department of Rehabilitation in 1975, during Brown’s first term as California’s governor.

The Ed Roberts Campus has been in the making since 1995, when Roberts died at the age of 56 and Berkeley’s civic leaders and members of the disability movement began to look for a fitting and lasting way to commemorate the life and contributions of this extraordinary man.

The polio that paralyzed Roberts from the neck down at the age of 14 turned out to be a catalyst rather than a roadblock in his life, and he went on to become the first severely disabled student to attend UC Berkeley — where each night he retired to an iron lung in the student health center. A pioneer of the independent living movement, Roberts became the second executive director of Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living. Later he was tapped by Governor Jerry Brown to head the state Department of Rehabilitation before returning to the East Bay to found the World Institute on Disability. Fittingly, all three of the organizations where Roberts made his mark are now housed at the campus that bears his name.

Visiting the Ed Roberts Campus

3075 Adeline Street, Berkeley, CA
(at the Ashby BART station)
Hours: Weekdays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
510.225.6300
Info@edrobertscampus.org
edrobertscampus.org

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Transactions Spring 2011 Issue: Contents