While by the mid-1970s most of the Black Panther Party's on-the-ground work was happening almost exclusively in the Oakland area, the Black disability politics expressed through "The Black Panther" had a wide reach, not just because of the circulation of the newspaper, which by the late 1970s was around 5,500 copies per week in select major cities, but also archival records of inner-party memorandums now members were expected to read the paper in full each week. This means in the mid-1970s Black Panther Party members and other Black people and non-Black supporters of the BPP read about disability politics in the Black Panther as being part of collective liberation. This framework likely influenced future Black Disability Politics and the view by Black activists of disability and health as political concerns.

This is in line with the Black Panther Party's goal as explained by Jane Rhodes as mobilizing the frustrations of the black American underclass through consciousness-raising.