UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Since his days as an education and public policy major in Penn State’s College of Education, Elijah Armstrong has interned for a U.S. Senator and a Colorado congressman, earned a master’s degree from Harvard, received the Paul G. Hearne Emerging Leader Award and founded a scholarship for students with disabilities. He believes his current appointment as a fellow with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBC) in Washington, D.C., ultimately will enable him to help more people.
Translation: The young activist is just getting started.
The genesis of his advocacy role stems from his days in a Florida college preparatory school that refused to accommodate his needs when his photosensitive epileptic reaction to flashing lights in a school classroom continued to make him ill and forced multiple hospitalizations.
He hasn’t stopped standing up for those with disabilities since.
Armstrong started a "No Hate Penn State" organization in 2017 designed to help create a Penn State experience that is safe and inclusive for all students. He also had a hand in developing Equal Opportunities for Students, a student-led national organization that deals with educational equity and promotes civil rights in education that is in conjunction with the American Association of People with Disabilities.
“Obviously, this was something I was hoping for and worked really hard for, but I had no idea that this was going to be the way that it turned out. Having the support of professors during my time at Penn State really helped me to get to where I am now,” Armstrong said, citing education professors Dana Mitra and Mimi Schaub and agricultural sciences professor Mark Brennan as a few who provided valuable assistance.
“Elijah connects his keen intellect with the use of personal narratives to help to make policy issues compelling,” said Mitra, professor of education (education policy studies). “He also seeks out opportunities and makes the most of each one, so that his influence builds and he continues to learn and share his wisdom with others.”
Armstrong checks a lot of other boxes, too, Mitra said. “Elijah is an honorable human being. He is dedicated to issues of equity. He is a role model. He is wise, responsible, hard-working,” she said.
Armstrong started a six-month stint in January serving in a Congressional office as part of the CBC. “And then the next six months after that I am on a committee; I’m not sure what committee yet,” he said. “There’s also a social justice project, which goes on at that point over the course of the year, which I’ll be presenting on in December.”
He said he believes he would not have his role with the CBC were it not for the internships with Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-Colorado) and U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania). “It’s a very competitive program and you have to have a master’s, and the fact that I was able to come in and say I already have experience on both the House side and the Senate side, I think, very much played a role in me being able to get these positions,” Armstrong explained.
“That internship with Senator Casey’s office was done through the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD). It was a special internship program where they have disabled youth from across the country. They place them in nonprofits in federal government and local areas and companies too, and I was one of those interns in 2018. And I’m still in contact with a lot of people from AAPD,” he added.
Armstrong won the Paul G. Hearne Emerging Leader Award in 2021 and with the $7,500 stipend that accompanied it, he founded the Heumann-Armstrong Award, in conjunction with Judy Heumann, known by many, Armstrong said, as the "mother of the disability rights movement."
Armstrong said his in-school struggles prior to enrolling at Penn State set him reeling and he “didn’t get his feet under him” and “feel good about himself” until he was a second-year student. His Heumann-Armstrong scholarship award allows students with disabilities to tell their stories.
“Oftentimes students with disabilities have to fight for their own accessibility, they have to do so much advocacy and so much building their own way around so that they can create their own accessibility,” he said.
“But a lot of times that labor goes unacknowledged," he added. "It’s a way for them to get financial compensation, a way for students with disabilities to specifically be able to compete for an award for them because very rarely are there specifically student education awards for students with disabilities. We have conversations about ableism in education, but we don’t really hear the student voice too much.”
Armstrong said he is aware that being a change-agent is a vitally important role but claims he hasn’t reached that status just yet. “There’s a level of systemic power which I don’t have to make the kind of change that I want to,” he said.
“At the same time, I recognize I do have privilege; I do have a level of institutional respect just based on the fact that I have college degrees, but I also recognize the fact that there’s a lot of changes that I want to make that I don’t currently have the power to.”
He noted that a lot of the activism he does involves a lot of convincing people to change their minds. “I don’t want to be in a position where it’s constantly trying to convince people that as a marginalized person, you need rights,” Armstrong said. “I think the true change-agent comes when someone’s able to change it themselves without having to convince someone else of the need for something to change.”
He said he knows he’s already helped people at this young stage of his life and agrees that service is likely his life’s calling, but he remains uncertain how that role will specifically unfold.
“I very much feel like at the current moment and for the foreseeable future, that this is something I definitely need to be doing, because it’s important and it’s been having a huge impact,” Armstrong said.