Black women in the United States of America face a femicide crisis that is structural, persistent, and measurable.
Black Femicide
Black women and girls in the United States are killed at disproportionate rates that are consistently underreported in mainstream media and underaddressed in policy. This section covers the specific crisis of Black femicide in the US — its data, its drivers, its legislative landscape, and the structural failures that allow it to persist. Narcissistic Abuse Rehab’s Black Femicide in the United States hub is one of the few dedicated research resources on this topic, tracking trends, contextual analysis, and policy developments.
The risk of femicide increases for Black women in America based on the concentration of structural racism where they reside.
Firearms kill Black women at rates no other weapon approaches. Nearly three out of four Black female femicide victims die by gunshot. That proportion has climbed 47% since 2011. Guns do not cause femicide. But they determine who survives it.
Black women are most often killed by someone they love, trust, or share a home with. Nine out of ten victims knew their killer.
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the sharpest single-year escalation in Black femicide rates in two decades. Though rates declined slightly from their 2021 peak, they remain 25% higher than pre-pandemic levels–and the federal funding rollbacks of 2025 have removed the infrastructure most likely to reverse that trajectory. The years between 2020 and 2023 represent the most acute phase of the Black femicide…
The femicide of Ugandan Olympic marathoner Rebecca Cheptegei has sent shockwaves across the global sporting community, pulling back the curtain on the issue of gender-based violence in Africa. Cheptegei, 25, died on September 5, 2024 after being set on fire by her former romantic partner on her way home from church in Eldoret, Kenya. This tragedy has sparked widespread outrage…
Two decades of data reveal that Black women face persistently elevated risk of femicide–up to 20 times higher than white women in some states.