Indiana Disability History

Title

Senator Tom Harkin - Americans with Disabilities Act: The Past and the Future

Subject

Legislation

Disability Rights Movement

Employment

Description

"I must be completely honest - I was not the first person to introduce the Americans with Disabilities Act," retired U.S. Senator Tom Harkin pointed out in an interview with the Indiana Disability History Project. In fact, Senator Harkin had been one of the main authors of the landmark civil rights legislation, and became its chief Senate sponsor. He also gives credit to the ADAPT "Capitol Crawl" action on March 12, 1990 with influencing legislators to finally get the law on the books. Before the end of May of that year, the bill had been passed by both chambers of the House. It was signed by President George H.W. Bush on July 26. In this 2017 interview excerpt, he looks back on a historic moment and forward to the work ahead. In his view, the next frontier is jobs. "We have not broken through on employment."

Tom Harkin was a United States Senator from Iowa from 1985 to 2015. He was interviewed on December 4, 2017 at the Indiana Governor’s Council for People with Disabilities Conference where he was the keynote speaker.

Creator

Indiana Disability History Project

Publisher

Center for Health Equity at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community and Indiana Governor's Council for People with Disabilities

Date

2018-02-23

Contributor

Tom Harkin - interviewee

Jennie Todd - interviewer

Peggy Holtz - videographer/editor

Rights

Format

video/mp4

Language

English

Type

Moving Image

Identifier

103-mi-01

Access Rights

Open to all users

Bibliographic Citation

"Senator Tom Harkin - Americans with Disabilities Act: The Past and the Future" YouTube video, 00:06:10, interview excerpt 103-mi-01 by the Indiana Disability History Project, posted by "Indiana Disability History" on September 14, 2018,
https://youtu.be/M0Ktb7-aDS0

Spatial Coverage

District of Columbia, Washington

Temporal Coverage

1985 - 2017