Black women are 10% of the U.S. female population yet represent 59% of women murdered. More people are mobilized in response to the deaths of Black men than those of Black women. Kimberlé Crenshaw understands this asymmetry as being partially rooted in Black women’s lack of “narrative capital,” and has called on women to “share their stories” of violence in order to redistribute said capital and occasion greater mobilization. Stories are important; the ethical dimensions and pervasive impact of storytelling about racist violence cannot be ignored. W.E.B. Du Bois, through his "martyr tales" in which he brought a Black Jesus to the Jim Crow south who was subsequently lynched for espousing a message of equality, ensured that Black men’s endurance of antiblack violence came to represent the courageous confrontation of evil, self-sacrifice, and democratic pacifism and through them helped to write lynching into "the story of Black peoplehood." Significantly, Du Bois did not often resurrect his Black Jesus. This is an important part of the political context in which Black women must share their stories. Like Du Bois before her, Toni Morrison saw a link between death, storytelling, democracy, and justice, but the thinkers held different views regarding the practice of storytelling and the democratic work of the dead. Morrison provides a model for how Black women should “share their stories.”

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