the rise in black femicide

...What We Refuse to Name Will Continue to Kill Us...

Femicide is the killing of women and girls because they are women. In practice, it shows up through intimate partner violence, coercive control, sexual violence, stalking, and the belief that a woman’s body, choices, labor, and life are subject to male entitlement. Naming Black femicide matters because when Black women are killed, the violence is too often flattened into “relationship problems,” “family tragedy,” or “mental health,” rather than recognized as gendered violence shaped by racism, sexism, and power. What we are facing is not only domestic violence—it is the deadly convergence of patriarchy, racial inequality, community trauma, access to firearms, and a long-standing silence around abuse.

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The data are clear. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Black women have the highest homicide rate among women in the United States—9.7 per 100,000—far exceeding other racial groups, with intimate partner violence contributing to about 41.5% of female homicides. The Violence Policy Center reports that in 2023, 733 Black women were killed by men in single-victim incidents, at a rate more than double that of White women. Black women make up 14% of the female population but over 31% of women killed by men. In cases where the relationship is known, more than 90% of victims knew their killer, over half were intimate partners, and nearly three-quarters were killed with a firearm. This is not random—it is patterned, predictable, and preventable.

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Black femicide must be understood as both gender violence and racialized violence. Patriarchy and white supremacy are overlapping systems of domination that normalize control, hierarchy, and the devaluation of certain lives. They shape not only individual behavior but the conditions that make violence more likely and protection less accessible. While Black men’s mental health deserves serious attention, it cannot be used to explain away abuse. Data show only a small percentage of intimate partner homicides are directly linked to mental illness, while far more involve prior abuse, conflict, and access to firearms. Abuse is fundamentally about power and control. Until we name that clearly—and confront the systems that sustain it—Black women will remain at risk in ways that are both deeply personal and profoundly structural.

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The silence inside Black communities is part of the crisis. That silence is not accidental. It is built from generations of racial terror, over-policing, distrust of institutions, economic vulnerability, church-based pressure to preserve families at all costs, and the burden Black women carry to protect Black men from a racist system even when they themselves are being harmed. Scholars and advocates have documented that Black women survivors often navigate help-seeking through the intersecting impacts of racism, sexism, and institutional mistrust. When speaking out is framed as betrayal, the abuser gains cover and the victim loses room to breathe. 

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Recent cases underscore how urgent this is. In Alabama, Precious Elicia J’anae Johnson, 24, was killed by her husband, Kynath William Terry Jr., in a hospital room shortly after giving birth in March 2026. In Florida, Nancy Metayer Bowen, the vice mayor of Coral Springs and the city’s first Black and Haitian American female commissioner, was allegedly murdered by her husband in April 2026. In Virginia, Dr. Cerina Fairfax was killed in April 2026 in what police said was a murder-suicide by her estranged husband, former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. In Alabama, Angelicca Newton, 29 and pregnant, was killed in August 2025 during what authorities described as a domestic incident involving her boyfriend, Alfred Lee Colvin III. These names are not a complete list. They are a warning. 

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Alabama has its own reason for alarm. The CDC’s 2023/2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey estimates that 34.2% of women in Alabama have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and 32.3% have experienced that violence with at least one related impact, such as injury, fear, missed work, medical care, or police involvement. Alabama’s public health and advocacy infrastructure also continues to show need: on a single day in September 2024, domestic violence programs in Alabama served 448 victims and handled 160 hotline contacts.

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Historical Alabama data are also telling. The Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) reported that from 1981 to 1998, the intimate partner homicide rate for Black females in Alabama was 4.70 per 100,000, compared with 1.57 for White females. The same ADPH document stated that Alabama’s domestic violence rate was among the highest in the nation. While those figures are older and should be treated as historical context rather than current rates, they show that racial disparity in lethal partner violence in Alabama is not new. 

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Current homicide data reinforce that broader violence burden. The Violence Policy Center reports that Alabama ranked 10th in the nation for Black homicide victimization in 2023, with 532 Black homicide victims and a rate of 39.1 per 100,000. Of those victims, 76 were female. Most were killed with firearms. This is not the whole picture of Black femicide, but it is part of the environment in which it happens: concentrated violence, gun access, trauma, and repeated exposure to deadly harm. 

 

So what does it mean to speak out? It means refusing euphemism. It means saying plainly that Black women are being killed in disproportionate numbers, often by men they know, often by intimate partners, often with guns. It means insisting that protecting Black women is not anti-Black. It is pro-Black life. It means rejecting the reflex that asks women to be quiet for the sake of race solidarity while their safety is sacrificed. The data support urgency, and the silence has already cost too much. 

 

Solutions must be as structural as the problem. First, we need survivor-centered, culturally responsive services that Black women can actually trust, including shelter, legal aid, counseling, emergency housing, and economic support. Second, we need stronger lethality prevention: firearm removal when domestic violence is present, earlier intervention when threats escalate, and systems that treat strangulation, stalking, coercive control, and repeated police contact as high-risk warning signs. Third, we need serious investment in prevention for men and boys, including trauma-informed care, healthy relationship education, and stigma-reducing pathways into mental health support. Fourth, churches, fraternities, civic groups, and Black-led institutions must stop treating abuse as a private matter and start treating it as a community emergency. CDC prevention guidance emphasizes comprehensive strategies that address immediate safety and upstream structural drivers alike. 

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And finally, we need a moral shift. Black women should not have to die for people to admit that patriarchy is real, that abuse is common, and that white supremacy and male dominance have left deep marks on how power is practiced and protected in this country. Speaking out is not divisive. It is necessary. Awareness alone is not enough, but silence is lethal. The work now is to tell the truth, honor the names, build protection around the living, and create consequences for those who cause harm before another Black woman becomes a headline.