Who I'm Looking Up To: Paul Steven Miller and Billy Barty

To commemorate the end of dwarfism awareness month, for this week’s installment of Who I’m Looking Up To I decided to highlight not one, but two little people who have made a major impact. 

The first is Paul Steven Miller. For almost 10 years he served as a Commissioner of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and in 2009 was appointed as a special assistant to President Obama.

He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1986, four years before passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. He was asked to apply to over 40 law firms yet, when they knew he was a little person, received 45 rejection letters without being granted an interview. One firm rejected him out of fear their clients would consider his employment as a “circus freak show” and while another told him directly "We're not going to hire you because we think our clients would think we are running a freak circus if they saw you." A law firm did eventually hire him and, in 1990, he became the director of litigation for the Western Law Center for Disability Rights at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. 

After President Clinton’s election in 1992, Miller worked for the transition team as a disability outreach and search manager. He continued to work for the administration in various other positions and, in 1994, President Clinton appointed him to the EEOC. During his ten year tenure, one of the longest of any commissioner, he worked to develop an alternative dispute resolution program to resolve discrimination claims before litigation, specifically structured negotiations, that proved more successful in the adoption of accessibility measures in the workplace. 

He resigned from the commission in 2004 and became a professor at the University of Washington Law School. During his professorship, he continued to write about the relationship between disability rights and genetic science. His work led to the passage of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in 2008 which bars the use of genetic information in health insurance coverage and employment. Specifically, insurance companies cannot deny coverage nor charge higher premiums and employers cannot hire/fire/promote based on one’s genetic information. This law was championed by Senator Ted Kennedy as the “first major new civil rights bill of the new century”. 

In 2007, Miller joined then Senator Obama’s Disability Policy Committee and, upon Obama’s election, was appointed as a special assistant- responsible for managing Justice Department appointments and disability-related programs. 

A colleague summarized his lasting legacy and influence perfectly:

“Paul Miller may have been born a dwarf, but in reality he is a giant. We are all better for seeing a little further from the perch of his shoulders."

The second little person I want to highlight is Billy Barty. Billy Barty was an actor and activist.

Born with cartilage–hair hypoplasia, Barty started his acting career in the 1920’s, appearing with Mickey Rooney in Mickey McGuire shorts. He was often cast as outspoken characters opposite taller actors for comedic effect. During the 1960s, Barty starred in Billy Barty's Bigtop, a southern California children’s show. The show was often a young child’s introduction to a real little person rather than an animated character such as the seven dwarves from Snow White. He regularly appeared on The Red Foxx Show and made guest appearances on Little House on the Prairie, The Love Boat, The Golden Girls and many other shows during the 1970’s and 80’s. For his contributions to the film industry he was awarded with a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 1981. 

When researching Billy Barty, I found a blog post written by Mark Evanier, a writer who worked with him. He recalled that Barty, while an advocate for little people, also knew how to make fun of himself. He told a story about how one time, when going for lunch, Barty offered to drive because his car was closer to the set. Barty was easily able to get into the driver’s seat. Evanier did not have the same fortune-  having to sit in the back at Barty’s suggestion after failing to contort himself into the front passenger seat. He went on to write that when having a conversation, Evanier (who was 6’3”) would either stoop or kneel down. At the end of most of these conversations, as Barty walked away he would turn around and say to Evanier, grinning, “I'm leaving now. You can get up." 

However, what makes Billy Barty truly inspirational was his activism off-screen. He was outspoken against fellow actor Herve Villechaize’s insistence that he, and people like him, were “midgets”. This frustrated him as Barty was working hard to remove the stigma revolving around the word “dwarf”. In 1957, he organized a get-together in Reno, Nevada with 21 fellow little people. That gathering marked the beginning of Little People of America (LPA).

Billy Barty passed away in 2000 but his legacy lives on. LPA  is now an international non-profit organization that provides support to little people. We celebrate Dwarfism Awareness Day on Barty’s birthday, October 25. I’ll close with his words: