Alexis Crawford
The world was shaken by the violent details following the gruesome discovery of the body of 21-year-old Alexis Crawford on November 8th, 2019. Alexis was a student at one of our prized HBCUs, Clark Atlanta University, where not only did her killers reside as fellow students, but actually roomed with her in their off-campus apartment.
While an official motive has yet to be released, it has been shared that a few days before Alexis was murdered, she had submitted a rape kit as she was allegedly attacked by her roommate’s boyfriend, Barron Brantley, 21 with sexual advances.
The night Alexis’s life ended, a fight between her and her roommate, Jordyn Jones, 21, ensued. For whatever reason, Brantley got in between the two and ended up strangling Alexis until she stopped fighting and eventually ceased breathing. Brantley and Jones then placed her lifeless body into a plastic container, and dumped her into a wooded area in Decatur.
While perpetuating general speculation as fact can be very dangerous, there are certain avenues the outline of this story leads to based on events that happened throughout the timeline, that can lead one to a logical, but sad observation: The detachment, and level of disregard people, most uncomfortably young people have towards another is truly reaching sickening levels of intensity.
Let’s say Brantley actually did not assault Alexis, and covering that up/ punishing Alexis was not the reason why she was brutally strangled, and hidden alone in a Georgia rough, even considering most people who are strangled are women in tumultuous relationships who have become victims of a crime of passion...
The act of actually choosing to not call the police, not call a neighbor, your parents, your at home friends, or anyone, is one thing - We get it;
You just murdered, and watched your boyfriend murder a 21 year old woman in front of you, a 21 year old you’re quite used to seeing at that. It is understandable how scary, and disheartening for elderly people that have seen many levels of death, and have dealt with many methods of how we can die could be, let alone 21 year old college students.
However, to be emotionally, and mentally sound enough to make a conscious decision to locate something to put Alexis in physically making sure her body would fit, picking Alexis up, placing her into a bin, then moving the bin to a vehicle, and then actually driving, and dropping the bin off after deciding somewhere desolate, and ‘perfect’ for an object to be discovered, then to drive back still informing no one, can be classified as many things, but an extremely unfortunate one, is shameful.
If there is no one else a Black woman is able to count on, she should always, at bare minimum, be able to turn to another sister, and know that she can confide, be loved, reminded, extended, comforted, understood and protected in the arms of shared unique experience, and the compassion that creates. No matter the beef, the bond should run deeper.
When Black women allow anyone, whether it be another ethnicity, or a man destroy another Black woman in front of us, for any and every excuse, we lose as a whole. Alexis’s life was not developed to be taken away by personal afflictions, likely do to actions she was not responsible for.
Even if - There are too many Black women who are too comfortable using their daughters as pawns for sex, to keep a sick man happy; Too many women who will destroy their daughters, nieces, and friends for being loved, or lusted after by an entity whose attention they have drawn by the natural efferevesance Black women possess. Don’t forget about the Black women who feel they have no other option but to tear down and crucify the next Black woman to feel secure in the spots they imagine they must defend.
Remember this scene and why she’s crying...yeah
Its cases like these that serve as evidence as to why we must start behaving as each other’s keepers and stop pretending to be.
A young woman, in college not far from her campus, lost her life for existing in a space where her life was not regarded at a high enough extent even by her own, posing very real questions: If this how we are going to treat each other, how can we expect larger, more powerful entities not connected to us, to not abuse us, and our sisters, and brothers?
How can Jordyn Jones help her boyfriend conceal Alexis’s truth, when that could have easily been her Black body cradled in the fetal position Jones and Brantley looked down upon when covering Alexis in that container? What tone was being set? Or does it not matter so long as there is a man by your side believing you are his ride or die, regardless of how despicable his actions were to someone who looks like you, to someone that could have been you.
Black women. Women period. We must stop compromising our sisters for the sake of men, and greater entities who abide by destructive behaviors aimed at us for weak, personal gain. We must stop tearing down the women who raise us up, and are responsible for raising up our Black daughters of the future. We must engage in, and take to heart our responsibility to water the most uncared for, yet most fruitful beings in our society, our fellow Black woman.
The detachment we are getting too comfortable existing within us, between us, has to end, or we will.
Rest in Paradise Alexis Crawford, we love you, we miss you, we see you - And we will never forget your story.
Jordyn Jones circled, Alexis at the end
