Blinded by medical intervention as a baby, Billups became one of the leaders of a groundbreaking, world-shaking 1977 protest. He talks about what drives him and why Barack Obama loves his energy
“My mother used to tell us we had to be really good,” says Dennis Billups. “There were always two strikes against us – so you had to hit the third strike out of the park.” The “strikes” were being Black and being blind. And growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s, both were potential sources of open discrimination. “There were times when, even walking in our own neighbourhood, we would get: ‘You’re supposed to stay inside.’ ‘Don’t you have a dog?’ ‘Don’t you have a cane?’” At times this could turn physical. “Some neighbours would turn water on us and stuff like that.” Finding employment was also a challenge. “Being blind, they didn’t have to do too much except say: ‘We’re not going to hire you,’ or: ‘We don’t think you can do this.’ So it was a glass ceiling, more or less. I’m sure with my twin sister there was a lot more, being a woman, African American and blind as well, but she was a hell of a fighter.”
Billups is a fighter, too, albeit one whose principal weapons are determination, congeniality, optimism – and a mellifluous voice. Now in his late 60s, speaking on Zoom from the San Francisco public library, he still radiates an infectious positivity that helped him as a young man when he played a key role in a lesser-known battle for civil rights.
