On 13 July, as the US fixated on the disappearance of Carlee Russell, a 25-year-old Black nursing student who went missing on an Alabama highway, Derrica Wilson saw hope for other families whose loved ones had also gone missing. She thought of of Casey Young, Alexis Ware, Relisha Rudd, Arianna Fitts and Keeshae Jacobs – all Black women and girls who were reported missing over the last decade.
Wilson, the co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, has worked with dozens of families to help raise awareness for missing people of color. Her organization focuses on Black women and girls specifically, whose disappearances receive significantly less news coverage than white women, making it harder to garner attention and investigative resources for solving their cases. Such attention is vital, Wilson told me, particularly in the first couple of days of a person’s disappearance, because it amplifies public awareness and puts pressure on law enforcement to invest in these searches.
In 2022, Black women accounted for 18% of all missing people, even as they account for just 7% of the US population, according to the National Crime Information Center and US Census Bureau. By the end of 2022, of the more than half million people reported missing, roughly 98,000 were Black women and girls. These cases almost never reach anything even vaguely resembling media virality.
But Russell’s case proved different. A deluge of national and international news coverage focused on the woman’s disappearance. Her family appeared on the Today Show, saying that their daughter had been abducted and that the perpetrator remained at large. And the local Hoover police dedicated substantial time and resources to finding her. Then the story began to fall apart. The police eventually released evidence that cast doubt on the kidnapping story Russell told police when she eventually resurfaced. And finally, on Monday, her attorney gave a full statement: Russell had lied and no kidnapping had taken place.
Wilson told me that the media’s expansive coverage of Russell’s case made the families of missing Black women “hopeful … because they’re seeing someone that looks like their missing loved one”. Now, disheartened by how Russell’s case broke down, missing-persons advocates and experts worry that the woman’s fabrication could undermine the pursuit of the thousands of legitimate cases involving Black women and girls.
Wilson said there was no unified national policy on how law enforcement should handle these cases, leaving it up to individual police departments to determine how much they invest in investigations. That reality is fueling the concern that Russell’s hoax could mean that law enforcement may treat future missing-persons reports involving Black women with skepticism. “These families are already fighting an uphill battle,” Wilson said. “They are still hurting, still searching, asking for support and community engagement for their missing loved ones. So they are taking it personal … this is a hoax for her, but all the families that we are dealing with, this is their reality.”
Russell’s disappearance, her reappearance and her subsequent admission of fabricating her kidnapping marked a rare departure from thousands of other missing Black women’s cases across the country. Yet her ordeal also gave a glimpse of what could happen if the legitimate cases of missing Black women and girls were given as much attention. “The quick actions of police, the notification process to the local media amplified to the mainstream, that is the momentum that we have been consistently fighting for for 15 years,” Wilson said. She hopes Russell’s case won’t distract from those of valid missing persons. “We want to move forward and build upon the momentum.”
