I am tired of writing their names in the past tense.
I am tired of watching our community lower its voice when a Black woman turns up dead in the home she shared with the man who was supposed to be her protector.
I am tired of the flowers, the candlelight vigils, and the social media tributes that fade by the following Sunday. And I am deeply, profoundly tired of our collective willingness to call this anything other than what it is. Men killing the women who loved them because of their fragile, narcissistic ego.
This month alone, and on Black Women’s History Month, might I add, several trending news stories took over the social media discourse and news cycles.
Nancy Metayer was a 38-year-old trailblazing elected official, the first Black and Haitian American woman ever elected to the Coral Springs City Commission. Metayer was re-elected unopposed in 2024 and was days away from announcing a run for Congress. She had a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins. She showed up for her community every single day.
And on April 1, the man she married allegedly shot her to death, and wrapped her body in blankets and garbage bags.
When I read this, all I could say was… “Again?” Another news story about femicide and the domestic violence crimes against women. That man was allegedly responsible for a premeditated domestic killing. And when police asked him why he did it, his response was that he “couldn’t take it anymore.”
Then there’s Dr. Cerina Fairfax, an accomplished dentist who had spent more than 20 years serving her Fairfax County, Virginia, community and building her own practice. She was somebody’s mother. She was somebody’s doctor. She had installed cameras throughout her home because she needed evidence to protect herself from her estranged partner. She had filed for divorce in July 2025.
A court date was set for April 21. Cerina had recently been granted custody of their children, and Justin Fairfax was ordered to vacate the family home by April 30, 2026.
On April 16, former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot her several times in the basement of their home and then took his own life. Their teenage son made the 911 call just after midnight. That child will replay that night for the rest of his life.
Police believe the upcoming April 21 trial regarding asset division may have contributed to a murder-suicide in which Justin Fairfax allegedly shot his wife and then himself on April 16, 2026. The act of murder-suicide is cowardice. There has been so much discourse about topics like this, where it’s turned into gender wars.
Call out what it is. This is Uroxicide, which is the act of a husband murdering his wife. It’s commonly driven by sexual jealousy, suspicion of infidelity, or attempts to control a partner. It is a severe form of intimate partner violence.
Instead of calling out the behaviors of this man, they humanize him, and blame mental health as the issue, and not the actions he continuously made to get him to this point. The lack of self-discipline and regard for his family and himself, especially in a high-profile position, is cowardice.
And then there’s Angelica Nwandu, founder of The Shade Room. She’s the woman who built one of the most powerful Black media platforms in this country. As her story spread across our timelines, so did a grief for many other names of women who’s death go unrecognized.
In 1996, her father murdered her mother, Georgina Nwandu, beating her with a flashlight and choking her to death while their children were home. Authorities said Jude Nwandu tied his wife’s body to the back of his van with a telephone cord and rope, then dragged her through the streets of Inglewood. Police spotted the van in progress, triggering a high-speed chase.
He was apprehended and later convicted in 2002. Angie was six years old at the time of her mother’s death. She and her four sisters were placed into the Los Angeles foster care system. She went on to build an empire, on top of a wound no child should ever have to carry.
Statistics show that Black women are twice as likely to be killed by a spouse and four times more likely to be killed by a dating partner than white women. Nearly seven in 10 intimate partner homicides in this country are carried out with a firearm, with women making up 77% of victims, more than 70 women shot dead by a partner every single month, according to Everytown Research’s analysis of CDC data.
We have let too many of our men off the hook for too long. We have praised their potential while minimizing their patterns. We have told our women to pray harder, forgive faster, and hold the family together, while those same families were slowly becoming crime scenes. That has to stop.
Men in our community must be held accountable from the very first sign of danger, not eulogized after the fact. That means a cultural shift that stops treating a man’s unraveling as a woman’s burden to bear in silence. It means enforcing red flag laws and demanding that every domestic call include a lethality assessment. It means that courts must move faster.
These women, among so many others, deserved to grow old. They deserved to be safe in their own homes. They deserved better than this.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788, or visit thehotline.org.
