Why Lauren Smith-Fields’s Friends Turned to TikTok
The New York Times
Ignored by the media and pushed aside by the police, families and supporters of Black women are building their own missing persons operations online.
On Jan. 22, the night before Lauren Smith-Fields would have turned 24, her friends gathered to celebrate the birthday of another friend. They talked, listened to music. And then “Good Days” by SZA began to play.
Ray Rose, 22, started to cry. He looked around the room and noticed that some of his friends were crying too. Mr. Rose thought about how Ms. Smith-Fields never knew the words to any songs, but she knew the words to this one. It was her favorite.
He stepped outside and pulled up a video he had made two weeks earlier, featuring clips of the two of them during their high school years. He made it as a way to remember Ms. Smith-Fields, who had been found dead in her apartment in Bridgeport, Conn., on Dec. 12 after a Bumble date. He decided to post the video to TikTok, and then turned off his phone.
