Rest in power: Nancy Metayer, Cerina Fairfax, Pastor Tammy McCollum, Ashly Robinson, Qualeisha Barnes, Davonta Curtis or Barbara Deer—all Black women killed this spring.
Even though I did not know Nancy Metayer, my heart is utterly broken by the loss of her life and the violence of her death.
Metayer was a Haitian American elected official, environmental scientist and advocate who was found dead in her home on the first day of April. Police say she died at the hands of Stephen Bowen, the man she had been married to for only a few years. He is now in custody; the case is being investigated as a domestic murder.
Described as a bright light in her community, the vice mayor of Coral Springs, Fla., was elected in 2020, then re-elected in 2024. She was the first Black and first Haitian American woman elected to the Coral Springs Commission in the city’s entire history.
On the day she was killed, Metayer was just about to announce a congressional run.
Still in her 30s, Metayer, a child of immigrants and first generation Haitian American, was an unrelenting advocate for justice. Throughout her short career, she was a champion for environmental justice and public health initiatives across Florida, and served on local and state boards focused on sustainability, housing and civic engagement. She was an undeniable force with a promising political future ahead of her that was cut short in the most brutal of ways.
Nancy Metayer’s spirit resonated with me, as I watched her from afar, blazing a trail in local politics. That she did so in 21st century Florida no less filled me with admiration.
The night before her funeral, I attended a virtual vigil in her honor. Organized by members of her community in Florida, including esteemed clinical psychologist Dr. Guerda Nicolas, the gathering was a vèyè—the Kreyòl word for a wake, or keeping watch.
On that Zoom for Nancy Metayer, we kept watch before laying her to rest, remembering her impact, mourning her loss and holding space for one another in communal love, care and solidarity.
The vèyè took place on April 16, the same day that news broke about Cerina Fairfax, an African American woman and accomplished dentist who was killed in her Virginia home. She too, was allegedly murdered by the man she was married to.
I did not know Cerina Fairfax, but I was once again gutted.
Nor did I know Pastor Tammy McCollum, Ashly Robinson, Qualeisha Barnes, Davonta Curtis or Barbara Deer—all Black women who were also killed between March and April in incidents of gender-based violence.
And to think that those are only the names that we know of.
I do know that one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence. And I know that for Black women, the deadly impact of this violence is even more acute: Black women are two-and-a-half times more likely to be murdered by men than white women, and more than nine in every 10 murdered Black women know their killers.
Globally, a woman or a girl is killed by someone in her family every 11 minutes.
Black feminists have been writing about and advocating against gender-based violence for what feels like far too long. In fact, the first use of the word intersectionality was in an essay by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, in which the experience of Black women victims of domestic violence animate her argument about what it means to sit at the intersection of multiple oppressions. Domestic violence is a part of our Black feminist origin story.
But during moments like those we have endured this month, I wonder: Are we screaming into a void?
In addition to the painful reality of these women’s deaths, the public reaction has further illuminated how readily people center and defend perpetrators of violence against Black women. As Dr. Stacey Patton writes:
“We need to ask why so many men feel an uneasy familiarity with the conditions that preceded Fairfax’s violence, even if they would never cross that line themselves. … We get language that softens the edges. ‘He was struggling.’ ‘He was under pressure.’ ‘He lost everything.’ But when you actually look at what was reported, what was documented, you get a very different picture … This was not just an ‘unraveling.’ It was a pattern that far too many women have endured.”
Moments like these bring to mind civil rights activist and jazz singer Abbey Lincoln’s essay, “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” which poses the question in 1966 as she laments the patriarchal violence that Black women endure:
“Who will revere the black [sic] woman? Who will keep our neighborhoods safe for black innocent womanhood? Black womanhood is outraged and humiliated. Black womanhood cries for dignity and restitution and salvation. Black womanhood wants and needs protection, and keeping, and holding. Who will assuage her indignation? Who will keep her precious and pure? Who will glorify and proclaim her beautiful image? To whom will she cry rape?”
Her words echo painfully in my ears 60 years later during this long month of April, as I think about the deaths of Nancy, Cerina, and so many more who have been victims of domestic violence, but whose names we may never even know.
In the midst of this heaviness, I am also grateful for and encouraged by Black feminist scholars who build on the work of Abbey Lincoln and choose to respond to the questions—Who will fight for us? Who will revere us?—with a simple and unequivocal answer: We will.
Or, to put it plainly, as Treva Lindsey writes in America Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice:
“Our resistance is a central part of how we have survived and in some instances, prevailed. … We fight for ourselves, which, more often than not, means we fight for the actualization of justice for all. … No matter what’s stacked against us, I am undaunted in the audacity of dreaming and fighting for otherwise. I have faith in us—Black women, girls, gender nonconforming and nonbinary people.”
I have been thinking about violence against Black women for most of my life. Whether it was as a child aware of DV in her family and community; a volunteer at the Haitian Women’s Association in Boston (AFAB-KAFANM), which has been addressing domestic violence in the Haitian community for decades; an activist who worked to create an organization with the mission to end violence against women and girls; the author of a book about rape culture; or a professor teaching classes on race, gender and violence, these issues are close to my heart and deeply embedded in my soul.
Every time a Black woman is killed by an intimate partner, it feels achingly personal to me.
So what a brutal month this has been. Patriarchy is an unrelenting scourge on this earth and in our community. It is enraging and exhausting.
I do not know what else to do other than to say their names and pray that their deaths are not in vain.
Nancy, Cerina, Davonta, Ashly, Qualeisha and Barbara: We say your names. We hold onto the memory of your lives, and we will continue to do the work in your honor. Because we revere you.
