This Black History and Black Futures Month, we are honoring the enduring wisdom of Black disabled organizers who have always been at the center of movements for equity and justice.
From Fannie Lou Hamer to Brad Lomax, Audre Lorde, and Harriet Tubman, Black disabled leaders have shown us that true liberation requires us to address the interconnections of oppression, and uplift the brilliance of those living and organizing at the intersections of identities. Today’s Black disabled organizers are carrying forward this legacy as we confront new and escalating challenges – coordinated attacks on our fundamental freedoms, the pervasive dismantling of disability protections, and a philanthropic sector pulling back from equity and inclusion grantmaking — while boldly envisioning a world filled with care, health equity, and belonging for us all.
At Borealis Philanthropy, our grantee partners are meeting this moment with powerful and loving solutions. They are building networks of community care, transforming cultural narratives, and creating spaces where communal healing and organizing can flourish. Their work, which has been historically underfunded, requires long-term, flexible resourcing—particularly in the face of increasing antagonism. And we’re doing just that. We are committed to ensuring—through increasingly unrestricted funding, participatory grantmaking, and innovative programs—that Black disabled organizers have what they need to sustain and expand the work they are leading.
Below, we’re honored to highlight efforts from our grantee partners—innovators, healers and dreamers—who belong to a powerful lineage of leadership, while creating new possibilities for a whole, new world.
We Were There, Too: Preserving Black Disabled History
For four decades, Anita Cameron, a Black disabled lesbian activist, has been re-shaping narratives around pivotal moments in both disability rights and justice movements. Her latest project, We Were There, Too, elevates the long invisibilized contributions of Black disabled activists throughout history. Through interviews, podcasts and an upcoming historical docuseries, Anita is documenting and preserving the stories of Black disabled leaders whose efforts have helped lay the foundation for key disability rights victories. By reclaiming these narratives, We Were There Too is interrupting exclusive disabled history narratives, ensuring that future generations cherish the profound impact of Black disabled leaders; and galvanizing us all to inspiration and action.
The Black Deaf Project: Centering Black Deaf Education and Culture
What began as a student-led gathering at California State University Northridge, has grown into The Black Deaf Project, a movement that builds community, reshapes curricula, and works to dismantle the structural barriers that have long excluded Black Deaf individuals from full participation in education and advocacy spaces. Through workshops, history projects, and collaborations with HBCUs, the Black Deaf Project is preserving the legacies of Black Deaf leaders, while equipping the next generation of changemakers with the tools and support to continue this work.
Depressed While Black: Creating New Models of Black Mental Health Care
When Imadé found herself in a psychiatric hospital without access to essential Black self care supplies, she transformed her experience into Depressed While Black, a movement for culturally-affirming mental health support and advocacy. Through Black Beauty Supply Kits program, the organization has provided over 600 care packages to psychiatric facilities across the East Coast, showing institutions that mental health support must honor Black identity and culture. By advocating for dignity and inclusion in mental health spaces, Depressed While Black is reshaping how psychiatric care approaches cultural needs, ensuring that all patients can find comfort, safety and community support during their healing journey.
Sins Invalid: Twenty Years of Disabled Black Art
For nearly two decades, Sins Invalid, a Black and Brown-led arts collective, has revolutionized disability arts and culture by centering the work of BIPOC queer and trans disabled artists. Through live performances encompassing poetry, visual art, and dance, these artists are telling their own stories, and on their own terms. Their work not only provides platforms for disabled artists to thrive but also expands our collective understanding of disability through an intersectional lens—one that recognizes disability as deeply connected to race, gender, and sexuality. By creating a space where BIPOC disabled cultural works are seen, valued, and economically supported, Sins Invalid is reshaping both the arts and broader movement for disability justice
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The Confess Project of America: Black Barbers as Mental Health Advocates
The barbershop has long served as a cornerstone of Black communities—a sacred space for community, conversation, and care. The Confess Project of America builds upon this sanctity by utilizing these trusted spaces as catalysts for Black mental health transformation. Through their groundbreaking movement, Black barbers become mental health advocates, equipped with tools for active listening and stigma reduction. By anchoring emotional support within these culturally significant spaces, The Confess Project meets Black folks in a place where they already feel seen and understood. Through their work, The Confess Project is transforming barbershops into hubs of healing, while also shifting narratives around Black mental health care as accessible, affirming, and deeply rooted in cultural tradition.
Funding Black Disabled Futures
Black disabled leaders have long built the movements that have led to stronger communities, increased access, and greater legal protections for all. Despite this centuries-long track record, their work, in present day, remains severely underfunded. The philanthropic sector has largely exacerbated this through funding practices that deem community-rooted, Black, and disabled-led organizations to be risky investments.Here’s what a course correction will require:
- Fund Black disabled movements. Provide multi-year, unrestricted funding that allows leaders living and organizing at this deeply under-resourced intersection to sustain and expand their work on their own terms. (Check out our own Black Disabled Liberation Project—a co-funding and political education undertaking—for more on the why and how of funding this vital work).
- Move beyond accessibility and fund systemic change. Disability justice is not just about access—it is about power, self-determination, and structural transformation. Fund Black disabled-led organizing across all issue areas, from housing and healthcare to economic justice and cultural work.
- Share power in decision making. Shift from traditional funding models to more participatory approaches that center Black disabled leaders in strategy, governance, and resource allocation.
- Recognize rest, joy, and healing as essential investments. In a world that demands constant productivity from Black disabled bodies, rest and joy are not luxuries—they are essential investments in our movements’ sustainability and power.
- Commit to authentic and aligned partnership. Resource organizers for the long-haul; offer trusting, flexible funding; and adopt tools and practices that elevate their wisdom, solutions, and feedback. Move your foundation into deeper alignment with their work and wisdom—for example, by adopting participatory grantmaking models, or reimagining how you measure impact and evaluate success.
To better understand how Borealis can support you in forging connections with—and funneling resources to—the frontlines of the disability justice movements, please connect with us.