Curtis Seldon Cone (Kitty) was born on April 7, 1944, in
Champaign, Illinois. Their family moved to Florida once her father returned from
World War II. She was successful in academics and very popular, but was expelled after one semester. Cone had various rules imposed only on her, and her failure to follow some of them led to her expulsion. Due to her disability and her father being in the military, Cone attended a total of thirteen schools. She attended the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She began using a wheelchair on campus and had to learn how to do daily activities while using a wheelchair. She was active in cheerleading and Student Senate. While running for Student Senate, she was interviewed by
Roger Ebert, who at the time, was editor of
The Daily Illini. At the end of her first year of college, her mother died suddenly. She had cancer, but Cone did not know about it. It is said her mother was misdiagnosed with what was referred to as nerves. She finished the semester, but returned home after the semester was over to help with her younger brother and stayed home through the fall semester of 1963. Her next year of school she got involved with the
NAACP. It was at this time that she was heavily involved with the
Civil Rights Movement. 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. She also noted the dormitory curfew imposed on women at the time was hard to make when she was so active in the community. The Dean had her consult with the head of her academic program. The head of her program said something about her getting weaker because of all the protests she participated in and then hinted that she only wanted to live on her own so she could have sexual relationships. During her time on campus, she and other students with disabilities were advised to not ask for or accept help from other students, so as to not appear weak or unfit for employment. Cone left college six hours from her degree. ==Activism==