Black Femicide in the United States

Black women in the United States of America face a femicide crisis that is structural, persistent, and measurable. This information hub consolidates peer-reviewed research, federal data, and policy analysis into a single reference for journalists, academics, advocates, and policymakers. Every statistic is sourced. Every claim is documented.

Table of Contents

• The Purpose of this Research Hub
• How to Navigate The Research
• The Increasing Vulnerability of Black Women in the USA
• Structural Racism: The Root Cause
• New Research: 2024-2025
• How To Reduce Black Femicide
• Further Reading
• References

The Purpose of this Research Hub

Black femicide is an ongoing crisis in the United States of America.^{1 2} However, it is a chronic, measurable, and structurally produced one.^{3 4} The Columbia University/Lancet study (Waller, Joseph & Keyes, 2024)–the most comprehensive peer-reviewed analysis to date–found that the femicide rate for Black women aged 25–44 remained unchanged from 1999 to 2020.⁵ Two decades of policy produced no net improvement. In 2025, Gillum et al. named it plainly: Black femicide is the ultimate health disparity in the United States.^{6 7}

This hub brings together five data-driven articles covering every dimension of the crisis: national rates, year-over-year trends, perpetrator relationships, firearms and method of killing, and state-by-state disparities.^{8 9 10} Together they constitute the most comprehensive English-language reference on Black femicide currently available outside of an academic journal.

How to Navigate The Research

The Increasing Vulnerability of Black Women in the USA

Federal policy changes in 2025 and 2026 disrupted domestic violence services across the United States.^{11 12} First, a funding freeze delayed life-saving grants and destabilized shelters and hotlines. Then, proposed budget cuts targeted both Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) programs and housing assistance.^{13 14} For example, one proposal included approximately $208 million in cuts to VAWA-related programs, alongside major reductions in housing support.¹⁵ As a result, many victim-survivors now face a perilous choice between staying in danger or risking homelessness.

Moreover, these budget cuts disproportionately affect Black women and other marginalized groups. This population of Americans already face higher rates of abuse and greater barriers to support.¹⁶ At the same time, new grant restrictions limit how organizations address race and inequality. As a result, providers struggle to deliver targeted, effective care. Ultimately, when funding shrinks and housing disappears, the path to safety becomes far more difficult leading to increased fatalities.¹⁷

Structural Racism: The Root Cause

Researchers consistently identify structural racism as the primary driver of Black femicide disparities.^{18 19} The Columbia/Lancet study documents a direct correlation between concentrated disadvantage — poverty, unemployment, lack of housing stability, historical legacies of racial violence — and femicide rates.²⁰ States with the most pronounced structural inequalities record the highest Black-to-white femicide ratios.

Furthermore, structural racism operates through multiple channels simultaneously.²¹ It concentrates Black women in economic peril that limits their capacity to leave abusive partners. It produces distrust of law enforcement that reduces help-seeking. It funds social services unequally. It enforces firearm relinquishment laws inconsistently. The result is a system that fails Black women at every intervention point–before the violence, during it, and after.

“The greatest inequities are in areas of the country where concentrated disadvantage is pronounced. These trends reflect systems that have long disserviced communities of colour, and underscore that sustained investment and vision to support underserved communities are critical to reverse racial injustices.”

Dr. Katherine Keyes, PhD, Senior Author, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, The Lancet (2024)

New Research: 2024–2025

Academic attention to Black femicide has accelerated since the Columbia/Lancet study.^{22 23 24} The research below represents the most significant peer-reviewed contributions published in the past two years. Each advances the field’s understanding of causes, scale, and solutions.

How to Reduce Black Femicide

• Legislation: Femicide Legal Codification – The U.S. has no federal femicide law. Legal codification would mandate tracking, create distinct prosecution categories, and align the U.S. with 28 nations that already recognize femicide as a distinct crime.²⁵
• Firearms: Domestic Violence Firearms Laws – States with strong domestic violence firearm relinquishment enforcement record measurable reductions in intimate partner femicide.²⁶ Extreme Risk Protection Orders show documented effectiveness.
• VAWA & Shelter Investment – The six states that reduced Black femicide disparities shared a common factor: targeted DV investment. Maryland’s improvement from 4:1 to 2:1 is the clearest documented example of policy working.
• Surveillance: National Femicide Tracking System – No federal system currently disaggregates femicide data by race. Researchers, advocates, and journalists are forced to piece together partial datasets. A national surveillance system is the foundational requirement for every other intervention.
• Community: Culturally Competent Advocacy – Research identifies help-seeking barriers unique to Black women survivors — distrust of police, economic dependence, community pressure. Interventions must address these barriers directly, not assume white survivor frameworks apply universally.
• Structurally: Address Concentrated Disadvantage – The Columbia/Lancet study identifies concentrated disadvantage as the primary structural predictor of femicide disparity. Economic investment in Black communities, housing stability, and healthcare access all reduce femicide risk through structural channels.

Sources: Waller et al. (2024) · Diez et al. (2017) · Lewis et al. (2024) · Gillum et al. (2025) · Campbell et al. (2003)

Related Links

• The Global Femicide Legislation Index
• National Femicide Rates in the United States
• Financial Abuse: A Hidden Form of Coercive Control
• Coercive Control: Resources, Research & Recovery
• The Alarming Rate of Black Femicide

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References

1. Gillum, T., Sheffield, A., Norton, A.D. and Hampton, C. (2025) ‘The murder of Black women in the United States: A public health crisis’, American Journal of Public Health, 115(5), pp. 663–667. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2025.308010. ↩︎
2. Radford, J. & Russell, D.E.H. (Eds.) (1992). Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing. Open University Press. ↩︎
3. Campbell, J. C., Webster, D., Koziol-McLain, J., Block, C., Campbell, D., Curry, M. A., Gary, F., Glass, N., McFarlane, J., Sachs, C., Sharps, P., Ulrich, Y., Wilt, S. A., Manganello, J., Xu, X., Schollenberger, J., Frye, V., & Laughon, K. (2003). Risk factors for femicide in abusive relationships: Results from a multisite case control study. American Journal of Public Health, 93(7), 1089–1097. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.93.7.1089 ↩︎
4. UNODC and UN Women, Femicides in 2023: Global Estimates of Intimate Partner/Family Member Femicides. (United Nations publication, 2024). ↩︎
5. Waller, B.Y., Joseph, V.A., & Keyes, K.M. (2024). Racial inequities in homicide rates and homicide methods among Black and White women aged 25–44 years in the USA, 1999–2020: A Cross-Sectional Time Series Study. The Lancet. ↩︎
6. Gillum, T.L., Sheffield, A., Hampton, C.J. and Norton, A.D. (2025) ‘Black femicide in the U.S.: The ultimate health disparity’, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. doi: 10.1007/s40615-025-02696-z. ↩︎
7. Gillum et al. 2025. ‘The murder of Black women in the United States.’ ↩︎
8. Violence Policy Center. (2025). Black homicide victimization in the United States.  ↩︎
9. Violence Policy Center. (2025). When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2023 Homicide Data. ↩︎
10. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2023). WONDER: Wide-ranging online data for epidemiologic research. ↩︎
11. Friedman, A. (2025). ‘We’re disaster planning’: Trump’s funding freeze rattles domestic violence nonprofits. Politico. ↩︎
12. Semuels, A. (2025). ‘People Are Going to Die’: Cuts Leave Domestic Violence Support Groups Reeling. Time Magazine. ↩︎
13. Olson, M. (2026). A Catch-22 for Survivors of Domestic Violence: Trump Admin Simultaneously Slashes Housing and VAWA Funds. Ms. ↩︎
14. Barclay, M.L. and Mithani, J. (2025). Without the federal government, almost no money exists to fight domestic violence. The 19th. ↩︎
15. Olson. 2026. ↩︎
16. Wakefield, M. (2024). The Alarming Rate of Black Femicide in the U.S. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
17. Wakefield, M. (2026). National Femicide Rates in the Unites States. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab. ↩︎
18. Posey, B.M. (2024) ‘Black femicides matter: Conceptualizing the killings of Black girls and women as structural and cultural violence’, Homicide Studies, 28(3), pp. 313–340. doi: 10.1177/10887679231209227. ↩︎
19. Bailey, Z. D., Krieger, N., Agénor, M., Graves, J., Linos, N., & Bassett, M. T. (2017). Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: Evidence and interventions. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1453–1463. ↩︎
20. Waller et al. 2024. ↩︎
21. Willie, T.C. (2025) ‘Silent no more: Confronting structural gendered racism and the crisis of abduction and femicide of U.S. Black women and girls’, AJPM Focus. doi: 10.1016/j.focus.2025.100421. ↩︎
22. Gillum et al. 2025. ‘The murder of Black women in the United States.’ ↩︎
23. Gillum et al. 2025. ‘Black femicide in the United States.’ ↩︎
24. Willie. 2025. ↩︎
25. Lewis, S., Kaslow, N.J., Cheong, J., Evans, D. and Yount, K.M. (2024) ‘Femicide in the United States: A call for legal codification and national surveillance’, Frontiers in Public Health. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1338548. ↩︎
26. Giffords Law Center. (2025). Gun violence in Black communities. Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence.  ↩︎