CABWHP 30th Anniversary Speech

Remarks during CABWHP 30th Anniversary Family Reunion on June 30, 2024 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California

“Thank you, Sonya and the staff, team, volunteers and workers for organizing this beautiful event and bringing us all together.  

It’s exciting to see you all here. This event is the wonderful culmination of many dreams of so many Black women, some are here with us today - others are here in spirit. But for many of us, before the dream, came the incident, the event, the thing that happened that inspired us to change our lives, whether that meant you started an organization or started a daily walk, it was a significant moment.  

For me, that moment was the passing of my father’s mother when I was a senior in high school. She died after suffering from emphysema caused in part by cigarette smoking. Now I can clearly remember learning when I was young that smoking would kill you. I took it literally, like young children do, and I truly believed that when she put that cigarette in her mouth that she would die each time.  And so I decided to steal her cigarettes, you know those ones they marketed to Black folks in the rural south? That’s what she smoked and so I would snap them in half and crush them. I’d even put them back in the case - which was a bit diabolical I have to admit. Even though she was upset, I noticed that no one else, my parents or any other adults got mad at me, in fact they seemed to be secretly in collusion with me, chuckling and ignoring my antics. For me, it was an early lesson about power, agency and  influence and how to get in good trouble. She eventually stopped smoking and of course I felt like it was ALL my doing.  

A short time later I would be curious about addiction, health, community, systems and circumstance. I would read Evelyn White’s book in college and learn about the National Black Women’s Health Project and Byllye Avery, our founder,  and decide that working in Black women’s health was my destiny. So a few years later in 1992, when the California version, led by founder Fran Jemmott, showed up at UCLA, where I was in law school, for a conference, and it was sold out - but I couldn't afford a ticket anyway, and I couldn’t get anyone to return my calls to volunteer, I didn’t hesitate to use my agency, my power, to sneak in, to skip my classes because it was Anita Hill, it was Alice Walker and Kimberle Crenshaw, it was Angela Davis. In one place. At the same time, around the corner from me. Y’all.  And it was all the amazing women who had convened to talk about our health and launch the California Black Women’s Health Project.   

A few years later we would convene our own conference asking what race had to do with it - it being our health, our well being, our ability to choose how and when and where we took care of our bodies, our selves. Now here we are 22 years later and we’ve got more data, but not enough. We’ve always known intuitively what the UN study recently stated - that it’s NOT only genetics or so-called lifestyle choices that impact Black women globally - it’s systemic racism and sexism in medical systems that are the main reasons Black women are more likely to experience serious complications or death during childbirth and pregnancy. Incredible. 

I could read more statistics but we’ve always known epigenetically or what the ancestors would call “in our bones” that what ails us is greater than just us. And we know that what saves us is also us, and only us. We are our best advocates, for our selves and for others, like my grandmother, when we have agency and systems that support us.   

What’s your moment or series of moments? Maybe it happened long ago, maybe it’s today, here and now. Whatever it is, I hope you are inspired to engage, advocate, change, not only yourself, but the lives of others. It could be voting, demanding to be heard, crushing your own cigarettes or even just giving yourself permission to take a nap when you’re tired. Whatever it is, CABWHP has got your back. Now and for 30 more years, or as long as we need them, and I’m glad to have played a part along with these other folks here with me. 

My co-conspirators here, the matriarchs of CABWHP - Holly and Crystal. I want to ask you, what was that moment or series of moments for you that led you to your power, your agency, to Black women’s health?”

-Latonya Slack