Today I had the honor of moderating a panel at the United States Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs with filmmaker Arlissa Norman, producer of documentary Vice News Presents: When Black Women Go Missing and Lakeisha Lee, sister of the late Brittany Clardy of Minnesota, who is one of the missing persons featured in the film.
MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend opened the program, which highlighted the disparities in law enforcement and the media when Black women are reported missing versus White women. Forty percent of all missing persons are people of color, according to the Black and Missing Foundation. But only 13 percent of the US population is African American.
Ebony Alert – Alameda and Contra Costa Counties.
— CHP – Alerts (@CHPAlerts) November 8, 2024
Last seen: Fairmont Dr. and Foothill Blvd., San Leandro @ACSOSheriffs
IF SEEN, CALL 9-1-1. pic.twitter.com/glRwoiDKjv
The stark contrast between the amount of people of color missing in the US and the population number is why the state of California created the Ebony Alert system, a resource available to law enforcement to alert the public about suspicious and unexplained disappearances of Black people.
“A missing person’s case is a murder waiting to happen,” said Natalie Wilson, a co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation. Thus, finding a missing person as soon as possible is key to survival. “In 27 of the first 31 Ebony Alerts issued in California, we found the missing person,” California State Senator Steven Bradford told me at the event. Sen. Bradford authored the bill that created the Ebony Alert system. It was signed into law in 2023.
Journalists from Vice News had to repeatedly advocate for Brittany and the two additional victims featured in the film (Shamari Brantley and Krystal Anderson) to be seen and heard.
It took three years of starting and stopping the production amid layoffs, budget cuts and the company filing bankruptcy before Arlissa and her colleagues could finish the film and bring it to air via a licensing deal with Tubi (because Vice News was no longer on air after it went bankrupt).
“We learned while reporting how similar victims’ experiences are [across the nation]. Almost everyone we spoke to mentioned things like they had trouble getting the initial police report, police saying [their missing family members] probably ran off with their boyfriend /not taking their concerns seriously,” wrote Arlissa in a email ahead of our panel discussion. As a result, Black families searching for their loved ones had to conduct their own investigations and hire private detectives, rather than rely on public services paid for by their taxes, like police-led searches, Amber Alerts and law enforcement-led media alerts. Arlissa also discovered in her reporting that there was very little interest from most media outlets in covering missing person cases involving Black women.
That was the case for Brittany, whose story is told in the film through her sister, Lakeisha. In 2013, Brittany suffered fatal injuries caused by blunt force trauma after being struck with a hammer by a predator she met online. When Lakeisha reported Brittany missing, police were slow to respond. She was killed while in captivity at the age of 18.
Lakeisha turned her pain into purpose and became an advocate for all missing women and girls of color through the formation of the Brittany Clardy Foundation with her mother. Her activism has led to a first-of-its-kind task force in the Minnesota Office of Public Safety dedicated to missing and murdered African-American women and girls. Lakeisha’s work has also led to the Brittany Clardy Act, legislation introduced to Congress by Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar proposing the task force be replicated on a federal level by creating an Office for Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls within the United States Justice Department.
Watching this film and meeting these activists raised my awareness on the importance of advocating for Amber Alerts and proper news coverage when a female of color goes missing. I highly recommend watching the film, now streaming on Tubi.
Learn more at Blackandmissinginc.com/resources.
