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LACY: Because I always felt that while obviously there was some commonality between being a minority and being disabled, in terms of how you were treated in the civil rights thing. . .

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that there were some profound differences in the way that a black person with a disability was perceived, both in the black community and in the disability community.

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INTERVIEWER: Speak about those differences.

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LACY: Well, I think one of the most significant ideas that I learned about was when I was working with directors of the Community Action agencies, and the disability program.

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LACY: Those agencies were really, really disturbing a lot of the agency managers. I had to attend many of the meetings of the Community Action managers. . .

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LACY: and I could remember one manager standing up and declaring, very loudly, that he didn�t see a difference between disabled people and black people,

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because he was black and he felt just as disabled as a disabled person.

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LACY: I think he got big support from that statement. I think it clearly was a dividing point between the way blacks saw disability and the way that black disabled people saw disability.

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INTERVIEWER: Meaning that you clearly felt that there was . . .

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LACY: There's a difference.

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INTERVIEWER: And that you have an additional area of discrimination that you face.

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LACY: Absolutely. What I found out though was that there were a lot of - the disabled people who lived in the community denied that that was different.

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INTERVIEWER: Which disabled people?

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LACY: Black disabled people. Because they felt the need to identify as black people in the community.

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LACY: They, like myself, early on, felt that you can�t identify with two groups; you�ve got to identify with one or the other.