In April alone, at least half a dozen Black women were allegedly killed by their partners, including the high-profile cases of Cerina Fairfax, estranged wife of the former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax, and Nancy Metayer Bowen, vice-mayor of Coral Springs, Florida. Shaneiqua Elkins survived a shooting by her husband, Shamar Elkins, that wounded her and killed seven of her children and one of their cousins in Shreveport, Louisiana.
These tragedies are shining a light on the killings of Black women and the systems that allow that violence to continue.
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The numbers are startling. Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than white women are, according to a 2025 study. Most of them are killed by men they knew. A 2024 CDC report also found that Black women made up approximately 13% of the population, but accounted for nearly 30% of intimate partner homicide victims. Firearms, mostly handguns, were the most common weapons used by men to murder Black females.
So why these appalling racial disparities? Often, Black women’s deaths at the hands of their partners are a culmination of months and years of intimate partner violence, threats or the fallout of a contentious breakup; all with no help. (A Miami Herald investigation found that police had been called five times to Nancy Metayer’s home over an array of issues, before her husband, Stephen Bowen, allegedly shot and killed her in her home in Coral Springs).
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And when victims do speak up, finding recourse can be hell. The process of seeking help in a domestic violence situation often forcesBlack women to navigate a system fraught with stereotyping, disregard and disbelief. Many survivors report experiencing racism at the hands of law enforcement, which makes them skeptical and fearful of police and child services agencies. Research has also shown that the stereotyping of Black women as “aggressive, shrill, and emasculating … or inherently self-sufficient may inhibit survivors from receiving the help that they need from law enforcement”/
Alongside the existing culture of silence around gender-based violence in the Black community, there’s a stigma attached to reaching out for help. Black women are seen as protectors, and in a world where the criminal justice system targets Black men, it is viewed as a betrayal to willingly put them in contact with that same system when they are the perpetrators.
Intimate partner violence also thrives because of the ways the rest of the Black community – particularly men – closes ranks to protect and sanitize the image of violent men. In the immediate aftermath of Cerina Fairfax’s shooting, there was an outpouring of tributes online – but not all of them were for Cerina. Many, including some prominent Black figures, made posts (some now deleted) commenting on how great of a man Fairfax, who is believed to have killed himself, was, and the significance of his accomplishments – in effect separating the man they knew from the man who had just murdered his wife, and minimizing the horror of this tragedy.
In many cases, there’s a history of mental health issues for the men involved. Black men are far less likely than their white counterparts to seek out therapy, and are often priced out of mental health resources. A relative of Shamar Elkins told the Associated Press that Elkins had voluntarily checked into a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital for more than a week in January because he needed help. Shaneiqua Elkins had also been seeking a divorce from Shamar at the time of the killings. Justin Fairfax was a prominent figure in Virginia politics until two women accused him of sexual assault. He reportedly struggled with his “mental and emotional health” after the allegations became public in 2019. Fairfax had been estranged from his wife before he killed her and himself, according to court documents.
It’s important to acknowledge how mental illness is connected to domestic violence, but that doesn’t erase the misogynoir, male entitlement, weak gun laws, and lack of access to social services that help men enact violence against their families.
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Black femicide is a public health crisis with failures of multiple systems to blame. And while Black women die, the state is ignoring the structures that allow abusive men to wreak havoc on the people around them. For many Black women, this is a fight for their lives.
