Kitty Cone was an American disability rights activist.
24 Facts About Kitty Cone
1.
2.
Kitty Cone moved to the California Bay Area in 1972, and began working as a community organizer for the disability rights movement in 1974.
3.
Curtis Seldon Cone was born on April 7,1944, in Champaign, Illinois.
4.
Kitty Cone's father was a lawyer during their time in Florida, but left the firm, joined the army , and the family moved to Georgia.
5.
Once the family was in Georgia, Cone began receiving treatment for her disability, which at that time, was misdiagnosed.
6.
Kitty Cone moved with her mother back to Champaign during the time that her father was serving with the army in Japan.
7.
Kitty Cone's diagnosis changed around this time from cerebral palsy to polio.
8.
Where Kitty Cone attended school, at Holton Arms school in Washington, DC, the school buildings were several stories high.
9.
When Kitty Cone was in her mid-teens, her family moved to Kentucky.
10.
Kitty Cone was successful in academics and very popular, but was expelled after one semester.
11.
Kitty Cone had various rules imposed only on her, and her failure to follow some of them led to her expulsion.
12.
Kitty Cone began using a wheelchair on campus and had to learn how to do daily activities while using a wheelchair.
13.
Kitty Cone had cancer, but Cone did not know about it.
14.
Kitty Cone finished the semester, but returned home after the semester was over to help with her younger brother and stayed home through the fall semester of 1963.
15.
Kitty Cone was becoming weaker about her second year of college and appealed to the Dean to move off campus into an apartment of her own, so she might experience living on her own before she was physically unable to do so.
16.
Kitty Cone noted the dormitory curfew imposed on women at the time was hard to make when she was so active in the community.
17.
Kitty Cone liked the work they were doing and approached Ed Roberts about working with the Center for Independent Living.
18.
Kitty Cone had experience in political organizing, so she was hired for the Community Affairs Department.
19.
Kitty Cone pursued implementation of Section 504 by protesting at the San Francisco Transbay Terminal in 1978, organizing Disabled People's Civil Rights Day in October 1979 in San Francisco, and lobbying in Washington against the Cleveland Amendment, which would have allowed local agencies to provide paratransit services instead of creating accessible public transportation systems.
20.
Kitty Cone was among 500 attendees at a protest at the San Francisco City Hall September 27,1987, while a public transit conference was being held at the Moscone Convention Center.
21.
Kitty Cone retired in 1999, but remained active with DREDF.
22.
Kitty Cone was unable to marry her partner, Kathy Martinez, due to legal restrictions on gay marriage.
23.
Kitty Cone was an alcoholic and stopped drinking in the 1970s.
24.
Kitty Cone died on March 21,2015, of pancreatic cancer in Berkeley, California, two weeks shy of her 71st birthday.