On April 22nd, Dr. Régine Jean-Charles, the Director of Africana Studies, Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, published the article “‘Who Will Revere the Black Woman?’ Remembering Nancy, Cerina and So Many More” with Ms. Magazine.
Just between March and April of this year, Nancy Metayer, Cerina Fairfax, Pastor Tammy McCollum, Ashly Robinson, Qualeisha Barnes, Davonta Curtis or Barbara Deer were killed by gender-based violence. Dr. Jean-Charles remembers them and calls for them to rest in power. She also notes that these are only the names that we know.
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.
Remembering Nancy Metayer as a first-generation Haitian American, a child of immigrants, an elected official, an environmental scientist, and an advocate, who was a victim of domestic murder, Dr. Jean-Charles recounts her community activism, her trailblazing work as the first Black and first Haitian American woman in the city to be elected to the Coral Springs Commission, and her championing of environmental justice and public health intiatives in Florida. While attending Metayer’s vigil, Dr. Jean-Charles learned of the death of Cerina Fairfax, an African American woman and dentist murdered, too, by her husband.
Dr. Jean-Charles notes the staggering number of women — one in three — who have experienced sexual assault, and that Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than white women. In the home, she reports that a woman or girl is killed by a family member every 11 minutes. She describes, at times, feeling like she’s screaming into the void, responding to civil rights activist and jazz singer Abbey Lincoln’s 1966 essay, “Who Will Revere the Black Woman?” She will, along with a community of pioneering Black feminist scholars.
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.
Read the full article here.
