The True Story Behind Being Heumann and the Longest Sit-In in U.S. History

“Like Dog Day Afternoon with disabled people.” This is how director Siân Heder describes a portion of disability rights activist Judy Heumann’s memoir concerning the enforcement of Section 504, an aspect of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act. This provision meant that people could not discriminate against anyone with disabilities in public buildings, from schools to universities, hospitals to the halls of government. It also meant those buildings had to be compliant and physically accessible to disabled people. But five years later, in 1977, Section 504 was still not enforced, and Heumann was not going to let that stand.The year before, newly elected President Jimmy Carter had promised to enforce Section 504, but his secretary of health, education and welfare, Joseph Califano, said he needed more time to review it. Exasperated and furious over their inaction, Heumann and a group of disability activists staged a sit-in at the San Francisco Health, Education and Welfare federal building on Apr 5, 1977. It was the longest occupation of a federal building in U.S. history.Heder, whose previous film CODA won the Oscar for Best Picture, has turned that portion of Heumann’s story into the cinematic vision she had while reading about it. Her new film Being Heumann tells the story of Judy Heumann (Ruth Madeley) and the courageous activists who helped enforce Section 504. TIME spoke with Heder, Madeley, and Kristen Joiner, executive producer and co-writer of Heumann’s memoir Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist, about Heumann's story and how the group brought the historic sit-in to life. The mother of the disability rights movementJudy Heumann speaks during a 'Section 504' demonstration in UN Plaza, San Francisco, Calif., April 5, 1977 HolLynn D'Lil/Getty ImagesJoiner first met Heumann in 2016. “Judy was deciding whether or not she wanted to work with me,” she recalls. “I immediately warmed to her because she was so direct, and I was drawn to that. My first thought when I met her was: ‘How did I not know about this story?’” Joiner told Heumann that it wasn’t until she heard her story that she understood that disability rights is a civil rights issue. “Judy’s reaction set the tone for our whole relationship. She said: ‘Let me get this straight. You have a background in human rights, and you never saw disability as a civil rights issue. Why do you want to write my story?’ I said: ‘Because I have this enormous blind spot.’”Judy snapped back without missing a beat: “Don’t say blind spot.”Joiner earned Heumann’s trust, maintaining a profound respect for the activist’s conviction in her beliefs and willingness to say what she thought without apology. They wrote Heumann’s memoir together over several years. That very comment about the word “blind spot” even features in Heder’s film during one of several heated conversations between activists at the sit-in.Heder came across Heumann’s story in 2020. At Sundance, a friend of hers working on the documentary Crip Camp, which would go on to earn an Oscar nomination, told Heder she had to make a movie about Heumann. So the filmmaker read her memoir and sent a cold email about making a film about her. “She wrote me back right away and said, ‘I’m in the last 24 hours of making a decision about a filmmaker, and if you can meet today at 5, you can be in the running,” recalls Heder.Heder made herself available and pitched her idea to Heumann, highlighting her desire to make it with a disabled cast. “She was so excited by that idea. Judy and I had a very beautiful collaboration for two years. We talked all the time,” says Heder.Heder began her research with Heumann’s memoir. She interviewed around 30 people who were directly involved with the protests. “I talked with anyone who was still alive,” says Heder. The filmmaker also drew upon a collection of oral histories recorded through the Paul K. Longmore Foundation at San Francisco University. That included a 200 page document where Kitty Cone (played in the movie by Madeline Delp), one of the sit-in leaders, discussed the protest. “She talked about feeling like she and Judy held onto too much control, and they should have empowered people. A lot of the conflict in the movie came out of really digging into Kitty’s oral history,” says Heder.“Conflict was an underlying theme in Judy’s life,” says Joiner. “Talking to her over the years, it was story after story of her being rejected. Judy was basically bullied by the world. She couldn’t go to kindergarten. She wasn’t allowed in school. It was one instance after another of being excluded. But she never internalized it. She never decided the world was right and she was wrong. She decided the world was wrong and she was going to change it.”When it came to inhabiting Heumann, Madeley, also a wheelchair user, was drawn to the way the activist spoke about her mother. Heumann’s grandparents were killed in the Holocaust, and her Jewish parents both were sent from Germany to the United States as teenagers. “Her mom used to drag her wheelchair up the stairs every day and fight with principals to let her in. I remember my own mother fighting to get one single ramp in school. I still didn’t have any rights as a disabled kid because our laws didn’t get passed til ‘95,” says Madeley, who is British.“I remember hearing about that determination, and being so aware of that from such a young age. Sian encouraged me to think about my mom and that connection to what Judy felt about her mum, and that was really special,” Madeley says.The world often reduces disabled people to their disability, but Being Heumann depicts Heumann as fully well-rounded as she was in real life. She’s sexy, complicated, hot-headed, frustrating, and determined. “The film really understands the combination of her warrior-like insistence on remaking the world for everybody like her, combined with the vulnerability underneath that,” says Joiner.The longest sit-in in U.S. historyMichael Patrick Thornton, Andrew Pilkington, Rein Barcel, Ruth Madeley, Rio Finnegan, Antwan Tolliver, Roberta Colindrez, Ray Fisher and D’Arcee Charington Neal in Being Heumann Courtesy of AppleThere were so many reasons why a sit-in at the San Francisco HEW federal building would never work. First and foremost, it was to be done largely by around 150 people with disabilities taking up residence in a building that wasn’t designed with disabilities in mind. The adaptations they had to make, or “hacks,” as Heder calls them, were ingenious. In one example, the protesters reconfigured an air conditioning unit to turn it into a refrigerator to store everyone’s medication. In another, after the FBI cut off the phones in the building, the deaf protesters realized they could sign out the windows to maintain communication with the outside world. “They had to become this working organism,” says Heder. They didn’t do it alone. Help from other organizations was imperative. The Black Panther Party, for example, provided hot meals daily for the protesters. The Mayor’s office provided support through delivering mattresses and even portable showers. Conditions were tough, and as the days wore on, concerns around survival increased.Through it all, Heumann led the way by bringing people together. “One of the most brilliant things about her leadership is that she never wanted it to be all about her. It was about the collective,” says Joiner. Being Heumann highlights the intersectionality in activism, showing how people with different disabilities came together, and often clashed, in an effort to make the world a better place for all of them. The many discussions held during the course of the sit-in show the vastly different needs of people with different disabilities. The wheelchair users want curb cuts to allow them to travel streets, but a blind person notes that curb cuts actually make things more challenging. These discussions, inspired by real conversations the protesters had, weave a rich tapestry of activism. “I’m constantly saying intersectionality is so important when it comes to disability,” says Madeley. She explains: “I want to know more about experiences of disability and race. I want to know more about disability and sexuality. I think that’s what’s so exciting about this movie. It’s not just Judy’s character—everyone has their own unique experience with where they are in the world.”There was plenty of arguing and in-fighting, as such a tense situation naturally breeds. But a vibrant community spirit also emerged through the protests. One of the most intriguing details in Being Heumann is a sex tent, established by the protesters in the federal building for…well, exactly what it suggests. That was no cinematic flourish, but a real element of the 504 sit in. “Sexuality was very important to me,” says Heder. “This was the ‘70s. It was a sexy time—these were counterculture people. Disabled characters are often infantilized or desexualised,” Heder adds, “but a sexual revolution was happening in the building. People were doing drugs for the first time. There was so much exploration happening, so tapping into that was essential, and really fun.”The final showdown Mark Ruffalo as Joseph Califano Courtesy of AppleEleven days into the protest, Califano (played by Mark Ruffalo) finally agrees to come to the federal building to meet with the protesters and hear their testimony on the importance of 504. But instead of coming himself, Califano sends Gene Eidenberg (Will Brill), his assistant. Heumann is devastated by this blow, and can barely hold herself together. She’s nothing short of furious, but stays and goes through with the conversation with Eidenberg. “Even though she’s on the verge of tears, she won’t leave the room. The movie captures the way that Judy would never write people off,” says Joiner. After 20 days in the building, the leaders of the sit-in, including Heumann and Cone, at the end of their rope, decided to confront Califano directly. With many of the activists flying from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. to protest outside his house, a number of protesters remain in the building to keep the sit-in going so the fight for Section 504 wouldn’t lose steam. Those who traveled across the country hold candlelit vigils over several days on Califano’s front lawn. When Califano continues to elude the activists, they return back to San Francisco to the sit-in. But not Heumann, who stays in D.C. “I have to stay here and keep the pressure on,” she tells Cone in the film. “They like you better anyway. I’m the asshole.” She responds: “You’re the asshole we needed.”Califano continued to ignore Heumann’s calls, but on April 28, 1977, he signed the regulations. Heumann and her fellow activists were victorious. There is some confusion over how many days the sit-in lasted. Many articles cite it 24 or 25 days, though Being Heumann claims 26 days. Any of these numbers would still make it the longest sit-in in US history.Instead of going back to San Francisco to celebrate their hard-won victory, Judy decided to stay in D.C. to ensure that 504 would finally become law. The decision speaks to her character. “For Judy, it was all about the cause. She'd been put off so many times and told, ‘Oh, something will happen tomorrow. It'll happen. It'll happen.’ She never took people at their word until it was concrete,” says Joiner.However, the decision threw Heder a challenge. “I always pictured the end of the movie being Judy rolling out of the building with everybody celebrating. When she told me she didn’t come back from D.C., I was like, ‘Well, I don’t have an end to my movie.’” But Heder eventually realized it was “the biggest character reveal I could ask for. The fact that the moment she won, was right on to the next thing that had to be accomplished. She could see the possibility for the ADA. It was this laser focus of this woman and her relentlessness that unlocked this character for me.”Though the San Francisco sit-in ended in triumph, there was a bittersweet feeling for the protesters when it all ended. Walking out the doors to cheering crowds celebrating the victory was euphoric, but leaving meant going back to a world that didn’t quite understand them. “There was a sense of freedom while they’re locked in this building, away from judgment and people pitying them,” says Madeley. “They could just be, and explore sex. They could explore drugs. They could just be rebellious.”Madeley adds: “So many of them didn’t want to leave at the end because of how free they felt in those walls. It was like camp was over—they didn’t want to go.”Thirteen years after the sit-in, the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, though even today, the fight for disability access is far from over. Heumann continued her activism, serving in the Clinton and Obama administrations. Until her death on March 4, 2023, she never stopped fighting for disability rights.