An 8-year-old girl got out of her wheelchair, crawled up the steps of the U.S. Capitol, and helped change American civil rights forever.
It wasn't a normal protest. It wasn't just a political slogan that was said for the cameras. There was no way to ignore the picture: a child with cerebral palsy pulling herself up cold marble steps and demanding something that should have been obvious: equality.
A Country That Closed Its Doors
To get what happened on March 12, 1990, you need to know what life was like for disabled Americans before that date.
There were no ramps on the sidewalks. No bathrooms that are easy to get to in restaurants. There are no lifts on public buses. There is no closed captioning on TV. Kids with disabilities were often put in different classrooms or not allowed to enroll at all. Employers could choose not to hire someone just because they used a wheelchair. A deaf person could be turned away from a movie theater. A young woman with cerebral palsy might not be able to go to the movies in her town.
Some estimates say that 43 million Americans had a disability. They were the biggest minority in the country, but no one paid attention to them. Frank Bowe, a scholar of disability rights, asked in the 1980s, "What happens when you take a group of people and make it impossible for them to work, live, or move freely in society?"
The answer was the disability rights movement, which had been fighting for decades.
The Way to the Capitol
The fight didn't start in 1990. Since the 1800s, there have been groups run by and for people with disabilities. The League of the Physically Handicapped was formed in the 1930s to help people with disabilities find work during the Great Depression. The group "We Are Not Alone" was formed in the 1940s by psychiatric patients to help each other. In 1977, disability activists staged a famous 26-day sit-in at the San Francisco offices of Health, Education, and Welfare. This was the longest occupation of a federal building in American history. They did this to force the implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which made it illegal for federal programs to discriminate against people with disabilities.
But Section 504 only applied to schools and colleges that got money from the federal government. It didn't affect the rest of society. The community needed a broad civil rights law, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The National Council on Disability wrote the first draft of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1986. In 1988, it was officially presented to Congress, and in 1989, it was changed. The Senate passed it by a huge 76–8 vote, with support from both parties and strong backing from President George H.W. Bush. But then the bill stopped. It came to a stop in the House of Representatives, stuck in the discussions of four different subcommittees. Many representatives didn't like how expensive and complicated the ADA's requirements were. Lobbyists for business said it would be too expensive. The bill sat around.
It felt like a betrayal to a community that had been waiting for decades. Wade Blank, a reverend, former civil rights marcher, and co-founder of ADAPT, said it was time for direct action.
The Wheels of Justice, March 12, 1990
In the early hours of March 12, 1990, disability rights activists from all over the country gathered in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. Then, more than 700 of them, some in wheelchairs, some on crutches, some with white canes and service dogs, started what they called the "Wheels of Justice March." They walked and rolled the mile-long route from the White House to the west front of the U.S. Capitol.
ADAPT, or American Disabled for Accessible Public Transit, led the march. This grassroots group had been holding confrontational protests all over the country since 1983. They had stopped city buses in Denver, taken over transit offices, and been arrested dozens of times. They had been disrupting meetings of the American Public Transit Association for seven years, demanding transportation that was easy to get to. They won in Denver: the Regional Transit District gave in and ordered 89 new accessible buses. But they wanted more than just buses. They wanted all of their civil rights.
When the marchers got to the Capitol, they saw 83 marble steps leading up to the entrance of the "People's House." There was no ramp. This was an architectural symbol of everything they were fighting against. There is no elevator. No accommodations of any kind.
For people in wheelchairs, the seat of American democracy was out of reach.
That was the point.
"We Will Not Let These Steps Take Away Our Equality"
Mike Auberger, a top ADAPT organizer who was paralyzed in a car accident and now uses a wheelchair, spoke to the crowd and said, "We will not let these steps keep us from getting the equality that is rightfully ours."
Then something happened that the whole country had to see.
Around 60 activists got out of their wheelchairs. They put their walkers and crutches away. And they started to crawl.
They pulled themselves up the cold marble stairs of the Capitol hand over hand, inch by inch, and step by step. Some people climbed on their backs. Others pulled themselves forward by their stomachs. Some people dragged their paralyzed legs behind them. The marble was hard and wouldn't give in. It was warm outside. The cameras flashed and whirred. The United States was watching.
Anita Cameron, a young African American woman who was both blind and had multiple sclerosis, was one of them. She later remembered thinking, "Whoa, we are doing it," as she fought her way up. We're really doing it. We're crawling into the past.
And a little girl was at the center of it all.
Jen
Jennifer Keelan was born in Michigan in 1981, a month early, and she only weighed three pounds and ten ounces. When she was two years old, she was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a condition that caused lesions in the motor cortex of her brain and made it hard for her to control her muscles and movement. Doctors told Jennifer's mother, Cynthia Keelan, and her grandfather, Chuck, that she would never be able to walk, talk, or learn. They said she should be put in a home or put up for adoption.
Her family said no. Cynthia remembered, "When she was born, she had her fist in the air. " We just let her finish it.
Jennifer had to fight as a child. She fought to go to school every day, but they told her she didn't belong. She fought for buses that everyone could use, but she was told they were too expensive. When she was six years old, she went to her first protest in Phoenix, Arizona, where she marched with ADAPT for better public transportation. It made a big difference in her life. She later said, "This was the first time I had ever seen people with disabilities like me fight for their rights when I was six."
She had been protesting for seven years by then. She and her mother were arrested in Montreal while protesting at a meeting of the American Public Transportation Association. The police had to ask for accessible school buses to take the arrested activists to jail because the city didn't even have accessible paddywagons. Everyone saw the irony.
Jennifer was eight years old on March 12, 1990. She was ready to go up.
"I'll Stay Up All Night If I Have To."
Some of the people who organized ADAPT hesitated when they saw Jennifer getting ready to leave her wheelchair and crawl up the steps of the Capitol. They were worried that the picture of a disabled child pulling herself up the stairs would make people feel sorry for her instead of strong. They were afraid it would weaken the movement's message of strength and freedom.
They were wrong about Jennifer.
She told them, "If someone my age didn't do it, then no one from my generation would be shown."
She got out of her wheelchair and started to climb.
One step at a time. Hand in hand. With a fierce look of determination on her small face. Her mother watched from below, crying. The crowd yelled and chanted:
"What do we want?" ADA! When do we want it? Right now!
The stone burned her hands. The steps seemed to go on and on. But she kept going. She yelled at the cameras, "I'll take all night if I have to!" She meant every word she said.
She felt stronger the higher she went. She later said, "I felt like all the kids who couldn't be there were behind me." "I thought it was important to not only speak for myself, but also for them and their voices."
Her mother was waiting for her at the top after she had climbed all 83 steps. The people went crazy.
The Day After: People Get Arrested in the Rotunda
The Capitol Crawl was just the start. On March 13, the next day, about 150 protesters went into the Capitol Building for a sit-in at the Rotunda. They chanted "Access is a civil right!" and "The people united will never be defeated!" while chaining their wheelchairs together with heavy chains.
Wade Blank, who led the protest, said, "We're using the same strategies that worked in the '60s to get rights for Black and brown people and women to help people with disabilities."
The Capitol police cleared the Rotunda of tourists in riot gear, then came in with big chain cutters and acetylene torches. They cut the chains that held the activists' wheelchairs together over the course of two hours and wheeled them out of the building one by one. There were 104 arrests in all, including Jennifer's mother, Cynthia, who was arrested at her daughters' request. Later, Jennifer said, "My mom asked if we wanted her to get arrested for us." "And both Kailee and I told Mom to get arrested."
But the momentum could not be stopped.
The Law That Changed America
The arrests at the Capitol Crawl and Rotunda shocked everyone in Washington. The pictures were on the front pages of newspapers. The footage was shown on TV over and over again. The picture of an eight-year-old girl climbing the steps of the Capitol became one of the most important symbols in the history of civil rights in the United States.
Congress could not put things off any longer. The House passed the ADA much faster than it had before.
On July 26, 1990, four months later, President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law at a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. About 3,000 people came, making it the biggest signing ceremony ever at the White House. "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" was played by the U.S. Marine Band. Justin Dart Jr., a wheelchair-bound activist known as "the father of the ADA," and Evan Kemp, the chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, sat next to the president.
Bush said in his speech that 43 million Americans had disabilities. He talked about "breaking down the wall of exclusion with a sledgehammer." He told the story of Lisa Carl, a young woman from Washington State with cerebral palsy who had been turned away from her hometown movie theater but would never be turned away again.
The ADA was the first law in the world to protect the civil rights of people with disabilities. It changed the way people lived every day all over the country:
They put curb cuts and ramps on the sidewalks.
Public buildings had to have elevators, wheelchair access, and bathrooms that were easy to get to.
Public places started to use Braille signs all the time.
Television had to have closed captioning.
Public transportation had to be easy to get to.
Employers had to make "reasonable accommodations" for workers who had disabilities.
Kids with disabilities now have the right to go to regular schools.
All public places, like restaurants, hotels, theaters, and shopping malls, had to be accessible.
Before 1990, it was almost impossible to imagine the rights that over 61 million Americans with disabilities now take for granted. The CDC says this is about 26% of all adults in the U.S.
Today with Jennifer
Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins, as she is now known, was born in 1981, so she is 44 years old now. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her mother Cynthia and her dog Mya, who is a service dog.
After the Capitol Crawl, her life didn't go smoothly downhill. She kept fighting—for her right to an education, for her privacy and dignity, and for her basic civil rights. In 1990, the same year the law was signed, she won the Americans with Disabilities Act Award. She got her GED in 2002 and then graduated from Arizona State University in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in Family and Human Development.
She started Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins LLC to keep doing her advocacy work. She worked with Nabi H. Ali, an award-winning children's book illustrator, and Annette Bay Pimentel, an award-winning children's book author, on the picture book All the Way to the Top: How One Girl's Fight for Americans with Disabilities Changed Everything. It teaches kids that they can make a difference at any age. The book was nominated for the 2022 Nutmeg Children's Book Award, and Kirkus Reviews called it "a necessary testament to the power of children's voices."
Artist Gina Klawitter used her as the model for a sculpture called "All the Way to Freedom," which reimagined her historic climb. She worked with BraunAbility, a company that makes accessible vehicles, to make a modified van that she can drive by herself. She is now a teacher and motivational speaker who goes to schools all over the country to teach kids about disability rights, how to be included, and how to stand up for themselves.
The Floor, Not the Roof
But Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins will be the first to tell you that the fight isn't over.
There are still big gaps in the ADA more than 30 years after it was passed. People with disabilities are still twice as likely to be unemployed as the general population. A lot of buildings, especially older ones, aren't fully accessible yet. People who are blind, deaf, or have motor impairments still can't use a lot of websites and digital platforms. In many cities, public transportation systems are still not good enough. There are still not enough affordable and accessible homes.
The ADA Amendments Act, which Congress passed in 2008, made the original law's protections stronger. In 2017, ADAPT activists staged dramatic protests against proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Pictures of police pulling protesters out of their wheelchairs in the same Capitol hallways where the Crawl had taken place nearly thirty years earlier made national news again.
"The ADA was the floor," says Anita Cameron, who crawled up the Capitol steps with Jennifer in 1990. It wasn't the ceiling. It was the start of our rights, not the end.
The Capitol Crawl story is a reminder that making things accessible isn't the same as giving them away. It's not a favor. It is a basic civil right. And sometimes, the fight for civil rights takes 83 steps, with people the world tried to ignore but who refused to be invisible climbing one inch at a time.
"The further up the steps I went, the more I felt empowered. I felt like I had all of the other kids behind me who couldn't be there." — Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins