[2] She moved to the California Bay Area in 1972, and began working as a community organizer for the disability rights movement in 1974.
[4] A few years later, she moved with her family to Maryland, where she began receiving surgeries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
During her early teen years, Cone had walking casts to stretch out her tendons in her legs, but did not use crutches at the time.
[4] She 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.
[4] During her time at University of Illinois, Cone organized and participated in activism about the Vietnam war, civil rights, and poverty.
After short stints in Chicago and Atlanta, Cone moved to Oakland, California in 1974 and connected with the Center for Independent Living.
[5] Initially Joseph Califano, U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, refused to sign meaningful regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which was the first U.S. federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities.
[7] After an ultimatum and deadline, demonstrations took place in ten U.S. cities on April 5, 1977, including the beginning of the 504 Sit-in at the San Francisco Office of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
She 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.
[1] In 1984 she began working at the World Institute on Disability, where she researched international personal care assistance programs.
[1] She 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.
[13] In 1990 she began working for the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF)'s lawyer referral service, and in 1993 she became its development director.