The NBWHP began in 1981 as a subsection of the National Women's Health Network charged with focusing specifically on the health needs of Black women. The NBWHP hosted the First National Conference on Black Women's Health Issues at Spelman College on June 24th, 1983.

The History of the National Black Women's Health Project

Schalk defines Black feminist health activism as health activism by Black people that is critically attuned to intersectional gender, race, and class politics. Note: Schalk makes clear it does not mater whether or not the word feminist is actively used by people enacting Black feminist health activism.

Black Feminist Health Activism

Schalk analyzes the NBWHP as an example of Black disability politics because:
- how disability was explicitly and implicitly included within NBWHP's mission
- NBHWP's self-help phiilosophy
- NBWHP's holistic, cultural, and political approaches to health and wellness
- how spirituality was incorporated into NBWHP's public health work.

NBWHP as Black Disability Politics

- The History of the National Black Women's Health Project
- Black Feminist Health Activism

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The theory of Black Disability Politics refers to disability politics expressed through text, speech, ideological platforms, or activist work by Black cultural workers (individuals whose work directly responds to and influences culture). It encompasses how Black individuals engage in Disability Justice and Disability Politics, and it can be understood as an integral intersection of both the Disability Justice movement and the Black liberation movement.

Theory of Black Disability Politics

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics, New York, USA: Duke University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478027003

Black Disability Politics

1. Intersectional but Race Centered
2. Not Necessarily Based in Disability Identity
3. Contextualized and Historicized
4. Holistic

Four Common Qualities of Black Disability Politics

- What was the Black Panther Party?
- Views of the Black Panther Party in early and later years?
- "The Black Panther" - The Black Panther Party
- The 504 Sit-In
- Oakland Community School
-Mental and Carceral Institutions

The Black Panther Part as an Example of Black Disability Politics

By placing Black children in disability specific classrooms under the label of uneducable Oakland Public Schools made a space where disability was racialized, due to uneducable being used to make receiving a lack of culturally competent education into a disability, and how racialization can be disabiling since placing Black students in an underfunded education environment (the disability specific classrooms) caused them to fall behind their peers because of the lack of resources.

Uneducable as a site of Racializing Disability

- Oakland Community School Pedagogy
- Ericka Huggins, Oakland Community School director

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