The Harriet Tubman Collective was formed after on August 1, 2016 the Movement for Black Lives released the vision statement "A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice." This policy plan included demands for reparations, economic justice, prison abolition, healthcare, an end to state violence, and so much more. The vision statement named groups that were considered the most marginalized Black people. Disabled people were only mentioned as "differently abled." This lead Black disability activists from the United States and Canada to organize the Harriet Tubman Collective which released a response statement "Disability Solidarity: Completing the 'Vision for Black Lives'" on September 7, 2016. 

The Harriet Tubman Collective

Schalk brings up as an example of how contemporary Black Disability Cultural Workers are confronting the exclusion of Black Disabled people from broader Black movement spaces the Harriet Tubman Collective.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Schalk observed that Black Disability cultural workers tend to use the words D/disabled and disability to describe themselves and the work they were doing. Contemporary Black Disability cultural workers also used the term disability while understanding the historicized and contextualized reasons why Black people may avoid identifying as disabled, and simultaneously work to bring more disabled Black people into politicized understandings of disability identity.

Differences between Contemporary Black Disability Cultural Workers and the work of the Black Panther Party and NBWHP

(1) boldly stating one's own Black disability identity and encouraging claiming of disability identity among Black public leaders
(2) creating new language and spaces away from mainstream White disability movements for Black disabled people to develop their own relationship to disability in all its facets
(3) not requiring individuals to use the word disability to describe themselves in order to participate in or receive support from Black disability cultural work.

Schalk's Framing of How Contemporary Black Disabled Cultural Workers Work Towards Broader Black Disabled Identity

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

Black Disability Politics

Schalk notes that while the NBWHP engaged heavily in the third tactic of not requiring individuals to use the word disability to describe themselves in order to participate in or receive support from Black disability cultural work that the NBWHP could have done more to engage in the first two tactics - for instance the NBWHP could have further encouraged members with HIV/AIDS chronic illness and psychiatric disabilities to understand themselves as disabled and the legal protections that come with that understanding. 

Comparing Contemporary Tactics to the Work of the NBWHP

Schalk argues that Black disabled cultural workers are growing and improving Black disability politics and that this growth in turn in changing how we mobilize outside of just Black disability politics work. 

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